Aam aadmi, circa 2016

He would like to put the year behind him

The party floated in his name could savour a victory of sorts at the end of the year by finally forcing its tormentor-in-chief to throw in the towel, but the Indian aam aadmi did for the most part of the year what he has always done: suffer in silence, as the inspired R K Laxman so eloquently depicted over generations.  The average Indian coped the best he could with ever-unpredictable prices of daily essentials, shortage of potable water and breathable air, crowded cities and villages, rising lawlessness and demands that patriotism be always displayed on the proverbial sleeve, even by that bastion of individual liberties, the highest judiciary of the land. The last two months, the aam aadmi stoically suffered the shortage of the species forced on him out of the blue and scrambled to conserve what few pieces of valid testimonials from the esteemed governor of Reserve Bank he could garner. He uttered nary a word of protest, with all the blowing of steam and thunder left to his far from common and underprivileged representatives, elected and self-appointed, in Temples of Democracy built to enshrine his supremacy, as well as in the media, claiming to be vox populi.

 
In what can only be termed as the true but perverse spirit of globalisation, the otherwise taken-for-granted common citizenry was at the centre of events elsewhere in the world as well in the year 2016 of the Good Lord. In the cradle of civilisation-turned-fierce battlefields of the ancient Babylon-Samaria, the historic cities of Nineveh and Aleppo, which had taken millennia to build, lay in ruins. Their residents did not know who were more savage: those who claimed to be their rulers or those who claimed to be their saviours. The truth, such as it was, came literally out of a babe’s mouth, when little Bana al-Abed, all of seven, described the ongoing destruction of Aleppo through tweets that moved the whole world. But the equally pitiable Rohingiyas of Myanmar were voiceless and the once-celebrated champion of the oppressed Aung San Suu Kyi, who now ruled that unfortunate land jointly with her erstwhile captors, never spoke of them, leave alone for them.

 
Wars small and large, territorial and economic, political and sectarian, caused a veritable flood of ordinary humanity to seek what it thought of as safe havens of developed lands in Europe, Australia and even North America. The wretched of the earth from Africa and Asia staked all of their meagre savings and their very lives to cross the otherwise placid waters of the Mediterranean in every manner of sea-going contraption operated by traders in human misery. Hundreds did not make it, but many thousands did, causing unprecedented problems for the host societies.
 

Europe, already reeling under sporadic and random terror attacks in its once peaceful metropolises, was overwhelmed by the masses seeking asylum. Brave leaders, such as Angela Merkel of Germany, who took a humanitarian stance to welcome them, quickly discovered that their own people did not quite want any of the new arrivals. Borders were sealed and barbed wire fences with armed guards and patrol dogs were in place, straight out of war movies.

 
Xenophobia became the raging emotion in postmodern Europe. The fear of the Other, not just the aliens from other continents and religious faiths, but equally from the same European stock, finally succeeded in turning Great Britain into Little England as it voted to exit the European Union. The fear of cheaper East European labour and aliens in mosques weighed more heavily with Britons than the glamour of London being the centre of the financial world. A scant few months later, the Five Star movement of a dictatorial ageing clown Beppe Grillo derailed the reformist young prime minister Matteo Renzi of Italy. 

 
Across the Pond, Hillary Clinton managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of certain victory in the US presidential elections, presumably because she did not or could not hear what the people were saying: “We are tired of the establishment”. They chose Donald Trump, with no experience and less understanding of public office. He threatens in his 140-character broadsides to undo everything good that his country has done: He wants to start a nuclear arms race, take on allies and adversaries alike, dismantle environment protection — and build The Great American Wall, ably assisted by a crony cabinet of billionaires with little mass contact.  There must be a grain of truth in the apocryphal story on the internet: Fidel Castro, who had made destroying America as his life’s mission, died a contented man two-and-a-half weeks after the US election!

 
“The people have spoken!” thunder the pundits, trying to outdo each other in the game of Monday morning quarterbacks with perfect hindsight, even as most of them make no bones about their fears that this bodes gloom and doom for all they value. But the global aam aadmi and aurat would like to put 2016 behind them. For most of them, it was quite simply, in the quarter-century-old words of that least common of people, Queen Elizabeth, annus horribilis.