Failed people, not failed nations

The idea of "failed nations" is rather disingenuous, a nation after all is made up of people, the loudest among them being the "intellectual" class. 

Indian intellectuals simply can not pat themselves enough over a cryptic obituary published during the period of emergency in the mid seventies. The obit, which was published in The Times of India hoodwinking the censors read something like - "the death of D.E.M. O'Cracy, mourned by his wife T. Ruth, his son, L.I. Bertie, and daughters Faith, Hope, and Justice."

You get the drift. That was the extent of resistance provided to a ruthless regime's attempt to take the country private. 

If some political outfit not popular with the intellectual cartel had imposed emergency, you would never hear the end of it. But aside from occasionally dropping the above anecdote at parties, the period is often talked about like it was a summer camp of fun. Actually it was, for a certain set of people. Some of them still feel nostalgic about the better public service during those days, especially trains running on time etc.

Indian intellectuals can not figure out for the life of them what makes Pakistan such a basket case and why India is not quite there yet. The most obvious difference can not be discussed, for reasons of political correctness. The factors they attribute these differences to act as a nice litmus test. The leftist types and the closest communists blame the market economy. The intellectuals of the "centrist" variety blame certain social groups for all problems local and global. No intellectual is really "rightist" - or more accurately, "rightists" are not considered intellectuals. 

As a sampler of current opinion pieces about the India vs. Pakistan issue, check out:

• BAD MANNERS - The idea of India versus the idea of Pakistan: MUKUL KESAVAN
  
• The same people? Surely not: Vir Sanghvi
  
• A flawed idea - Indians and Pakistanis are the same people. Why then have the two nations moved on such divergent arcs over the last six decades? : MJ Akbar
  
• Mirror Image of the future? India could soon become another Pakistan. : Sagarika Ghose
  

The Indian intellectual is a special case. This species is highly dynastic in nature and a fierce protector of their own turf. The origin of this class is in the Government, as is the case with communist style centrally planned countries. The legacy has been carried forward, despite certain superficial reforms. What used to exist as an unofficial branch of the Government survives today as a strongly cartelized system.

Coming back to the emergency issue, the reason intellectuals did not really make too much of an attempt is simply this: they widely expected the emergency to continue and ultimately evolve into a permanent autocracy. Put another way, it didn't make too much of a difference to them either way. Only, they could not publish those Indira Gandhi cartoons for a while. 

It is no wonder they fail to see why India took the other branch of the fork. Ultimately people decide their own fate. Democracy is a negotiated system of Governance. People must decide to what extent we can let the system be subverted. We have a pliable president. We had the cash for votes scam. We are going to have a relic from the dark days of emergency as our new CEC.

Has the time come to sound the bugle for freedom? Sadly we can not fall back on our sold out intellectuals for guidance. It is clear that they haven't changed much since the emergency days.