Everyday and the Political
The other big shift is that the equation between the every day and the political has changed with populism making a comeback. The populist regimes allow everyday socio-cultural practices—including interpersonal practices—to determine the political in a much bigger way. This also has some strange and complex linkages with the changes in neo-liberal dynamics because of the features of neo-liberalism that extend beyond social constraints of class, caste, and religion. Neo-liberalism is producing dynamics of its own kind, and therefore, the microscopic aspects of everyday interpersonal life are beginning to matter much more in the political realm than what they have done in the past. In that sense, populism is liberating and inclusive, i.e. one is not under the burden of preconceived frames of ideology, one needs to think in terms of a received or available political, and also does not possess a programmatic idea of what politics should be—populism allows individuals to imagine politics from the location where s/he stands. Populism, in one sense, is nothing but the celebration of the ‘irreducibility of multiplicity’ in politics. There are immense multiplicities and heterogeneities in society, and populism is that which gives you a sense of being included in political dynamics from your own social location rather than asking you to change your perspective in terms of a pre-received constitutional vision or a vision of the liberal democracy. Populism gives one the empowering feeling of entering with one’s own location, own identity, social vision, culture, and so on.
This authoritarian regime is populist in nature, the most complex, and simultaneously, the most significant aspect of this regime. This populist tinge comes from the fact that it is inclusive in a very strange sense. This regime is inclusive of all those groups that perhaps have remained at the margins, those who have been dropped out of the system. Although it creates all kinds of ‘others’, there is also a sense of inclusiveness in this populism. The current regime also creates a sense of inclusiveness in questioning the class-character of the liberal institutions. Liberal institutions and Constitutionalism expected a certain kind of familiarity with procedural language, civil etiquettes that went along with proficiency in English, and being urbane. There is a convergence of a certain kind of subalternization and a certain kind of Right-wing authoritarianism. The Left assumes the regime to be fascist, authoritarian, or a top-down force. It is presumably authoritarian, but that is just a part of the story. The larger and more significant part of it is not merely top-down authoritarianism but something more inclusive and populist.
A New Symbolic Order
There has been an exclusion of the subalterns such as migrants and non-English speaking individuals from liberal institutions, such as the bureaucracy, judiciary, and media for far too long. For example, who are the lawyers who resorted to assaulting in the court premises?2 They were social dropouts, or in sociological terms, ‘deviants’3—who could not make it big in life—who belonged to economically vulnerable upper castes and did not do well for themselves under the demands of the liberal democratic institutions.4
It is this kind of new social constituencies5 that the symbolic ordering of the populist regime makes feel more inclusive. We are moving from empirical accuracy to normative ordering,6 and we can all do that from our own social experience. Therefore, there is an explosion of symbolic social space.7 This populism is somehow making that possible in a strange way. On one end, some social groups are making an entry on a symbolic plane, and that entry is happening through this symbolic imagination of ‘what should be’, which is not based on truth, facts, evidence, and empirical accuracy. Therefore, the current populist-authoritarian regime can respond to you by making you inclusive in this symbolic order. And quite a few new things are happening in this kind of inclusivity. For instance, if you were to ask someone about demonetization, they would say that it succeeded, while most of the economists would hold the view that it was an ineffective strategy to fight black money. Then, what was it that succeeded?8
This symbolic opening up of a space is occurring partly because of a large growth of insecurity as a pervasive phenomenon. Today insecurity grips all social groups from the middle class to the poorest. Contrary to the European middle class, the Indian middle class, in fact, grew at the time of neo-liberal reforms. Therefore, the very growth of this class took place, on one hand, through expansion of opportunities, and on the other hand, through withdrawal of social security measures—for instance, golden handshake, VRS, withdrawal of pensions, contractualization of jobs, and massive expansion of informal sector, among others. In fact, Zygmunt Bauman points to it, in his book In Search of Politics, that till the 1970s, primitive accumulation was slower than the expansion of industries. Therefore, more jobs were created prior to the 1970s than people getting displaced. Post 1970s, globally, the ability of industries to create jobs reduced significantly than the number entering the job market as a result of displacement due to the process of primitive accumulation, and this has declined compared to the people who are entering the job market. Therefore, insecurity today is a driving force and something that is experienced across classes, even the middle class and the well off.9
This insecurity has also become a part of social relations. To form any kind of social relation, you need the consent of two people, but to break it you just need the decision of one. The very idea of contractualization of social life, even when you are in a happy relationship, brings insecurity, as it just needs one party’s decision to break away. We have been witnessing the flipside of these ideas of democratization of social relations, perpetuated by liberal democracy for quite some time. While we began the century by believing that secularization of social life—that is the growth and expansion of civil society and associated life, secular shifts from ascriptive10 to prescriptive identities are all about freedom—all social commitments today have become ad-hoc. We are all now a part of contingent commitments as there are no full-time and absolute commitments. All social bonds today are ad-hoc bonds. We have to understand that the expansion and secularization of civil society have made this a reality of everyday life. That is how we have been secularized to think about our social relations—through rational, critical, and self-interrogatory means. Therefore, we now need to revisit this liberal idea of expansion of freedom under secularization. Look at the entire debate around the freedom to wear a burqa or the legalization of sex work.11 In the 1960s, sex work was perceived as a form of exploitation, a residual effect of capitalism, and this labour, upholding the objectification of women, could not be absorbed into the job market. Today, we are talking about the rights of sex workers and also the legalization of sex work. There are appeals to not stigmatize sex work but treat it as a kind of alternative profession. These are the two examples that should lead us to question how the liberal idea of expansion of freedom and choice comes within certain constraints and in terms of social adhocism.
