After days of discussions around a possible hung parliament and various coalition equations, who could have expected such a poll outcome in the United Kingdom? Certainly, not David Cameron. Or else, his party wouldn’t surely have campaigned so vigorously against a possible pact between the Labour Party and the Scottish National Party (SNP), vehemently ruled out by Ed Miliband.
Ironically, in a year that marks the octocentenary of Magna Carta — the Great Charter — signed by King John at Runnymede on June 19, UK’s major political parties planned their campaign strategies around fear. Magna Carta was the first formal document making it imperative for the monarch to follow the law of the land, and ensure individual rights against the wishes of the ruler. It was a charter of liberty and hope. But in its 800th anniversary year, we witnessed an election campaign tied to fear. Can anyone deny that exercising the franchise without fear or favour also constitutes an important individual freedom?
The Tories scared the English voters into believing that a minority Labour government would be captive to the SNP, which clearly wants to break away from the United Kingdom. The Labour, on its part, pressed the panic button based on their assumption that another five years of Tory austerity will cut the public services, including the much valued National Health Service, to size.
The campaign of fear, it seems, is going to haunt David Cameron in the weeks and months to come, as he heads to form a single-party government backed by a slim majority. Armed with the over 50 seats in Westminster, the SNP will make every possible effort to irritate David Cameron and undermine the authority of his government over Scotland.
Nicola Sturgeon, the charismatic leader of the Scottish party, had vouched to enhance the influence of Scotland in Westminster. She led her party to win 56 out of the 59 seats in Scotland. But, given the outright majority of the Tories, the election outcome didn’t necessarily enhance SNP’s power in Westminster. Sturgeon will, therefore, try her best to enforce that power by questioning Cameron’s authority, and, thereby, fuelling Scottish ambition of independence from Britain in the form of a referendum.
The rise of the SNP meant bloodbath for the Labour and the Liberal Democratic Party in Scotland. Jim Murphy, the leader of the Scottish Labour Party, and Douglas Alexander, the Shadow Foreign Secretary, have lost their seats to the SNP. Alexander lost his seat to a 20-year-old student, Mhairi Black.
Danny Alexander, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury and a key figure in the Tory-Lib Dem coalition and Charles Kennedy a former Lib Dem leader too, suffered the same fate. So did Vince Cable the Business Secretary and Lib Dem leader from Twickenham, a constituency he held for nearly two decades. What is surprising is that the coalition partners may have projected their record in government during the campaign, but it is the Lib Dem candidates who were punished as the Tories returned as winners.
As the election results stated coming in on Friday morning, I met a girl from a religious minority community. She told me, she voted for the Conservative candidate overlooking Cable, who represented the middle ground and sanity in British politics. And she is not alone in holding that view. While the voters were polarised as a fall out of a vitriolic election campaign, it is equally true that the electorate can’t be stereotyped by their religious and ethnic backgrounds any longer. Across the country, young voters from the religious and ethnic minority groups stood by the Tories, generally considered tough on immigrants and religious and ethnic minorities. For years and generations, these groups have constituted the core support base of the Labour Party.
The performance of the Labour Party isn’t that dismal in London. They have increased their tally from 2010, probably a message for the city’s Conservative Mayor Boris Johnson, the darling of the party’s right-wingers. Rumours that Johnson would be propped up as a leader of the Conservative Party if Cameron failed to deliver an outright majority, were circulating. The electoral outcome in London also underlines a consolidation of working class votes in favour of Labour after the Tory onslaught on a possible Miliband government in a tacit agreement with the SNP.
The electoral outcome across the United Kingdom is a complex equation, definitely much more than what caught the eyes of the poll stars, a majority of whom were proved wrong.
The equation is even more complex in England. The United Kingdom Independent Party (UKIP), which wants the UK to quit the European Union (EU) and blames the migrants — especially those from the East European countries — for all the ills that have befallen Britain, have made significant inroads in England, not necessarily in terms of seats won, but in the share of votes garnered by the party.
The rise of the UKIP comes not necessarily at the cost of the Conservatives, which incidentally is its parent party. But, also at the cost of Labour. The Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls lost his seat because of the number of votes secured by the UKIP in his constituency of Normanton in West Yorkshire, up in North England. The polarising party led by Nigel Farage is making its presence felt beyond the South of England which sees the maximum immigration from the continent.
