Liberalisation’s children

RAMESH VENKATARAMAN

The Indian Express : Thursday, December 01, 2005

Liberalisation’s children are less aggrieved than upwardly mobile. Along with Bunty aur Babli (but thankfully in more conventional ways), they are eager to get in on the economic action they see around them and on their TV sets. What they are demanding from their politicians are effective public services and infrastructure (the bijli, sadak, paani, padhai of the slogans), a measure of probity, and a push to attract investment and create jobs that will give them a fighting chance to move up in life.

In short, we are moving from a politics obsessed with redressing historic wrongs — Indira Gandhi’s Garibi Hatao, militant labour and kisan movements of the ’70s and ’80s, Mandal, Mandir — to one focused on attaining future dreams. Equally, today’s electorate is starting to view government less as a mai-baap granting entitlements — seats in colleges, jobs in the public sector, subsidies — and more as an enabler of opportunities. This is a quintessentially middle class ethos in the making, even if material reality for the vast majority is still a long way from middle class levels. The lack of political momentum behind the proposal to introduce reservations in the private sector is telling evidence of the new mindset.

To become an effective political voice, however, the middle classes must shed their brahmanical abhorrence (although not their inherent civility, rectitude and distaste for unctuous obsequiousness before the powerful) for the rough and tumble of mass politics. India urgently needs its middle classes to stand up and be counted — not just in business and economy, but in politics. The writer is a Mumbai-based management consultant. The views expressed here are his own