Without humour, you miss wood for trees

Why can’t we agree to disagree on certain things and agree to agree on others which are beyond partisan interests? Why can’t political discourse permit more openness to get feedback from critics and the normal citizens?

When a cartoonist becomes a danger to national security and a corrupt politician or for that matter a professor becomes an ally in this war, there is something fundamentally flawed in the tenor of our times. It doesn’t matter who is offended by cartoons, and where.

It could be a Danish, Bengali, Maharashtrian or even a dead cartoonist like Shankar. Doesn’t really matter. What matters is that somebody wants to prove to the powers that be that India of future will be or should be less inclusive, less tolerant and less open to laughing at itself.

Politics will become a progression like ploughing a furrow in a dry clay soil, very hard to cut open and very difficult to let sunlight go deeper, giving hope to new seeds of ideas and imagination.

Will I not like ban on gutkha if I know it causes cancer, I will. Even if I will not stop at just banning but also promote alternative mukhwaas (mouth fresheners) which are healthy, say, including fennel, mint, gooseberry or amla, mango kernel, betelnut, coriander, nutmeg and so on.

Likewise, if somebody proposes use of generic medicines to reduce public procurement cost, expand health coverage and include more poor people. Why shouldn’t we applaud such measure, ignoring which party governs that state? I remember when minister and MLAs came to visit water supply programme in Gujarat from Rajasthan, they appreciated that villagers here could not only make suggestions but also make officers listen to them.

There is no doubt that water conservation programme was supported in Gujarat for more than a decade and half. Why not acknowledge it and appreciate it?

Will not political discourse in India become more mature, civil and decent if we started appreciating each other’s good ideas?

Who can claim all good ideas can come from any one source, space, social community, or sector?

Why can’t we appreciate the gesture of a prime minister of a neighbouring country to support education of poor children who otherwise would have become labourers or cobblers?

Why can’t we feel ashamed when a brave woman mountaineer selling boiled eggs outside Dumdum, Kolkata plans to sell her kidney to raise funds for her expedition to Mt Everest?

Why can’t we endorse the idea of unique identity cards for every citizen across factions within a party and across party lines? Why can’t we agree that corruption is eating into the vitals of our society and people will not live with it?

How can allocating coalpits from which no coal has been taken out be worse than exporting the million of tonnes of ore taken out and transported illegally to ports and shipped? Both are bad and parties need to sit together and develop norms of transparency and accountability?

It is so easy to get lost in the details and lose sense of the larger purpose. Politics needs to permit civil discourse if greater values of Indian civilization have to have any relevance for future generation.

In Mahabharata, we are told that after sunset when war was halted, healers would apply balm on the wounds of wounded soldiers regardless to which side they belonged to. Is it impossible to be civil and polite in advancing partisan agenda in politics?

I’m quite optimistic that we will see better culture of expressing differences in politics and civil society. A little while ago, some activists saw corruption only in one party and thus lost the faith of larger civil society.

I’m sure our society is much more mature than many of the political leaders we have thrown up so far. But best of our polity is yet to come. I have no doubt.

The author is a professor at IIMA and can be reached at anilgb@gmail.com