[Reader-list] P. Sainath :Where India shining meets greatdepression (The Hindu)

[Jeebesh Bagchi]

dear Shivam, Ravi and Lawrence,

My desire for responses beyond the initial repulsion was from a  
position of confusion. These images definitely gesture towards a  
shift in ways of perceiving the world. And i am not sure what this is  
shift about.

On the one hand the realities of increasing brutalities. Rising  
counts of suicides, dislocations, and evictions. On the other, these  
images. I would think that slowly a new way of 'being' in highly in- 
equal social realities and arrangements is taking shape. A new  
psychological profile is emerging. Also, we are witnessing a  
dismantling of some earlier held assumptions.

I am trying to think what is getting dismantled and being replaced by  
what.

Dislocation and violence have always accompanied great dreams of  
wealth and domination. Europe in 18th and 19th Century is a good  
example of this. Thousands banished from within it's land to Americas  
and Australia. Thousands dislocated from other parts of the world to  
fulfill the search for labour, land and materials. The "Engine of  
Progress" record has been fairly bloody. In the 20th Century the  
record of this progress-travel has been more bizarre and bloody.

I would think that we grew up with a psychological profile that  
somehow gave space to these `dislocations` and through various ways  
admitted it as a violence that cannot be wished away. We co-inhabited  
the spaces of violence in our cities. From the popular cinema to  
documentary filmmakers - all found ways of talking about it. That  
mode of talking i would think reached a aesthetic and conceptual dead- 
end by early nineties. Rarely could accounts move beyond the `heroic- 
resisting` subject or `victimised/traumatised` human objects. This  
binary did give rise to an image fatigue of the `poor` in the nineties.

Also, the nineties saw the stress on what Partha Chaterjee calls the  
`the political society`. The modes by which people found a way to  
make claims using the forms of `electoral mobilisations` and `welfare  
administration`. The emergence of the courts as the central actor in  
today's `evictions/ dislocations` is in a very definitive way a  
dismantling of these negotiations.

The forms that we have at present - the courts' discourse and the  
image making sensibility of a new triumphal elite - open up for us  
new questions about how to think this conjunction. What sensibility  
is being demanded of us to navigate the contemporary? I am trying to  
understand this from all your comments. What intrigues me is the  
`speech acts` given to the `poor`. These kind of images have existed  
in many ads by industry (and also in welfare ads). But, the speech  
act of this one is something new.

And our poor Raghu too existed in similar way in many ads. However he  
was never branded a `pick pocket`. Well the ground was laid down  
about 5 years ago by an esteemed judge in the Supreme court. He  
uttered in his judgement - " Giving land to squatters is like giving  
money back to the pickpocket". That sensibility has taken deep roots  
and circulatory force.

I wonder, what will this harsh time-travel of capital (progress/  
development/ triumphal chest beating in nationalist competitions) do  
to millions who will not have Americas to go to. Both cities and  
countryside are becoming a huge ejection machines, as was always  
under the sign of progress.

How will we be able to make sense of this world? Authoritarian  
solutions of many kind will gain ground, so will deep solipsism.

Well in short, i am as confused as you guys are.

warmly
jeebesh

On 05-Apr-06, at 6:35 PM, Shivam wrote:
>
> I am not sure if I am able to answer Jeebesh's question fully. Why
> don't you tell us what you think?
>
> S.
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