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| Diary |
Magazine | 27 Oct 2003 |
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| Delhi Diary by Vinod Mehta |
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The orgy of self-congratulation we are witnessing courtesy the culmination of four years of glorious NDA rule is, given our current drift, unexceptionable. While October 2003 is doubtless a milestone—if nothing else it marks four years of successful survival—the roar of trumpets heralding the "phenomenal progress" the Republic has registered is vastly exaggerated. The feelgood mood the country is experiencing currently has very little to do with good governance and a great deal to do with individual talent being gradually liberated from government-made chains. India is marching ahead despite its rulers, not because of its rulers. Let me hasten to add that my criticism is not aimed at a particular party, but the political culture they have collectively spawned.
As a political entity, the BJP offers an amazing paradox. Given the human resources it commands, given the experience of its top leadership, given the energy, hunger for power and organisational skills it possesses, given the disarray in the Opposition, the 11 Ashok Road-wallahs should be sitting pretty. Waiting for the general election to fall into their lap. And yet, all present omens suggest that even 150 Lok Sabha seats seem a distant dream. Consider another paradox. Here is a party born out of cow-belt politics—and yet it is largely invisible in the cow belt. Not just invisible, it has been virtually wiped out. The truth is that the grand and "stable" government Mr Vajpayee leads and is so proud of hangs on to the BJP because of local compulsions, while the party itself rules a miserly two states of insignificant electoral value.
How did it all go wrong? And why does the future look even bleaker? Here is a pseudo-secularist’s view. In the eyes of millions of voters, the BJP is still perceived as a reckless, adventurist party unable to shake off the Hindutva project—a project which is seen as both irrelevant and divisive. If India’s 350-million-strong, burger-chomping, mobile-crazy, shopping mall-addicted middle class is going to set the political agenda, and if that middle class is evenly spread right across the country, then a party obsessed with banning beef, building a temple at one particular spot, rewriting history textbooks and changing personal laws can only have marginal electoral appeal. It is a party of the past and not a party of the future. Sad, because India needs a bona fide right-wing formation which does not dance to Dr Praveen Togadia’s perverse tune.
Rants and Raves
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Unlike the BJP, Outlook is not releasing full-page ads celebrating its eighth anniversary. Neither have I received any bouquet of roses despite the fact that Outlook is in a sense one up on the BJP: we are not merely stable but growing. Naturally, it’s a long way since our launch number of Oct 18, 1995 with two scoops on the cover: a preview of then prime minister Narasimha Rao’s erotic novel The Insider and an exclusive opinion poll in the Kashmir valley testing the local mood on self-determination. Perhaps the most satisfying thing for us today is that many Outlook and non-Outlook readers believe we are the No. 1 newsmagazine in the country, having overtaken our honourable and eminent rival. Of course, this is not strictly true but it is nice to hear, and when someone compliments me on the happy occurrence, I neither stop him nor correct him. I just ask him to spread the good word wherever he goes.
For me personally too, October 2003 is a landmark. I have completed nearly nine years as editor of Outlook, breaking my previous record of seven at The Sunday Observer in the ’80s, and hopefully putting to rest the undeserved reputation I had acquired of not being able to hold a job. Nevertheless, I was slightly taken aback when recently an elderly gent in Bangalore, who had clearly followed the ups and downs in my career with alarming diligence, asked me when I was quitting Outlook and moving on to a new project. Hmm...
Rants and Raves
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In the early ’70s I was commissioned—with a princely
advance of Rs 500—to write a biography of Meena Kumari. I had no interest in Hindi cinema or the ‘great tragedienne’, but I did have a little time on my hands, so I pursued the commission enthusiastically. The book was duly published and received pretty decent reviews; the late Khwaja Ahmed Abbas in Blitz was especially generous. For myself, I was unhappy with the biography because I was young and foolish in those days and rather easily influenced. I had been reading too much Norman Mailer and it shows in the book.
Now, a couple of publishers are after me to have the biography reprinted with perhaps a new and longish foreword added. Initially, I must confess I was petrified at the idea, but last Sunday I re-read a few pages and they were not as bad as I had imagined. With some minor surgery and editing most of the obvious blemishes could be excised. However, is anyone interested in Meena Kumari? I am not sure. Her kind of cinema and her kind of actress is history. Yet there is the everlasting appeal of nostalgia, something our Meena was hooked on, and most apparent in a collection of mediocre poems she wrote and recorded in her own voice.
Rants and Raves
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In these grim times, sex surveys provide much-needed entertainment. Mr Durex offers us one annually (see the pioneering and bold Delhi Times dated October 13) in the hope that we will buy his undoubtedly superior product, but he does stretch credulity when he confidently announces that Indians have sex 2.65 times a week. What does this statistical oddity convey? Twice or three times a week one can understand, but 2.65 times is baffling.
Rants and Raves
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