'Flat Out': Delhi’s found a voice but govt isn’t listening

Extraordinary situations demand extraordinary responses. The UPA government, being a government in irreversible decline, is incapable of thinking out of the box. So it met the growing public anger over the brutal gang-rape in the Capital with water-cannons and tear gas shells – acknowledged instruments for expressing the wrath of the establishment.

A government which should have been on its knees with folded hands for not being able to accomplish the minimum – making its capital city safe – retreated and watched from the safety of the official homes in Lutyens’ Delhi.

Manmohan Singh, rightly addressed by his unforgiving rivals as Maunmohan Singh, did not think it worthwhile to address the nation, calm down the tempers, soothe the frayed nerves and reassure everybody that the government would come down severely on the wrongdoers. There was no sign of members of the Gandhi family. Sonia Gandhi had done her bit by paying a single, suitably-advertised visit to the hospital where the victim continues the grim fight for her life.

Home minister Shinde had disappeared from the scene as though a rape is a usual crime in a medieval India. And even the Opposition basked in its Gujarat glory, having done its share of politicking over the issue while the Parliament was in session.

The Congress is happy that it has only just emerged from a productive winter session, managing to push through some crucial bills. After the session ended earlier this week, the politicians — including those of the Opposition — shed a few crocodile tears and then dispersed with a sense of accomplishment, unconcerned that the anger on Delhi’s streets had far from died down, that possibly the sense of outrage had only just found a voice and was now, irrepressibly, growing in volume; the number of protestors were swelling on Rajpath — the arterial link that connects Rashtrapati Bhavan with India Gate and is bathed in soft sunshine on December afternoons.

It did not strike the government that there was no guarantee even now that the ruthless rapists would be severely punished — punished in a manner that it would prevent the very thought of any further such savagery. It did not strike the government that the girl’s infection was still causing a great deal of anxiety and the doctors were not being able to say with confidence that they would keep her alive, give her back her normal health.

For quite some time, this government has been slow to respond to middle class grievances. When accusations of widespread corruption were being levelled against the UPA, the coalition’s think tank reacted late, possibly slowed down by the assumption that the urban middle class voters are restricted to small pockets and would not be a decisive voice in the polls. But the government keeps forgetting that the middle class is also a major opinion-maker and lays down the trend for the rest of the country to follow. These protest-visuals being aired across the country by loud television channels may well have an adverse impact on a nationwide election.

This explains the slothful and the complacent government’s delayed response to the Anna and the Arvind Kejriwal movements. These are not to be brushed aside as urban phenomena restricted to city limits — not really an issue that affects the larger electorate. Such poll calculations can be upset in 2014. The Indian voter is increasingly aware if he/she is voting for the state assembly poll or the national election.

Two years from now (an astute, experienced politician should never take a chance) even a law and order issue like a brutal gang-rape can become a hugely embarrassing political issue. Then, the government may well be perceived to be an indecisive behemoth, one which kept forever vacillating and could never decide on the action which needed to be taken urgently.

By refusing a dialogue with the protestors, the government has miserably failed to defuse the crisis. All that was needed was even for a Rahul Gandhi to step out and promise fast-track courts or assure the crowd about speeding up justice in this particular case, guaranteeing that the police would not delay and that in the not-too-distant future, harsher punishments like chemical castration would be considered seriously by the administration.

This may not have necessarily resulted in the angry crowd dispersing peacefully but it would have been the beginning of a conversation, a sensitive friendly gesture. This was the moment for the government to demonstrate its capability to think out of the box. Instead, it stuck to routine police measures to deal with the largely peaceful assembly.

This incident proved beyond doubt that the UPA government is suffering from a major disconnect with the changing social psyche. It may soon have to pay a heavy price for this divorce.

Diptosh Majumdar is national affairs editor of DNA.