In Flesh and Blood

“Change” is the most permanent thing in life. Be it any good or bad change, we all advance towards change with a certain amount of anticipation and panic as to the potential consequences that might result from it. India today is in the grip of some of the most radical changes that simply leaves me astounded and makes me feel awestruck as to how far we have come. And I am not even talking about days long before I was born. As recently as a decade back there was a sense of decaying politics and age old idealisms that were doing the rounds. We were happy arguing with each other in the quintessential “cha er dokaan”, or “rocker adda”, vociferously critizing the shenanigans of the various “left”, “right” and “central’ politics, “mamataisms” and the recent India defeat /victory in cricket. But today the right to information has changed the whole fabric of the nation. Today every celebrity, every politician and every other “who’s who” has to be accountable for any action that they take and they have the right to be questioned by the public freely in national television. Today college students can vociferously and openly charge the Shiv Sainiks on the recent happenings of the Shiv Sena, and can also demand a justification regarding the opposition of the women’s bill. Be it villagers, students, intellectuals, writers or simply cynics, there is a platform for everyone and I think this has revolutionized mass media as a whole. Today we believe more in action than in words and are less tolerant of age old politics and the reassurance of “talks”. Perhaps this change is a good change. To view such wielders of power in flesh and blood somehow makes us more connected as country people, to demand a straight answer rather than diplomatic political verbiage, and to fight for a cause in a united manner rather than having dozens of opinionated “intellectuals” interpreting every action for us “simpletons”. In recent years modern technology has received a lot of flak as well as praise for the use of various forms of social networking. In India parents are concerned about their children spending too much time on twitter and facebook and other modes of communication rather than open exchange of thoughts. My question is, when have we been given the platform for such open exchange of thoughts? Even a decade back whatever news we got about the various happenings in a country came in the form of newspapers and news reports, where the general public was not given any scope of voicing their thoughts out in the open. Today with programs like “we the people”, where the news agent sits with the general public and questions the politician or the superstar, that feeling of disconnection or distance is no longer prevalent. Facebook and twitter has brought celebrities and the public in the same platform and the remoteness of the star has given way to real people, who face real problems like you and me. Today we have reality shows were married women are given a chance to compete against each other in dance performances. And we are not just talking about Indian forms of dance. I myself have watched these episodes and seen the “boudis” from Calcutta as well as the suburbs perform hip hop, bollywood style, salsa and other western dance forms.
There would always be one section of the society who would always criticize change. But just pause for a moment and think that even a few years back we were receiving news about dowry problems and wife beating and child marriages in India. Today a married woman from Calcutta and a married woman from Bankura are sharing the same dreams, sharing the same stage and doing it with élan in front of their husbands, their in laws (who are very proud of them) and on national television. No wonder the age old Marxist politics in Calcutta are losing in popularity and giving way to a new wave of change which propels people to come out of their secured life and voice their opinions freely. No wonder the septuagenarians in the Parliament are insecured of women like Chavvi Rajawat who left corporate job to become the "sarpanch" of Soda, a village in Rajasthan, to spread awareness amongst the villagers so that they are more aware about the goings on in the country. It is unfortunate that the people whom we have placed in power are still caught in a time warp and find it difficult in accepting change, but to us, the future of the country looks promising and hopefully we have more inspiring examples from our generation to teach the wielders of power a thing or two about accepting change with dignity.