Narendra Modi: Closest representation of State’s Inception

If I were to describe Narendra Modi and his fan following, perhaps I should say Lord and his men because that’s what Narendra means (nar-man, Indra- God or lord), I put it this way—Debauch aspiring Ascetic to lead them, fantasizing excess in near future, fascinated by Asceticism but aspiring Debauchery. In short: Asceticism as a means to Debauchery. Here lies the paradox—a practitioner of self-denial, asceticism, Mr. Modi is working day and night so that our aspiring young ones, whom he praises so much that they may also reciprocate naively, can fulfill their dream of excess. His fans are everywhere, on social networking sites, newspapers, among Bollywood actors and corporates apart from usual fundamental ideological base that he is part of and represents. There are chants of growth wherever you go. The saint must work ceaselessly for our surplus, so that we can “dream big”. And this is it! Nationalism, superpower, growth and this is it. Well, I never feel associated with such injected terms: Terms which I think come into common discourse through state or aspiring state. Vocabulary must be taught to us before we can even think of analyzing. You see, with these terms, whether or not they are true on ground level, an atmosphere for discussion prevails. In this arena all arguments must be either for or against the proposed vocabulary and its sophisticated structure. For example, every discussion, and subsequently an argument concerning growth of Gujarat, demands it to be either in support or against. This vocabulary of growth and superpower infused into the mainstream ensures that opinion, if any exists, must either be praising the proposed idea or denying it. So a BJP fan must always support the “growth” and a Congress fan must deny it. What is lost then? The loss is we do not know what it means to grow. What it means to be a superpower! It is out of question—the need to debate what is actually growth. Cancer also grows! Now we must imitate some blur image assigned to these terms and that too, obsessively. The time for theory has ended. We must immediately stop debating and act as if we have taken all our time to define, everything is concrete and clear; the point remains of implementing it. This is most dangerous belief. Recently I watched a movie—“Django Unchained”. There is a scene in the movie where Leonardo DiCaprio( Calvin Candy) mocks one of his black slaves for not knowing the meaning of “reimburse”. Actually, Candy paid five hundred dollars for that slave and expected him to fight at least five “mandingo” fights failing which the slave must reimburse the master. I liked that scene not because I found it amusing but because it contains much deeper meaning. The idea being—the slave must know the meaning of reimburse and subsequently that he is morally expected to reimburse no matter how much violent and degrading act, that is slavery, brought him in a position to reimburse. The master must teach the vocabulary.

Elite Squad: The Enemy Within, a Brazilian film directed, produced by Jose Padilha, starring Wagner Moura, is a semi-fictional account of BOPE. I am not concerned with the overall story or theme. I am interested mainly in the character of Sandro Rocha who is a lead corrupt boss of Rio militia. Since he is powerful and corrupt, he is seen as someone getting his share from drug dealer—a sort of tax you can say. He and his gang later kill the dealers, the middle-men, and start operating directly. He now acquires a bigger role providing internet, cable TV, banks, cafes, restaurants, every business and acts as a protector to the slums. How will a guy living in that slum treat Rocha? I think we deal here with a central and important problem. Although Rocha does not form an official state here, through him we can see how state actually operates. A guy living in that slum sees his relationship with Rocha and his gang as of mutual benefit, protector. He sees the relationship as that of specific roles defined in society. You know what I mean to say.

‘Rocha looks after our basic necessities. He takes care of our wants. Rocha provides security. We must pay our taxes and all that.’

Rocha and his gang is state here.  If we somehow disappear from our own times and place ourselves when our civilization is just beginning to take shape, Rocha represents the dynamics of state. Let us give our Rocha some bigger hurdles to tackle, say employment generation. Rocha owns all lands and resources by default and he generates employment. Now give Rocha a little bit of global touch of growth. He now is a Messiah who intends to achieve a fantasy of surplus for everyone—‘there shall be no poor, we will be a superpower.’ It does not matter why there is a poor. What matters is we must act hastily. Poverty should vanish from earth as soon as possible. Again the mantra: theory is wasting time, acting is everything. As the time passes by,—sufficient generations after Rocha—we have a totally new set of ideological points governing Rocha’s posterity.

