Keep Off The Grass

The Indian nation was founded in 1947 on a moral claim—that it represents the interests of all inhabitants of India, irrespective of their caste, class or religion. And the Indian state does not respect the demands of those who believe that the special status of their community earns them a right to a nation of its own. The legitimacy of the nation depends on its allowing equal access to civic space; once common spaces turn into exclusive zones, social divisions follow. Then how does one understand SEZs, industrial projects, and housing complexes for which the state has voluntarily ceded space and power to private interests in the name of progress?

Consider the new Bangalore international airport, which sits on 4,000 acres acquired by the government under a public-private partnership. Gated complexes and technology parks are coming up in the vicinity. Meanwhile, 17 people have already died in accidents on the gleaming eight-lane highway connecting the airport to the city. The planners, in their wisdom, did not build enough signals or underpasses for the locals. The Bangalore airport is no exception. From the Narmada valley to Nandigram, the state has protected private interests while the weak and vulnerable suffer. Private enclaves are sprouting all over India. These are areas where the middle class and the rich can live, work, and educate their children without any contact with the poor except as service providers. As they separate themselves from the rest of India, the Indian gated classes are getting ever closer to their gated counterparts the world over.

The SEZs and industrial parks resemble outposts of an empire that extracts resources from its surroundings without any concern for the welfare of those who live there. Power without responsibility is a familiar theme. Until six decades ago, it was the natural condition of our British rulers, who lived and worked in secluded zones where Indians came as supplicants. Then, as now, the colonial empire seized land and extracted resources from India in the name of a civilising mission. What is happening now looks increasingly like recolonisation, with one major difference: the high growth rates of the past decade have garnered many more votaries for the gated economy than British colonialism ever had. The gated city on the hill attracts the rest of India as well. All of us aspire to the lifestyle of the gated classes. But at what cost?

Since we are a democratic society, the gated economy has greater legitimacy than colonial rule. However, there is inherent tension between our democratic principles and the growth of the gated economy. Electoral democracy masks these cracks. Elections allow representation of competing interests and periodically hold our rulers accountable for their acts. But electoral democracy hasn't done much to create a moral commons, which is a civic space where all Indians have automatic membership and get equal treatment. Surely, one of the central responsibilities of the Indian nation is to make sure all its citizens come together in a common moral space. Here the state has failed. Unlike secessionism, which the state sees as a threat to its integrity, the state is not reacting strongly enough to the exclusion of Indian citizens from SEZs and other gated zones.

Systematic exclusion does not threaten either our thriving electoral democracy, or our political parties, who are capitalising on the divides created by the gated economy. But democracy is more than elections; it involves creating a common civic space. But the gated economy is destroying the moral commons. Do we have the intellectual capacity and the political will to build a new commons? The consensus for the gated economy suggests the road ahead is treacherous.

The impact of exclusion is not just physical; human psychology ties physical proximity and common activities on the one hand to emotional and moral sympathy on the other. Gated communities aggravate the divisions between the elite and the rest by separating those who live and work in the gated economy from those who do not. These divisions are potentially dangerous; geographical separation leads to loss of empathy, which in turn can lead to violence. For example, the physical and psychological separation of Hindus and Muslims was one of the leading causes of the Gujarat riots.

The physical integrity of the nation is tied to its moral integrity as a refuge for all its citizens. Part of the failure of moral integrity is ours—we hold the state responsible for preserving the physical integrity of the nation, but we do not hold the state responsible for the nation's moral integrity. Otherwise, how can we tolerate the destruction of the moral commons? The gated economy is a direct result of adopting a western model of development in an impoverished society. The gates of the new economy serve a dual purpose. They keep the poor out and enable preferential access to common resources such as water for those who live inside. More importantly, the barriers create a psychological cocoon where the gated classes can pursue their dream of becoming equals of the West. The explosion of dollar millionaires suggests that parity with the western world is achievable for the gated classes. However, that comes at a severe price. Gandhi warned us a hundred years ago that the western model of development is not replicable in India without great harm to our people and environment. The gated classes couldn't care less: they are for unbridled consumption.

The gated economy is as much about a mindset as it is about material developments. The underlying cause is not material, but intellectual; six decades after independence, our minds are still colonised by an unsustainable model of development and modernity. Without true swaraj, the gated classes live in fear of being inferior to the west and with disgust for the unwashed masses that keep them so. To paraphrase Gandhi's reply to Tagore, if we were truly independent, we would open the doors to our neighbours without being afraid that they will dirty our floors.

If the gated economy is a sign of mental colonisation, maybe we can learn something from the struggle against the colonial power. The goal of the Indian independence struggle was not just to transfer power from the English to Indians, or even to establish parliamentary democracy. Its goal was to create a nation in which Indians of all stripes actively recognise their obligations towards one another. In Gandhi's words, "The very essence of democracy is that every person represents all the varied interests which compose the nation." This was not an empty boast. The organisation that Gandhi spent his political career on—the Indian National Congress—was an imperfect but genuine moral commons in which people of all stripes found refuge. The Indian independence struggle was unique in creating a common space as a means for creating the nation. I would like to believe that independent India has momentarily forgotten that impulse, but those ideals still burn in our hearts.