The common man versus the hungry millions

There is something unique that Mahatma Gandhi's entry in the freedom struggle, in the early part of the twentieth century, brought about. As Michel Foucault's conception of power would suggest, the grassroots is where the real power lies and all other power holders' power emanates from there. M.K. Gandhi provided this hitherto missing conceptual block to the movement and roped in the ‘hungry and naked’ masses into the freedom struggle. The marriage of the coming in of the masses and their hope of amelioration after the downfall of the Raj proved to be pivotal in bringing about the downfall of the British Empire in India. The successful and hastening role of the masses proved that real power lay with the lay people.

            Of late, contemporary India has been witnessing a disturbing trend that is somewhat antithetical to what transpired during the blossoming of the freedom struggle. We are witnessing a marginalisation of the hungry millions and glorification of the ‘common man’.

            Common man – a term being mostly used for referring to the middle class of the society – has been witnessing an ever greater share in the public discourse. The creation of Aam Aadmi Party is one such manifestation. Be it the provision of free Wi-Fi, or the hue and cry over dearer onions, or the coming up of plush shopping malls, or the public policy jargon of regressive subsidies, the central figure in all these has been the middle classes or the more commonly known common man. The shaping of opinions that the media endeavours belong to this class.

            The common man gets an unusually big chunk of media attention as compared to its absolute numbers. India’s annual per capita income is approximately Rupees 80,000. This figure is an average of all Indians’ income. A substantial proportion of the population lies much below this average level. (Not to mention the 20% of 1.25 billion Indians who live below the generously defined poverty line of India – Rupees 27 or 32 per day depending upon which poverty hat one dons – rural or urban.) This substantial portion of population, unfortunately, is not part of the discourse on common man.

            Along with the media attention, this class also gets a lot of disproportionate attention from the political parties. The major reason for this is basically rooted in the economics of demand and supply. This class is the major consumer of the so called news channels and political debates. When every night, in so called debates on the so called burning issues on the so called news channels, over-enthusiastic anchors shout their lungs out while asking what the nation wants to know (sic), the nation is but a small part of India – the middle class (mistaken for the veritably common common man). There is something oddly ironical and tragicomic about men and women sitting in their cars being interviewed about how the rising onion price is cutting a deep hole in their deep pockets.

            There is a need to bring about a course correction. There is a need to focus on the right issues - a need to identify the real common man (the hungry millions); a need to repriortize – free and clean sanitation facilities over free Wi-Fi at Connaught Places, feeding the hungry millions over providing subsidized diesel to BMWs. There is a need to bring back a revolution of sorts to empower and strengthen the grassroots. But first of all, there is a need to identify the problem correctly because the answer to a problem, more often than not, lies in how we perceive and understand the question. John Dewey, an American scholar, once remarked “a problem well put is half solved.”