One of the sad truths about resolutions is that they appear as guilt lists at the end of each year, remain in the conscience for a day or two and are then effectively forgotten as the new year rolls around. If people are fickle, countries are even more so. Here are some of India’s imagined resolutions:
Honour commitments
One of the great values that we picked up from being a non-aligned country was to not take a stand on anything. India’s position on refugees, the environment, human rights, gender, religious tolerance and race set a new high in terms of ambivalence. We took no stand on the brutal repression of Uighurs in China, said nothing during the murderous regime against the Rohingya in Myanmar and have happily oscillated between support for Palestine and for Israel.
During the pandemic, despite binding international contracts, we reneged on vaccine delivery to Bangladesh and Nepal. If India were a person, it would be branded insecure, selfish and unreliable.
Also read: India’s Host of #SupportIsrael Posters Betray a Persecution Complex
Don’t make religion a public issue
Our inept external politics aside, we harbour with some seriously flawed prejudices internally that score highly on the metrics of religious and ethnic bias. In fact, the war on minority religions gets murkier when back-handed endorsements are made by people in authority. State laws on cow protection are used to persecute minorities; religion is itself used as a basis for citizenship; indeed, protesting Sikh farmers were accused of having an anti-national agenda. Some members of the ruling elite recently even suggested that Bollywood should not have Muslim actors as heroes when Hindu heroes were available.
A well-known Muslim comic was arrested for derogatory jokes he never made at a show he never had. Constantly harassed, he has since retired at the age of 29. It seems the country is no longer guided by the constitution but follows a Monty Python script.
Stand-up comedian Munawar Faruqui who was forced to cancel multiple shows in light of threats from Hindutva groups. Photo: Instagram/munawar.faruqui
Also read: If a Comedian Can Be Arrested for a Remark He Didn’t Make, Is the Joke on Us?
Learn to take it
Indian insensitivity to its own minorities is in direct opposition to its hyper sensitivity to nationalism. How hard is it for a country to laugh at its own shortcomings? In the 1980s, after the release of Attenborough’s Gandhi, the Father of the Nation was harmlessly lampooned in an American beer commercial. Within weeks, there were ‘questions’ in Parliament, a complaint filed and the offending ad withdrawn.
More recently, when comedian Hasan Minhaj ridiculed Donald Trump at the annual White House Correspondents’ dinner, he was held up in America as a spokesman of free speech. Could Minhaj ever stand in the Lok Sabha and joke about the Prime Minister, without having a shoe – and a legal case – hurled at him?
Stop mutilating the Earth
As countries made firm commitments on climate change at the Cop26 Summit in Glasgow, India’s goals were so unambitious and vague that they amounted to no real commitment at all. The country reels under water shortages, air pollution, deforestation, floods and other self-created crises. More than ever, a national green environmental policy is required to ride out the long future of development.
Also read: COP26: A Step Forward or a COP-Out?
Projects for heavy infrastructure – many notably destructive for the environment – need to be seriously reviewed and replaced by those in public health, primary education and basic nutrition. If anything, we need sustainable housing, a rethink on ecologically destructive infrastructure projects and a ban on tourism in eco-sensitive zones; besides, a rapid removal of private vehicles from city streets. If ministers were to be seen cycling to parliament – as they are in many countries – the message may get through.
Don’t neglect the poor
Why do the poorest – whose numbers have grown by more than 10% after the pandemic – have so little influence on government policy? The significance of the inclusion of more Indian billionaires on the ‘Fortune 500’ list is quickly lost to the much larger numbers added on poverty, illiteracy and malnutrition lists. The government’s lopsided policy uses the poor shamelessly in service of the rich, building highways, temples, metros and smart cities. What would it take to reverse the tide and get the Ambanis to lay water pipelines in parched Maharashtra as a tax-cut or the Tatas to invest in slum schools, public health clinics or rural nutrition?
Connect with the public
How do you keep the governance of 1.3 billion people a secret? By never interacting with them. Employing bugging devices against opposition ministers, minority leaders, journalists, activists and judges, is an operation that should be reversed. Bureaucrats, ministers and government officials should be directly tracked by the public and a regular accounting of their work should be released on government websites. ‘Mann ki Baat’ should similarly be a public address system to, rather than from, the Prime Minister so that farmers, labourers and transport workers can direct their problems and grievances towards him.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi during a recording of Mann Ki Baat. Photo: PTI/Files
Seek new ideas
The two-year span of the pandemic altered the psychology of daily life – work stopped, people isolated, streets and offices fell silent. The antidote now is not just the resumption of the old normal, but fresh, imaginative alternatives that can activate a public optimism.
Set up libraries in metro stations; invite comedians like Vir Das to address parliament; take children from slum schools to Disneyland; get former New York mayor Mike Bloomberg to run for civic office in Delhi; provide free trips for Hindu pilgrims to Muslim religious sites and vice versa; invite Chinese citizens to monasteries in Ladakh and Arunachal Pradesh; ‘et the Bajrang Dal tour Pakistan; make the horn illegal on Indian roads.
Let the Indian cricket team take up golf…
Gautam Bhatia is a Delhi-based architect and sculptor.