‘All problems are there because we do not follow the fundamentals set by state. Or each problem exists because State doesn't have sufficient funds. We should tax the rich and all that.’ State’s emphasis is to present and formulate every bit of problem as a function of funds, which will be solvable if we have enough funds—obviously that day of sufficiency never arrives. Nevertheless, subjects of the State have become habitual of encountering the problem as properly defined; the point is of for or against as I previously pointed. Rocha is not the only one. You can see a reflection of state wherever a sub-state or to be politically correct, a sub-governance begins to germinate. Some street side vendor or one with a barrow often pays a part of his money as extortion for selling in a particular area. In India, where the official State is not vigilant enough, this is often the case. Now that is not the official state tax but they pay it. Why? Because of sheer threat of violence or violence itself! This is governance or state in its crude form which after sufficient time acquires the status of what we call—social contract.

I told this long story—out of context it may seem but it is not. I think Narendra Modi is closest representation of State’s inception that we can get in our own times. You must know, it is a necessity for Rocha to evolve.      

Lovely Commercials

My God! These commercials! I love them especially those tobacco commercials. If you have ever noticed, they start with something ethereal about tobacco, something that transcends, something that elevates, that make you feel like a king; I don’t know but in a naïve manner I put—to make you feel fearless. To chew tobacco is to be fearless; at the same time it is a source of divine pleasure. This is how the commercial start and this is what they convey until a short warning –indecipherable, incoherent with the overall advertisement, usually spoken too fast to be heard so as not to tamper with the pleasant environment which the actual advertisement creates –appears.  In fact, warnings of all sorts share this feature.

“Chewing tobacco causes cancer.”

“Smoking is injurious to health.”

This is what they say, making their honest and good intentions clear in a clumsy way. While majority of advertisement deals with fearlessness, it ends making us fear for our lives. Two totally different emotions fused in one.  Good for none but a laugh. Optimism and pessimism mixed in one. If not for anything else, it is good to tell ourselves how pathetic our condition is. I mean we tell a lie and then a truth and this is not the important thing. What is important is we are forced to do it. Forced not to tell lie only; forced not to tell truth only; if it had been any one of lie or truth, the condition is much better. But we are forced to tell both at the same time. I think this is horrendous. I feel this whole thing like Obscene is sold, at the same time the seller urges you not to buy the Obscene because it’s obscene. What a humanly gesture!

There is another commercial which fascinates me. When I say fascinates me, it genuinely means fascinates me. Please allow me to present to you—‘killer jeans’. Let us be murderously correct –not just ‘killer jeans’ but ‘killer water saver jeans’. That’s what their product is about. At least they say it so. Killer and saver, both at the same time! Killer jeans that saves water! To be politically and environmentally correct, they even put a protesting audience—some sort of young bare chest students caring for our environment and all that—against police with water cannons. You see, these advertisements are fabulous. They do not disappoint anyone. There is something for everyone to feel associated with the product in some sort of transcendental way. Now we have an easy solution for water shortage. Wear killer-saver jeans and be environmentally correct, in other words be environmentally guilt free, be on the right side of the history. Even an atheist, who considers himself free from guilt, can’t resist it. He too wants to be on the right side—redeemed environmentally. Christianity, Islam and whatever religion you take, I think the principles of guilt are best implemented by the advertising world, even better than those religions themselves. Water shortage started because we didn't wear the ‘killer-saver jeans’ at the right time in our long history. To correct our mistake we must instantly indulge in this endeavour obsessively. Who knows, maybe we could measure the precise amount of water we save by buying killer jeans. ‘Oh! You have only three jeans, I have ten of those. I save ten litres of water.’ Now, simple mathematics can even predict how much water people around the world save. Those poor devils who could not afford these jeans are even wasting water, undoubtedly even causing the water shortage in the first place. Imagine an extreme situation—there is shortage in arid regions of Africa and we have our benevolent Western nations sending over hundred thousand ‘killer water saver jeans’ as an aid. Killer jeans dropped from airplanes not to kill as the name suggests, but to save.

The last commercial which has not escaped my memory and still deserves a laugh whenever I watch it is the one about the milk supplements.  Alexander, Akbar and Jhansi ki Rani didn't like the taste of milk; we need milk supplements in various flavours to make our kid drink it. But that is not the point of laughter. One advertisement in the same line of milk supplements, of Bournvita if I remember correctly, claims that to absorb the calcium in milk by human body we need its supplement to be mixed along with milk. Mother who gives Bournvita to her child is knowledgeable while who don’t is ignorant of the obvious, self-evident fact. Nevertheless the point such advertisements make is that man has been drinking plain milk from thousands of years only in vain, technically as good as water, deficient of any extra benefits. I don’t take it as an insult to our ancestors but actually a groundbreaking research of our technologically advanced and intelligent folks, who obviously have strongest of bones than most of our bravest fighters of history.