Sunil Sethi: India's chameli churnings

It’s an ailing king in Shakespeare who utters the famous line: “Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown.” Asian rulers everywhere, in the wake of deadly contagion of the Jasmine Revolution, must be casting nervous glances in their backyards to check out the symptoms. The ailment is more complex than it appears and further complicated by the uncontrollable virus of instant communication. All in a matter of a few weeks, the white-flowered rebellion has seen the overthrow of autocratic regimes in Egypt and Tunisia, placed Libya’s half-crazed dictator under siege, shaken monarchies in Bahrain and Oman and put authoritarian governments in China and North Korea on high alert to quash any sign of protest.

What people want in these countries is not the same just as their levels of economic and social advancement are dissimilar. Poverty, unemployment and corruption may be the issues that drove protestors into the streets of Tunis and Cairo but the Gulf kingdoms, like Libya, are oil rich and very wealthy. Muammar al-Gaddafi and his tribal ruling elite, it could be argued, squandered their riches worthlessly but others have been shovelling bank notes down the throats of the populace to buy peace at any cost.

The sovereign rulers of Bahrain and Kuwait recently deposited 1,000 dinars (about $3,000) into every citizen’s bank account and, last week, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia made permanent thousands of temporary jobs held by government employees. He also announced social schemes worth $36 billion. What their people seem to want, however, is not guilt money but other freedoms. In the super-rich, urbanised and relatively liberal island kingdom of Bahrain, for example, women were allowed to contest elections only as recently as 2002. In Saudi, they still can’t drive cars nor hope to get around much without male chaperons.

India sits smugly, between parts of an Arab world on fire and a jittery China, but how complacent can it be about its democratic, social and economic achievements? It may side-step the sweep of the Jasmine Revolution but parts of the country are either in the throes of, or ripe for, serial chameli revolutions. One-third of the population mired in poverty, two million malnourished children under the age of five dying each year and depreciating standards of education that make a large number of college graduates unemployable, are just some of the disasters shadowing India. Chameli churns in full cry include Maoists taking district collectors for ransom, corruption scams on a scale unknown in the modern nation-state and an escalating hiatus between the rich and poor of eye-rubbing wonder.

What the economic reforms have also produced is a loosening of belts in outlandish displays of wealth unseen in an era of socialist austerity. A brazen example, worthy of an Arab sheikh’s bounty, on show in the capital this week was at Congress leader Kanwar Singh Tanwar son’s wedding. The gifts included a helicopter worth Rs 33 crore, it took 1,000 workers more than a month to complete the decorations, and the event was attended by 30,000 guests including cabinet ministers and MPs. The host was unabashed and called it a “simple” affair, gratuitously adding, “I got many poor girls married but no one noticed.”

An embattled ruling party, engaged in defending itself on other fronts, seems not to have noticed the damage to its image such an event can inflict. It confirms the public impression that anything goes and the political class, DMK or Congress, has its own set of social norms when it comes to showing off. It is the sort of extravagant partying that contributed to the troubles of Seif al-Islam Gaddafi and other high-flying despots, now painfully grounded. As Shakespeare’s sickly king realised, the people are watchful even if the ruler is not.