North-East exodus, an apalling tragedy

An exodus of some 30,000 people in three days from some of India’s major cities, abandoning their jobs and boarding a train that takes them back in time — that is a tragedy and a shame. Having worked hard to buy their refrigerators and TVs, they have been forced to sell them at throwaway prices, a cruel joke of a garage sale. It was a regular riot sequence, but virtually no stone was hurled — like a social equivalent of a neutron bomb, where populations are cleaned out, even as buildings are left standing.

Now, the same old script has started to play out. Politicians, after having done precious little to stop the swirling masses at railway stations, particularly Bangalore, from boarding the train back “home” (but where their futures are headed, no one knows), are blaming ‘Pakistan’.

Pakistan is not just a country, but also a peg on which we hang our dirty linen. Meanwhile, Pakistan flags, again like a re-run of a C-grade Bollywood film ( Border , Sarfarosh or Gadar ), are sprouting here and there. They shall continue to do so, from improbable corners. Conspiracy theories will be beamed into our drawing rooms, 24x7.

BEHIND THE FARCE

Those looking for conspiracies could instead inquire into how States and the Centre were ineffective as the drama unfolded. Inexplicably, the fleeing people were aided by the Railways, which ran special trains to Guwahati. Instead of enabling people to leave, the government should have ensured their safety. After watching this bloodless horror show, the usual flood of words, unctuous and outrageous, has begun. Social media needs to be curbed, says one. Another, not knowing when tragedy turns to farce, claims ‘India being one great diverse country, where people can go wherever they want in search of their livelihood’. If s/he had said that this is a country that produced Mary Kom, the parody would have been complete.

Meanwhile, we are still to figure out what exactly happened in Bangalore, Hyderabad, Pune, Chennai and Coimbatore after August 15 (this is turning out to be a bumper harvest of ironies). To put the magnitude of the events in perspective, three decades of Shiv Sena politics in Mumbai against migrants from Bihar and Uttar Pradesh have not achieved what some nameless forces managed in the last three days.

To use an analogy of the financial world, what unfolded was a bit like conducting a derivatives deal with the click of a mouse, without any ‘physical’ delivery: while Biharis were roughed up in Mumbai to make them leave, the pressing of some mobile phone keys achieved more dramatic results in Bangalore.

If there was an exodus from Gujarat and Delhi after the killings of 2002 and 1984, at least the reasons were gruesomely apparent. Even so, the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi in 1991, with the memories of 1984 fresh in minds of Delhi-ites, did not trigger an exodus of Tamils from Delhi. What explains the staggering fear this time?

Bangalore does not seem to know. Lost in its ‘tech’ fantasies, a sense of incomprehension looms over its streets — a ‘tech’ city undone by rumours that went viral over SMS, MMS and Facebook. Its ‘cosmopolitan’ sheen has been torn apart. The pretence of the ‘globalised’ Indian is over. He can’t accept even his own people.

SOCIAL SCHISM

Governments, States and the Centre, have goofed up, but so has mainstream, urban India. The fact that rumour-mongering and SMSes can drive out so many people only goes to show the complete absence of any social thread linking people of the north-eastern States and the rest of urban India.

The SMSes seem to have circulated only among people of north-eastern origin.

This is possibly for two reasons: the data base of phone companies was meticulously combed to exclude the rest (the issue is to curb this sort of access, and not social media), and the ghettoisation of north-eastern people ensured that other communities did not know about the vicious messages. Had these messages gone to a wider set of people, the outcome would have surely been less damaging.

Those who engineered the campaign to create ill will and rearrange demographies must have figured that this ghettoisation would work in their favour. The other migrant communities are, for all their cultural, religious and linguistic markers, somehow a part of the Indian mainstream; in contrast, north-easterners are working class, socially and culturally marginalised, and with little power against the Indian state.

ECONOMIC CRISIS

Meanwhile, our cities are growing intolerant by the day. Tensions between locals and outsiders are on the rise. Political forces are once again creating schisms on the basis of language, religion and ethnicity. The virtual disappearance of cosmopolitan institutions such as trade unions and the rise of identity groups as units of political and cultural discourse are beginning to tell.

Such schisms run deep in times of economic distress and unemployment. During the crisis years of 1989-93, the nation was rocked by communal violence. The slump of 1998-02 was accompanied by a strong socio-political climate against minorities, culminating in the violence in Gujarat.

In contrast, the subsequent high growth years were marked by a measure of social peace. The 2004 and 2009 elections were fought on the plank of inclusive growth and welfare.

But the run-up to the next general elections may start to look like the early 90s, if Assam and its aftermath in Mumbai, Bangalore and the rest of the country are any indication — more so if the economic slowdown becomes a prolonged affair.

COMMENT NOW