The Game on or Game over?

George Orwell, a great visionary writer prophetically wrote that we will be destroyed by the things that we fear. He was talking about state surveillance to come which he so vividly and imaginatively pictured in his novel, 1984.  He seems to be proved right as the globe seems to have shown rapid sprouting and blooming of totalitarian regimes that boast of strong leadership.  We in India have also surrendered to this discourse of fear which has succeeded in convincing us that our unity is in the division, our peace is bloodshed and our prosperity is economic alienation of the weak.  Therefore, we seem to have come to love politics of fear and hate.

Maybe we have to read and think of George Orwell alongside Aldous Huxley. Orwell’s novel, 1984 and  Huxley’s, Brave New World might bring insight into what ails society. If Orwell sees destruction in our fears, Huxley sees the same in what delights us. Orwell laments and warns us over the loss of our freedoms. Huxley envisions that we will come to enjoy this loss. Some of us have made a virtue of the loss of freedoms under the banner of cultural nationalism that we know as Hindutva.  We seem to delight in what we deem to be the coming of the Brave New World in our country. This new world is greeted as new India by non-other than our Prime Minister.

We seem to have entered a time that may be described as Taylorism named after Fredrick Taylor or  Fordism named after Henry Ford that uses ultra-managerial techniques to manage people. Maybe this is best exemplified by the likes of Prashant Kishore who has shot to fame by the delivery of spectacular victories in our elections. Taylorism or Fordism is not just about elections or managing the labour force for the industry. Today what is call Taylorism and Fordism might illumine us how knowledge from human sciences and the power of growing technology are being used to tailor our society to suit the power elite.  Therefore both Fordism and Taylorism today are indeed about domesticating and taming our society through indoctrination, advertisement and propaganda.

The techniques of mind control and those that socially engineer recall or memory of the trauma of the past are employed to promote the interest of the power elite.  Maybe it is because of the success of these techniques that people like Subramanian Swami declare that India has already become a Hindu nation.   We can also see this at work in the linking of Savarkar’s mercy petitions with Mahatma Gandhi by our defence minister, Rajnath Singh. We have reached what may be described as Pavlovian social conditioning ( after Ivan Pavlav) that seems to have taken us to the doorsteps of a totalitarian society wherein we have come to love our servitude compelled by our fears.  Our ruling benches have thus perfected the art of surveillance as well as the social conditioning of the citizenry.  This means power is getting more powerful and democracy is dying in its practice by the day.

We may say that it is only elections and the power of our vote that have remained of what is left of our democracy. The Fourth Estate has become the lapdog of the rulers and ridiculously works as the watchdog of the opposition. We seem to have come to enjoy the prime time debates which have become all noise and no substance.  The godi media is shamelessly carrying forward its anti-people agenda by masking it as pro-people. Besides, we do seem to enjoy the death of democracy and its institutions all in the name of what is thought to be the rise of the Hindu nation.  This means both Orwellian fear and Huxley’s delight seem to be hybridizingly working and we are left with few or no options.

The high profile Didi’s victory in West Bengal and the year-long farmer’s agitation appear to be the only silver lining in an otherwise Covid-ridden gloomy condition of our society. Congress the grand old party does not seem to manifest any semblance of recovery from the jolt that it received with the rise of Modi in 2014.  Unfortunately, Its internal squabbles and a kind of rudderless leadership does not inspire confidence.  It has so far failed to become a magnet for opposition unity.  The political vacuum is crying to be filled. Does that mean the game is on as TMC will like us to believe?  Or does that mean game over for India and  Goa?

 We cannot meekly surrender to the political tyranny unleashed by the ruling benches. The game is not over. The game is certainly on. The political parties in Goa are feeling its intensity.  The coming of IPAC in Goa seems to suggest that election in Goa is set to use market strategies to manufacture our consent to vote.  Given our volatile condition and the manner it is unfolding at a quick pace, we have to find ways of responding to this rapidly evolving precarious situation both nationally as well as in Goa. The Game is certainly on and we cannot remain fence-sitters but have the challenge to save our democracy by becoming enlightened voters.

The rising prices are choking the common men and with the skyrocketing of the petrol prices, even the rich have begun to feel the heat. The insensitive deaf ear to the farmer’s agitation, the heinous killing of the farmers in Lakhimpur, the huge seizure of drugs at Mundra port operated by the Adani group in Gujarat are all testifying to our subjection to Bure din.   But maybe it is the intoxicating delight in cultural nationalism that makes some of us ready to put up with servitude as long as their innocent demonized other is punished with exponential bure din.   Our fear of the demonized other, as well as sadistic delight in subjection of this other to bure din, has blinded us to the fact that so-called cultural nationalism has become the hiding place for truly anti-national rogue elements. This is why the game is on. We have to play the game to win and make it game over to all who are enforcing bure din on us. But to win we will have to rise above our fears as well as delights that control and enslave us and unite as Indians and Goans.  We do not really have anything to lose when we forge this unity. In fact, we will free ourselves from the chains that weigh us down.