Musing on sadness

The election campaign in West Bengal has turned out to be a slanging match. Look to your left or even to your right, it is the same mud-slinging which is having its day. The content of the campaign has been taken over by allegations and counter-allegations, that too in words matching those erupting from the gutter. Even the commentators and the civil society are so polarised that the civility in the society has been replaced by vulgar expression of might. The irony is that this is the same Bengal which was once considered to be citadel of civility and cultural conformation.

Over the past few weeks, I spent some time to be a mute observer of what’s going around only to make an effort to get to the truth behind the cumulative decadence in values that is gulping Bengal. Though not sure if I have managed to do so, but prima facie it seems that the sharp accusations are a function of the expansion of the sample space of the stakeholders.

The patron-client relationship which is the mainstay of any political formation is now utilised to its optimum level and even beyond for the sake of distribution and redistribution of favours. In the process what they are missing out is that there is enough redistribution of favour but not adequate generation of resources. Majority of those who are pawns in the process of socio-political polarisation and degeneration are actually the stakeholders. Since their level of engagement with the stakes and dependence over them have increased with every passing day, these pawns are shouting their lungs out and often resorting to other vitriolic and vulgar means to maintain their positions of prominence and privilege.

Often the media is the favourite punching bag of every evil that engulfs the society. However unfortunate and unfair it may sound, but in this case, the media has also emerged as a powerful stakeholder with serious contention in rendering the politics of the land murky. The out of proportion media explosion has created a workforce who are inept with their knowledge, expertise, experience and insight to deal with the sharp divisions that are manifesting a fractured polity. Conventionally being the mirror of the society, the media with its inadequacies is actually projecting a rapturously vulgar imagery of an already broken state. 

Historically, the civil society was considered to be an intermediary between the state and the individual. That’s how the civil society oiled the wheels of capitalism for generations. The trade unions, the pressure groups, the intelligentsia, the media – they all are well-orchestrated tools of capitalism to contain systemic discontent. When the allegiance of the civil society shifts from the objective of sustenance of the social system and is fractured between warring factions it is the society which turns out to be the ultimate looser. 

So whatever be the outcome on the 19th of May, it is Bengal and the Bengalis who are the real losers. The decadence and the depletion in the values, lexicon, civility, reverence and imagery are gradually turning out to be irreversible. It seems that in the folly of political one-upmanship not many are bothered about the moralistic degradation. 

Tirthankar Bandyopadhyay is a journalist and media consultant. 
He can be contacted at tirthankarb@hotmail.com 
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