India Today

2000-2009 - The decade that changed the world

Wed, Dec 16 07:39 PM

On a warm blue September day in 2001, Mohammed Atta, an Egyptian architect from Germany, forced his way into the cockpit of American Airlines Flight 11 bound for San Francisco, flew it into the World Trade Center Tower 1 and changed everything. No hostages, No released prisoners, no cash, just this humble Al Qaeda goal: The destruction of free liberal Western democracy as we know it.

With the idea unleashed, the decade saw reproductions. India's Parliament in 2001, the Madrid train bombings in 2002, the London transport system in 2004, the Sharm Al-Sheikh hotel attacks in 2005, the Bali nightclub bombings in 2005, Mumbai 26/11/08.

Till the end of the 1990s, people saw terrorists as holding innocent people to bargain for something. The last decade has shown us the willingness of cosmopolitan, educated young, moneyed people using the Internet revolution that's happened in parallel, to be taken in by the appeal of martyrdom and spectacularly kill themselves for Osama Bin Laden.

The world scrambled to react. America led the excitement with the catch phrase, "War Against Terror" and the clear declaration, "Either you're with us or against us". "We're with you", India shouted, "We've known terrorism almost daily, now you know what it feels like to be us" and other such brotherhood ideas were loudly proclaimed. The Americans weren't listening and didn't care. The only time America did say, "What's going on here?" was in December of 2001, when some Lashkar people showed up in jeeps to blow up our Parliament and we said we might go to war.

As the decade rolled on, there were surprises, disappointments, optimism, shame, joy, elation and apologies, but none predictable. The sudden rise (and complete domination of) the Congress party from a position of relative weakness made pundits look foolish and made the BJP's India Shining slogan work against them as India shone essentially to, and for, the Congress.

Even though an economic rise was guessed, 8 per cent GDP or thereabouts as Europe shrunk, elated us and generated a lot of chat about the rise of a new India and its consuming power. A young nation gained confidence from earning and spending much sooner than their parents did, call centre jobs and a visit from President Bush ("We love you" our prime minister said).

And the poster child of this new India, certainly post elections, was Rahul Gandhi, proving his dexterity at balancing convoluted patriarchal alliances with new-age consultant thinking, all the while carrying his charm with the good looks of a Turkish lothario.

Some things came as no surprise: politicians held up bags of money in Parliament exposing bribes they said were offered to switch affiliation. This came some years after a news organisation held covert operations (coined "sting" to sound forceful I suppose) to expose a shocking new reality. Politicians caught on camera taking bribes in suitcases.

A large debate ensued about the venal and barbaric nature of the elected corrupt while those accused defended themselves by

a) claiming they were set up,

b) threatening and shutting down the news organisation in question or

c) trying to slither out through petty detail loopholes.

To the public, there was never any debate on whether our elected officials take bribes. It was certainty. What we refer to as everyday. The only sting operation that would have indeed shocked the people was if our politicians didn't take a bribe.

Later, a news channel did another sting operation exposing the movie actor Shakti Kapoor asking for sexual favours in return for giving a young lady a film role thereby starting a debate on Bollywood's casting couch. Again, the only shock for the nation here was that Shakti Kapoor sleeps with women.

Any highlight of these past 10 years would be incomplete without mentioning last year's events in Mumbai. Arguably, the logic and procedure had antecedents across the world and, therefore, it should have been no shock when men in their 20s with guns and backpacks showed up to kill and die.

Yet it was. Beyond of course, the shock of what they did was the shock of who we were. A crumbling city with inadequate security, a foolish elite incapable of erudite opinion, an intelligentsia with no political voice, an elite paralysed in its own elitism. This decade showed we needed to wake up, even if we had no idea what the hell to, where to go or what to ask for.

Post 26/11, much anger was aimed at politicians again. This time, I'd argue, misdirected. The urban public needed a target and they were the easiest. Foolish generalisations like they are all corrupt and thieves and criminals were really ways for the public to vent, forgetting that in a multiparty democracy, we had elected these very same people by large majorities.

And could throw them out. It wasn't an us versus them because they were us, just those of us we had put in power. Once the anger subsided and ridiculous attempts at civic action from clusters of posh people died down, everybody went about their business of not voting and not caring. The tragedy and the small burst of shouting that followed did help the politicians in realising that they need to occasionally care or sound like they do, so words like "good governance" and "public accountability" became the mantras of the most recent campaigns.

The interesting analysis post 26/11 that angered the media (and subsequently, the public) was how much was spent on security for a handful of VIPs while our biggest cities lay exposed to any kind of assault. One television channel asked a perturbed Murli Manohar Joshi as he walked in with his melange of black cats, "Sir, who is paying for this?"

This decade also woke up the other end of the economic spectrum, the poorest of the poor, and not in a good way. They'd had just about enough with the India of fashion shows and DLF SEZs and zipping Mercedes. They wrote a manifesto about armed revolution, called themselves Naxals, revived a dead 70s student protest ideology and took to killing policemen and stopping trains in the deep interiors.

One party that simply by fiery speeches and obstructing regular life gained attention and political legitimacy was the MNS, with an agenda against migrants to Mumbai, especially those from Uttar Pradesh. In a country otherwise economically powering ahead with attempts at decent government, improving infrastructure, progressive secular and liberal economic ideas with a middle class that aspired to a better life, one wondered where the MNS ideas came from.

And who voted for the mandate. As the TV debates between supposed urban intelligentsia essentially became noise and screaming matches, the MNS quietly got the votes to become a party to reckon with. We realised the only thing more worrying than an agenda of malice or absent security, was us.

On a less sombre note, Shashi Tharoor, our erudite world ambassador with the foppish Oxonian Merchant Ivory charm brought the proper British accent back to Parliament reminding us that the Raj did not die; it just moved to the External Affairs Ministry and posed on the cover of GQ.

We also found out Kapil Sibal, Cabinet minister, wrote poems (on his cellphone on long flights, like a frequent flying T.S. Eliot) whose literary merits were debated on national television. The main curiosity this aroused was what other Renaissance talents were there in the upper echelons of our ruling party? Maybe our finance minister Pranab Mukherjee was a ludo champion or our home minister P. Chidambaram made world famous lemon pudding?

So there you have it. The era that changed our lives, in brief. Winston Churchill had once said, "Indian politics is lunacy trying to reach its full potential." This decade, we came close.

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