power here power there

What’s better than one good book? Simple – two good books. And when they seem to complement each other I truly enjoy the experience. While many times you get to read books that complement each other, very rarely do you get the chance to read them in quick succession. I was lucky recently.
I normally don’t pick Indian non-fiction, but I was lucky to pick two books by Indian authors discussing home grown Indian union issues. One was Curfewed Night by Basharat peer and the other was Hello, Bastar by Rahul Pandita. The first book is about Kashmir and the second is about the Moaist / Naxal movement in India.
I have learnt over many years that India is not the ideal democracy that we grew up believing it to be. The newspapers and the media are not really interested in showing any real side of the truth. The closest I seemed to have gotten to the truth has been thanks to the Tehelka magazine.
These two books, despite all their flaws in writing style are interesting in the fact that according to me they are courageously trying to unmask the government. There is a clear idea of two Indias. One is the urban shining India and the other is the rural India untouched by the growth and modernisation. These books are revealing that there is a third India, the oppressed, raped and pushed under the carpet India. This is the place where the government not only does not care but is actively involved in oppressing and raping its own populace.
When I was much younger I always wanted to join the army. The notion of patriotism had been drilled into my head. Not that it required much drilling by external parties. I managed to drill that into my own head by own will. I wanted to pick up arms and serve the country. That was dream that lasted till very late. Only tons of reading and understanding real stuff later made me realise the false bloated notion of the nation. I refuse to now honour and respect these man made lines.
As regards Kashmir, my first experience with it was as a child with parents visiting the paradise on earth. I don’t remember it being particularly beautiful as much I remember it being arrogant. A people who knew that the world wanted to see them. I then saw it as an adult in the year 2003, and I saw no progress in the intervening 20 years. I saw people shattered, their egos broken, the desperation writ large in their eyes. While I was able to put the two together, only after reading Basharat peer was I able to live the horrors of the people of Kashmir. We could naively say that Kashmir has only itself to blame but the atrocities of the Indian forces and the rape by the powers that be, have also massively contributed to it. While there might have been a fire we managed to really add fuel to it.
Jump to the Naxalite movement in India and you realise that it is nothing but a rebellion against the state that is busy pillaging our resources at the expense of the tribal livelihood. Oh god. It’s horrific on how we manage to do it.
These are also case studies on power. While its clear that for those oppressed the state is the culprit and for those in the comfort of modern air-conditioning the rebels are to blame, to my mind both are completely totalitarian regimes corrupted by power. It is both that extract their meat from the populace. The rebels who pick the gun are reluctant to drop when they realise the power they wield. Power corrupts and is an addiction like no other. And it works at all levels. Even I look at the grass root, as a father the power I wield corrupts my thinking. Sometimes Jispa get the unnecessary brunt of rage which is nothing but a power equation. Surely I think I do it far less (I think, I hope) that what I might have faced; but hand on heart, the power is what manifests on my child.
This power equation is crazy and it is this that makes us cling on to our status quo. We are afraid of change, we forget the reason and the power itself becomes the motive. Like the book on social entrepreneurs I was reading, one do gooder realised that he could not go into get into Maoist bastions and uplift the people. The Maoists have a vested interest in keep the area underdeveloped.
I see this in offices as well. I see too many bosses having a vested interests in keeping their employees only happy enough. How much should I pay him, for him not to go? WTF? They actively supress any learnings and actively ensure stagnancy. As growth inevitably is followed by demands and market forces that put a price on the persons head which the organisation does not want to pay. Why should it? Why should I develop a person only to lose him or her? I have only in the past learnt one thing. Keep pushing the person to grow and learn. The bigger he gets the more the space he pushes around him. The wider his span of vision gets. This only benefits the organistaion, and if he leaves, be happy that he has created a big enough void, so that the new person will have to first fill that void and then try to do some more. I don’t know why the organistaions can’t see this, why the bosses can’t see this, why we can’t this?
Power lies in letting go. Yet we hold on. I so want to let go. I will try at every opportunity but dam it. I don’t see it. I only see it in hindsight. Dam.