A single day at Jantar Mantar Road. 4th March 2013.

The protest by the National Fishworkers Forum

The Pension Parishad dharna

The protest against the hanging of Afzal Guru

The protest demanding a 'Gorkhaland'

The protest against anti-Bahujan policies of the GoI

The single-member protest against a specific rape

The fast against sex crimes in general

A protest against land-grab in Bangalore

 and a protest by the main Opposition party which wound up before I arrived there. 

Each yelling their demands, plus gratis abuse of the government. Though it is the final resort, and its efficacy questionable to say the least, we have at least this final freedom. It gives me hope.

distance

"the fact that the general elections are still more than a year away means the Finance Minister has had to squarely balance the competing claims of economics and politics" —The Hindu, day after the Union Budget 2013-14 was presented.

Presumably they mean 'vote banks' versus business people. But which is economics and which politics? Meaning that the point economic sociologists have been arguing for some time—that economics distances the government from its people, turning them into 'consumption', 'production' and so on—is only reinforced by a democratic politics that distances them as 'vote banks'. 

The increasing disparity in incomes but also in concerns is one formulation of these troubles. When I told my mother of the movement to implement a two-thousand rupee universal old age pension, especially for NREGS workers, she immediately disagreed with it. Her view was that tax money should not be spent on giving dole in any form. Moreover, she doubted the work actually done by those registered with this scheme that merited giving pension 'when people actually doing work are not getting it'. Disagreeable as this seems to people who do not pay the stipulated thirty-three percent or so of their income to the government, as well as to those whose concerns are wider for other reasons, it must be dealt with.
My mother readily acceded to my protestations and counter-assertions about the need for pensions for old people, particularly those engaged in hard labour and in the unorganized sector, the difficulties inherent in the current pensions system—both in terms of insufficient amounts and difficult criteria. I didn't tell her about lowering the age to 55 years for men and 50 for women, while ensuring continued employment without discrimination arising from this assured income. I forgot. But chances are she would not, however deserving, have appreciated that pensions should accrue without the same conditions that the organized sector accepts as universal for it. I'm not certain of my own views on this last in any case.

To overcome these concerns, this sense of what is fair and unfair, appealing to individual interest is never going to work. The only reason parents are fine about them making money and their children spending it willy-nilly (when they are) is that they see their children as an extension of themselves, as an expression of a group-self-interest. Terms like 'vote bank' used on english news media about those who don't watch it—in effect— creates rifts in a population that is already internally distanced in material circumstances. We need a lot more national sentiment of the substantial and non-military variety—cultural and social particularly. 'National shame', 'national pride', etc about unemployment figures, agrarian distress, labour laws, public health and sanitation, and the rest. But how do we produce this?