Column

The irritation with Pranab Mukherjee’s budget last week had less to do with what finance minister did or did not do: it was but a symptom of the general sense of unease that seems to be taking hold of the mood of the country. The errant monsoon has only made the mood cloudier. Even a finely-crafted commercial film like New York, directed by Kabir Khan, and starring John Abraham, Katrina Kaif and Neil Nitin Mukesh, has a dark conclusion despite its icing of optimism. It happens that way. Many unrelated things carry the gestalt of the moment.

It will be said that the last five years and more have been cheerful, upbeat and it could not have been expected to have lasted too long. There had to be a dip in the mood graph. Right now, problems — social, economic, even political — seem to be creeping eerily out of the corners and coming out into the open. The want-to-do-it and can-do-it spirit has now given way to the sullen desire to rebel and defy and break, even if it means self-destruction.

There is a strange whiff of the 1970s and early 1980s in the air. The dull economic situation, the tight job market is making it difficult for anyone to have a positive outlook. Instead of opportunities all that one sees are hurdles.

After what seemed a meaningful verdict of the parliamentary elections in the summer, it seems that politics has been reduced to a meaningless charade. The Congress’s silly posturing about royal titles, Mukherjee’s irrelevant eulogy of Indira Gandhi’s 1969 bank nationalisation in the budget speech, the inner party squabbles of the BJP and the CPM, the grumblings of Mulayam Singh Yadav and Lalu Prasad Yadav, Mayawati’s surreal political extravaganza make for a jarring and discordantpicture. The country has just got bogged down in trivialities. Even the narrow and selfish goals of personal success seem to have vanished. The big goals have vanished and as to ideals and dreams there seem to be none on the horizon.

A conspicuous weakness of the sense of hopefulness of the last few years has been that Indians had a dream to chase — that of western affluence. With the western economies in shambles, most Indians feel more than a little orphaned. The catching-up-with-the-west game had kept everyone’s energies focused. It is not that the goal post has been shifted. It has just disappeared. That leaves the Indians with the task of setting their own goals, something which they have not done in a long, long time. Perhaps for the last two centuries.

The change in the mood in the country also comes at an inopportune moment. The global economic downturn has pushed India into the front row, into a position of responsibility, with an opportunity to lead and guide, to provide an alternative to the crisis that is swamping the world. That would require a collected frame of mind which is what is missing at the moment.

One of the big challenges of the moment is for new ideas. India cannot go shopping for ideas in the western world any more. The west does not have too many to offer, anyway. Technology and technological solutions can still be borrowed and there are quite a few available in the west. The basic need is for new ideas.

It is juvenile to ask for a seat in the United Nations Security Council or greater say in the International Monetary Fund at a time the old frameworks have turned creaky after a misuse of more than half-a-century. The old structures and solutions do not work any more.

The country will have to pull itself out of the anger and listlessness it is slipping into. The captains of industry can set the ball rolling by revving up the economy and people with ideas — market executives to advertising copywriters to filmmakers to university researchers —should broadcast all they think. It is their chance to make things happen. There can be no better way to chase the dark inner demons away.