Neo-liberalism and Populism
This is also occurring within the limits of neo-liberalism. We are taking for granted that neo-liberalism is here to stay and that it confines and limits our political imagination. The fact that there is no alternative to growth and development is also determining how we plan our social life. This convergence of a certain kind of liberal freedom12 in social and cultural life, which includes mediatization, means that on the economic front, it is the neo-liberal economy, and on the political front, it is the populist democracy. We need to see the possible convergence that is occurring on these three planes. Therefore, even if neo-liberalism leads to jobless growth and material insecurity, it is not questioned.
Freedom and insecurity are not in direct conflict today, and something else13 is occurring in a liberal democracy. Perhaps, the reason that more than freedom what is being privileged today is security and securitization. This populist-authoritarian regime is symptomatic of these changes. First, we do not have an alternative narrative to neo-liberalism coupled with big growth and development; secondly, we have landed upon contingent, ad-hoc social commitments
as a result of the expansion of the discourse of freedom in social and cultural life; thirdly, neo-liberal growth itself. I think these three parallel processes are producing a convergence, which allows a populist-authoritarian regime to thrive. Perhaps, this is why we find the movements—born out of inequalities—are electing regimes, which in turn, are furthering these very inequalities. The amount of frustration and anger among the people of the United States, due to the lack of jobs and social inequalities, eventually ends up electing someone like Donald Trump. In India, we have growing inequalities but we end up electing a Right-wing regime, which is seemingly more pro-corporate, pro-jobless growth, pro-securitization rather than a social democratic process. It tells us that there is no linear equation between what we expect and what we are doing. Right-wing populism is successful today because it is able to bank on, be inclusive, and respond to these basic insecurities in social, cultural, and economic life. Populism is providing a symbolic succour, which is in terms of moving away from these massive insecurities that we are stuck in right from the most intimate interpersonal social life to collective and political life. Populism is one way of ordering these insecurities by giving us a vague symbolic structure.
Populism and Emotions
The other part of the success of this new populist regime is its ability to include subjective emotions more upfront than liberal democracies and moving away from the liberal democratic conception of a rational self based on separation of the private and public realm of an individual. The liberal individual was a public individual. It was acceptable to hold discriminatory opinions in the private realm as long as one didn’t express in the public and professional life. Liberalism expects us to be civil and politically correct in the public domain and the opposite at home, whereas populism has allowed the passage of this private individual in the public domain without any sense of guilt. Following this, we may say that one way to understand the spread of these populist regimes is that they are allowing the private individual some social space for expressing her own emotions and beliefs. The private emotions of our leaders today are in the public domain.14 Populism is allowing subjective emotions to play out in public. It is no longer the imagination of a rational individual, according to the Benthamite formulation of pleasure and pain—maximizing the pleasure and minimizing the pain—but a whole range of emotions, real emotions—of fear, anger, sense of vulnerability, resentment—are allowed to be expressed in the public domain in this populist regime. This recognition of the fact that human beings are agents with self-contradictory emotions and that our political decisions are going to be self-contradictory is what the populist regimes are putting on the table in front of us. Leaders can very conveniently pass off self-contradictory emotions today, as it no longer looks dishonest, rather more real. This new kind of articulation of emotions and consequent actions are considered popular instead of false, breaking the private and bringing it into the public. The functioning of a liberal democracy is based on a rational, rounded individual, but today symbolic imaginations provided by populism are making what may seem uncivil real. Today, the state is willing to speak in the language reserved for the private realm. Centrist social democratic systems hinged their politics on the bifurcation of the civil and uncivil but today’s regimes are willing to speak erstwhile uncivil things openly. In that sense, populist regimes, strangely, come across as more honest. Today’s regimes are putting subjective emotions into a policy frame. The state is becoming an emotional being.
