Where is the young blood?

By V. Krishna Ananth

AFTER ALL the heat and dust raised by members of the political class, the people of Assam, Kerala, Tamil Nadu and West Bengal have given their verdict. In all these States (barring West Bengal), those who were rejected outright just five years ago are now back in the saddle. The Congress(I), whose future had appeared bleak, has now managed to capture a couple more State Governments.

The people were left with hardly any new choice. And this certainly raises some serious concerns. In other words, the craving for change notwithstanding, the electorate's choice was restricted. And hence, they voted the Congress(I) in Kerala and Assam and the AIADMK-led front in Tamil Nadu. They were denied the luxury of a third force or a new alternative.

Take for instance the Asom Gana Parishad. Mr. Prafulla Mahanta, among those who had captured the imagination of a whole generation of the Assamese people, has been pushed to the margins once again. Similarly, the DMK, the platform that ushered in a new culture in the political space since the 1960s, has been dealt such a blow that its revival will be difficult given the present crop of leaders in the party.

The DMK and the AGP had, in their own way, represented a new political resurgence in the two States and their rise and growth had served as basis on which the idea of a pan-Indian nationalism (represented by the Congress since 1952 and on which the BJP too began growing since its inception in 1980) began to be questioned. And in this sense, they had lent the ideological basis to a distinct political culture that showed a lot of promise in the post-colonial discourse.

And commentators and critics who prophesised, even until a couple of months ago, that the Congress(I) would wither away are beginning to revise their positions. There is a sense of dismay among the articulate middle classes that the ``masses'' do not ``deserve'' anything better and that there is no way that the corrupt and the arrogant lot could at all be removed from the political scene. A sense of resignation is evident even while they have begun expressing hopes that the loser today will be the winner tomorrow. This may not be off the mark.

Given the magnitude of expectations and the ``limitations'' for those in Government, no party or platform can now hope to satisfy the voters for long. In an era where anti-incumbency has become so central to the electoral outcome, the losers only need to wait patiently for a few years. For, they know only too well that there will be no other alternative the next time around.

This, indeed, is the difference between the vibrant 1960s (and the decade after that) and now. The 1960s marked the beginning of a new era in India's political discourse (indeed all over the world for that matter) when the established order was shaken. If it was the DMK that marked the beginning of this phase (from Tamil Nadu) the AGP was, perhaps, the last visible (and successful) manifestation of that brand of politics whose guiding spirit was to challenge the established order in all walks.

The protest wave swept across the universities and colleges across northern India in the 1970s, leading to the fall of the Chimanbhai Patel Government in Gujarat. The students and the youth were able at that time to build a popular perception against the established regime all over the Gangetic plains that led finally to the ouster of the mighty Congress party and Indira Gandhi from power. It was the spirit of the 1960s that led Jayaprakash Narayan, himself a product of another such resurgence (in the last decade of the freedom struggle), to declare that there was no place in his scheme of things for the old guard.

Indeed, the tumult was not just an Indian phenomenon. There was the student movement in France that pushed the old order out. And there was the combination of students and youth rallying behind the Janata Vimukti Perumuna (JVP) to capture state power in Sri Lanka; it is another matter that the ``revolution'' could succeed only for a moment. But, those events in Colombo left a lasting impact on the island-nation's politics for decades after the ``failed'' revolution.

That was also the phase when the mighty U.S. administration could no longer carry on with its war games in Vietnam. And the existing regime in Iran was shown the door a few years later (in the 1970s) after it became clear that the people of Iran were not going to let a pro-U.S. regime continue there. The 1960s were also the period when the battle cries against the pro-Soviet Union regimes were beginning to be heard across the then Eastern bloc.

If there was one common aspect in all these ``movements'' it was the leading role that students and youth assumed in them. In this sense, they were condemned by those in the establishment - irrespective of whether they belonged to the Left or the Right - on the ground that they represented nothing but chaos. But then, the most articulate representative of this spirit - Bob Dylan - did not bother at all to deny this charge. ``I accept chaos,'' he proclaimed once.

And those were the times when he went about singing before packed crowds (the youth and the students who thronged his concerts) that ``The times they are a-changin...'' Dylan brought out the very spirit of the times when he sang: ``Come mothers and fathers throughout the land... And don't criticise what you can't understand... Your sons and your daughters are beyond your command... Your old road is rapidly again.'' Dylan also had this to say to the writers and critics: ``The choice won't come again... and don't speak too soon for the wheel is still in the spin... And there is no tellin who that is namin... For the times they are a-changin...''

It was this spirit that guided the students in Assam during the early 1980s when Mr. Prafulla Mahanta, Mr. Brighu Phukan and Mr. Atul Bora could mobilise the people and get them to take on the mighty Indian state; though they may be heroes no longer. One also finds such men as Mr. Laloo Yadav and Mr. Sharad Yadav, also products of the anti-corruption movement of the 1970s, now facing charges of misusing public funds.

The DMK, which triggered the imagination of the youth in the 1960s and emerged as a platform that exposed the fallacies in the idea of pan-Indian nationalism, has now been reduced to a fellow traveller of the Hindi-Hindu-Hindutva BJP. And the AIADMK that was born in the context of ``exposing'' the corrupt DMK regime is now being led by someone who has been convicted for corruption.

The point here is not to say that the new order that emerged as part of the spirit of the 1960s was ideal. Nor is to argue that the old order was bound to make a comeback as the new order was bound to fail. The problem lies elsewhere - in the ``normality'' that prevails on the campuses and among the youth. The ferment of the 1960s and the tumult of the 1970s seem to have ended and the calm that prevails is scary. After all, there is no way one can expect a change, a new alternative, from this calm and ``normality''.

A revolution led by students and youth may not have succeeded anywhere. All that they may be capable of is disturbing the calm and leading the society into chaos. But then chaos is what led to shakeups in the past. And a shakeup is necessary to flush out all those in the establishment - the winners and the losers in the past few elections - so that there is space for a new generation.

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