Author: Ravi Shankar Etteth
Publication: The New Indian Express
Date: May 29, 2011
URL: http://expressbuzz.com/opinion/columnists/how-to-win-friends-and-influence-poor-people/278837.html
Some have to go hungry in order to survive.
The hunger for justice and the hunger for publicity often go hand in hand.
Professional dissidents like Medha Patkar who live on newspaper ink are past
masters in the art of fasting. After Anna's hunger strike and Baba Ramdev's
imminent denial of nourishment until black money is brought back to India,
Medha chose to eschew food again in early May, protesting the demolition of
slums in Golibar, Mumbai until the government caved in. Does anyone care?
The slum dwellers do.
More than 4,000 families from 46 cooperative
housing societies vehemently voiced their anger against Medha's interference
in the Golibar slum redevelopment scheme. They want the project to be expedited
and social activists to be kept away. The slum dwellers even took to the streets
in support of the Slum Rehabilitation Authority (SRA) with placards that proclaimed
"Medhatai you are in the wrong direction. Work for the welfare of the
slum dwellers and not against them." Anna read his Delhi right, but it
seems Medha hasn't read her Mumbai right.
India isn't an easy read for anyone who storms
into public life. When Medha Patkar realised that the Narmada Bachao Andolan-her
first major production that featured poor, dispossessed villagers-was flawed
in its premise, she decided to change tack and adopted the larger anti-development
platform. Donning the swimsuit of ideology, Arundhati Roy leapt into the Narmada
that Medha had muddied, only to hastily swim away. Later, Medha played an
active role in getting Tata out of Singur; but why did she keep schtum when
villagers pleaded with Tata to return and Ratan Tata questioned the source
of her funds? Why has Medha-who built her resume on land acquisition-refuse
to participate in the Jaitapur farmers' protests? Anti-nuclear activists accuse
her of furthering her own purpose by taking up issues, only to abandon them
later. Arundhati, it seems has wisely decided to keep away from Medha's fast.
Roy is smarter. And prettier. She has never gone on fast; she is slim already.
Besides, she needs energy to write long articles on poverty that would do
a school magazine proud, hold press conferences that never fail to make at
least page 2 in newspapers, and attend snooty parties in New Delhi and New
York.
Just as our country is pockmarked with politicians
like Raja and Kalmadi, activists like Medha Patkar, Teesta Setalvad and Mallika
Sarabhai also blight it. For social performers and politicians alike, poverty
is a constituency to be ploughed for public acclaim. The chefs of dissent
will cook up anything for hype; Teesta Setalvad had to take anticipatory bail
for manufacturing spurious victims of the Gujarat riots and force-feeding
confessions in court. Mallika Sarabhai woos the limelight by criticising Narendra
Modi as she enjoys the benefits of Gujarat Shining. Even Anna Hazare, a political
innocent was presumably browbeaten by Sarabhai-bhais into denouncing corruption
in Gujarat.
Medha Patkar is no less than any venal politician
who defrauds India's poor. One does it for power and money, the other for
satisfying a maniacally self-righteous ego and an insatiable hunger for media
attention. Along their path to awards and acclaim, the debris of a million
hopes-of abandoned villagers and idealistic followers-lie like a ruined city
of ordinary dreams.
- ravi.shankar@newindianexpress.com