When our dear Prime Minister Modi called for India to be Atma Nirbhar many pointed out that it was a rephrasing of his earlier call for Make in India. Those with a nose for history recognised that Make in India was a Nehruvian policy begun way back when the stalwarts of the current government were still getting an education or weren’t born.
After making a Trumpian promise that Covid will vanish in 21 days Modi seems to have washed his hands off the issue instead asking Indians to be Atma Nirbhar – self-reliant. The predicament for the common person could not have been put more starkly by the Finance Minister who blamed the economic downturn to an Act of God.
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Gods have always been an integral part of the day-to-day Indian secular ethos. We work on Ram Bharose and then lament Allah Meherban Gadha Pehelwan.
So, Indians exist between Modi-fied Atma Nirbharta and Ram Bharose. This existentialism is apparent in how we have come to live our Covid lives. Everything from the Media to travel hinges on this.
Let’s look at the media and social media first. Most of the media is beholden to one entity, the ramifications of the abdication of their role doesn’t seem to concern them. Instead they are factories churning out lies and the most vile discourse. These are a smoke screen to hide matters of national interest – Covid, China – from us citizens. What better proof of Atma Nirbharta than this? Media channels and the gurus at Whatsapp Universities are capable of independently -without any aid from the real world outside-manufacture news. The impacts of this type of Atma Nirbharta are Ram Bharose – left on God.
But should we really blame the media? The Urdu pithy Allah Meherban Gadha Pehelwan – a literal translation is when the gods are kind, a donkey can become a strongman – succinctly explains the situation.
Ram Bharose is the grease that ensures things function in India. Instead of the capacity of trusting our fellow citizens we leave it all on god. This is seen in our everyday, be it in the chaos of traffic, cleanliness at eateries, security of Apps, response from Customer Care and so on. In these Covid times, air travel has been added to the Ram Bharose list.
Right from booking a ticket to entering the airport one is given the image of a system that is catering to a passenger’s safety. But then things begin to unravel, the much touted Arogaya Setu App is not checked, airline’s provide masks and shields, but their staff are unable to regulate passenger boarding and deplaning even as passengers remove their masks on the flight. On arrival temperature checks are half-hearted while the ink with which passengers are stamped to mark their quarantine period is easily washed away. It would seem there is a symbiosis at work here; the citizen recognises the government’s ineptness while the government recognises the citizen’s recalcitrance to follow norms. The façade under which the government and citizen operate hides the fact that they function on Ram Bharose.
And there is merit in that because it provides a perfect escape from accountability. Recently the Finance Minister blamed the dire economic situation on an ‘Act of God’. As a corollary the Government does not need to bother about migrant deaths, compensation, impacts on unorganised sector or on job losses or the status of the promised Rs 21 lakh crore infusion. When the country and the economy is running on Ram Bharose it is certain that the ideal of Ram Rajya is a pipe dream.
And when everything is on Ram Bharose then Atma Nirbharta is the need of the hour. When citizens find the government and its organs unconcerned about maintaining systems by which society functions then Atma Nirbharta or relying on the self becomes a survival tool.
Maybe that is why the Covid infections in India continue to rise. People are getting infected because they are forced to fend for themselves as the government remains unwilling to take responsibility.
One needs to ask why hasn’t this Atma Nirbharta prevented people from falling to political bigotry and the infantalisation of issues by the media? The answer is pretty clear. There is a difference between being given responsibility, acknowledging one’s own responsibility and becoming responsible as a result of being thrown to the dogs. In the former case there is a sense of pride that attaches itself to being given responsibility. The hashtag culture that media generates and perpetuates is nothing but the devolution of responsibility from the media to the citizen. The media feeds the citizen tripe and then gives them the responsibility of amplifying the message. Viewers become active participants in the circulation of news and in the formation of opinion. This becomes a far more onerous, but easy, task than that of thinking for oneself and holding the self-accountable. Finally, the latter can be succinctly explained by the reworked pithy ‘desperation is the mother of invention’. The resulting chaos is aptly explained by Allah Meherban Gaadha Pehelwan.
A self-reliant nation consists of citizens who are clearheaded and who cherish and protect the ability to think independently. More importantly they are led by a government who sees the importance of citizens who can think for themselves and therefore can demand accountability from the government. However, an Atma Nibhar Bharat is less about critical thinking and more about survival because of the government’s Ram Bharose functioning.
(Samir Nazareth is an author and writes on socio-economic and environmental issues)