The divide between the public and the private that liberal democracy stood on is witnessing a huge shift as the private is becoming the public and vice versa. The state has assumed the role of a patriarch, what a father stands for in the private realm. We must not reject these regimes as merely populist, as there is something inclusionary about them that is not in line with the old discourse of equality15 but along the discourse of relative mobility. Equality has turned into a non-issue in the light of the failure of poverty alleviation programmes in Russia, China, India, and even globally. And what has replaced equality is the idea of relative mobility, that is, we are better off than the position where we were previously. This very idea of relative mobility itself opens up the space for the triangular convergence that is happening now and the playing out of a lot of subjective emotions. This, to a large extent, is a kind of relief from the secular, rational individuals that liberal institutions expected us to be. In that sense, the populist-authoritarian regimes have succeeded, in terms of allowing the play of these private emotions. What marks our everyday idea of social life today is the idea of ‘resentiment’—a combination of resentment and sentiment,—which, in a sense, is a mix of envy, humiliation, and powerlessness. These factors lead to a deep sense of pragmatism.16
Another shift is from idealism to pragmatism. Normative politics with principled positions are finding it difficult to articulate current aspirations, and instead, we are witnessing a move towards a more pragmatic turn in popular politics.17 Politics to a large extent has become very pragmatic. We understand that there are limits to social achievement and that social conflicts have no solutions. From an imagination of overcoming conflict, we are reconciled to the fact that conflict is an everyday reality and that we will live with these conflicts for a long time to come. The social utopia that the Left and other progressive political parties created across the globe has begun to look increasingly unreal and imaginary now. The other reason why populism is succeeding is precisely because it is more pragmatic and more real. As long as the idea of irreducible social conflict, and undeniable heterogeneity in terms of caste, gender, ethnicity and so on is true, there are going to be conflicts. There is historical evidence that societies have never and will never exist without social conflicts, bereft of differences and inequalities. If we begin to believe that conflicts can be managed and moderated, we would begin to understand politics differently. The state that was forced to speak a social democratic language, now, under populist regimes has given voice to the views that we used to hold all through only in the private realm. The state has also accepted that conflicts are going to stay unsolved to become our lived reality. The populist state has allowed the space for the articulation of the realities that we used to acknowledge only in our private life but never admitted in public.
Therefore, being consistent, idealistic, and committed is no longer a virtue, not merely because it is opportunism but a given reality, a compulsion. One takes contradictory positions in accordance with the social location one is placed in. And why should that necessarily be considered dishonest? There is a complete demystification of the state. The state has come home and speaks the everyday language of emotions rather than the impersonal language of citizenship. Populism is allowing you to be your inconsistent self in the public domain. Liberalism has taught us to not express our private feelings in public. Populism has allowed free-floating emotions in public. Therefore, we have a nice continuity between the public and the private. All dominant social groups stand to gain in the populist-authoritarian regime. Once you begin to understand the range of these emotions, you have to understand how to channelize them for progressive means and give them a new direction. We have to understand this new language of authoritarianism.
Populism and the Strongman: From Modi to Yogi
One of the central features of populism is dependence on a strongman and Indian politics is once again at the cusp of debating how to have a strong leader who does not undermine the significance of the political party he or she belongs to. In the popular perception, a good leader is someone who is decisive and clear-minded. But the leader is also expected to be amenable to public opinion, approachable, and accountable. These popular perceptions of leadership influence the manner in which political leaders manage their parties and the way they project themselves.
Indira Gandhi was lauded for her strong, almost authoritarian, personality and was portrayed as ‘Durga’. But she was also chastised for undermining inner-party democracy, for initiating a process of
de-institutionalization, and for making demands for a ‘committed judiciary’ that finally landed Indian democracy in the crisis of the Emergency in 1975. This tension and friction, between the rather opposing imaginations of leadership, is a continuing thread of Indian politics and democracy.18
Arvind Kejriwal was touted as an honest and approachable leader who cared about public opinion. But when he sat on a dharna and did a sit-in while being the chief minister of Delhi, he was roundly criticized. The general opinion then was that a leader cannot bring down the prestige or garima of an official position by taking to the street as a ‘commoner’—He needed to maintain the dignity that comes from keeping a distance from the street. Looking approachable was no longer perceived to be an act of bringing power closer to the common citizen—read direct democracy — but as a violation of the sense of self as a citizen. Kejriwal himself has agreed that what he did came as a ‘cultural shock’ to the aam aadmi in Delhi and elsewhere.19
Ascetics and Celibate
A ‘good leader’ also cannot be a ‘part-time’ politician; he has to be a professional and committed to spending all his time with the machinations of party and government. This view coexists with the idea that a good and strong leader is ascetic, who believes in renouncing his personal and private pursuits for the larger cause of the nation. By this logic, those without a family are often, ipso facto, considered, to be honest leaders. Power has to be managed with a single-minded pursuit and without personal attachments. This is the gift of the Gandhian imagination of brahmacharya, which means celibacy in the immediate sense but also indicates a sense of detachment, in the broader sense.20
India After Modi Page 4