Despite the resounding success of the SNP in Scotland, Plaid Cymru, another nationalist party in Wales, has managed only a handful of the 40 seats. But there is apprehension that the trend set by the Scots will inspire the Welsh to speak out more vigorously for independence.
With a large number of leaders not returning to parliament, the Labour Party faces a generational crisis. The burden of the skeletons of the New Labour, left by the Blair-Brown years, seemed to have been too heavy for Miliband to bear. The infighting between the Blairites and the Brownites, which later resurfaced in the form of a family war between the Miliband brothers — Ed and David — the latter leaving the Labour Party to take up a plum job in the US, split the organisation too wide for Ed Miliband to stage a comeback.
An outright majority is not all comfort for Cameron. Now that there is no coalition, he will face enhanced pressure from his backbenchers to deliver more for the Tory core voters. Europe and immigration are causes for concern for the prime minister so is the difficult task of balancing the books and yet deliver a reasonable public service.
Divisive politics awaits a divided nation.
A version of this write up was first published in the DNA on May 9, 2015
Tirthankar Bandyopadhyay is a journalist and media consultant.
He can be contacted at tirthankarb@hotmail.com
All comments are personal.
Saturday
Wednesday
Scare dominates campaign in Magna Carta octocentenary
The campaign frenzy is over and the electorate is all set to exercise their franchise to elect the members of what is historically the mother of parliaments. The year which marks the 800th anniversary of the Magna Carta, the first charter finally contributing to a body of conventions called the constitution of one of the influential democracies in the modern world, is witnessing an election unprecedented in the history of the contemporary British politics.
The Magna Carta may have been the first formal document making the King of England answerable to the law of the land and ensured individual rights and a beacon of liberty, but the campaign of the election held in its tercentenary year is dominated not so much by the spirit of optimism and hope but more so by a message of fear.
David Cameron is scaring the voters that if they don't vote judiciously, the "achievements of the past five years of containing the deficit will be thrown out of the window." The Labour Party is pressing the panic button based on the fact that "another five years of Tory rule will cut the public service down to size". The Liberal Democrats are using a dual strategy for scaremongering, saying that the Tories are dangerous for the society and the Labour detrimental to the economy.
The UKIP has its favourite punching bag the European immigrants, harping on the collective psychosis on jobs and increased pressure on social goods. The threat of global warming and climate change are good enough for the Greens to make the electorate worry of what lies ahead for the British Isles.
The nationalist parties - the SNP in Scotland, Plaid Cymru in Wales and the Sinn Fein in Northern Ireland - have set out a battle among nations in what is actually a national election.
It's not only among the parties but within them as well that fear, apprehension and insecurity are more predominant than ever before. If reports are to be believed, the right-wingers in the Conservative Party are waiting in the wings to push David Cameron from the pedestal of leadership if he fails to deliver an outright majority. The people on the right in the Conservative Party want to prop up Boris Johnson as the next leader, making the general election of 2015 a make or break for Mr Cameron.
The Labour leader is also under pressure from the trade unionists, despite the best of efforts to distance himself from his largest support base during the party's leadership race. The Tories may have trained their gun around the narrative that Ed 'back stabbed' brother David under pressure from the left hardliners, the Labour leader is facing the heat from the trade unionists and the nationalists SNP and Plaid Cymru who are harping on the traditional political philosophy of the Labour Party, lurching more to the left and with greater credibility.
As the heat and dust of a hectic election campaign settle down, its time for the British electorate and the politicians to seat back and reflect. The negativism that dominated the campaign, can this antagonism bring about any positive change in Britain!
Tirthankar Bandyopadhyay is a journalist and media consultant.
He can be contacted at tirthankarb@hotmail.com
All comments are personal.
The Magna Carta may have been the first formal document making the King of England answerable to the law of the land and ensured individual rights and a beacon of liberty, but the campaign of the election held in its tercentenary year is dominated not so much by the spirit of optimism and hope but more so by a message of fear.
David Cameron is scaring the voters that if they don't vote judiciously, the "achievements of the past five years of containing the deficit will be thrown out of the window." The Labour Party is pressing the panic button based on the fact that "another five years of Tory rule will cut the public service down to size". The Liberal Democrats are using a dual strategy for scaremongering, saying that the Tories are dangerous for the society and the Labour detrimental to the economy.
The UKIP has its favourite punching bag the European immigrants, harping on the collective psychosis on jobs and increased pressure on social goods. The threat of global warming and climate change are good enough for the Greens to make the electorate worry of what lies ahead for the British Isles.
The nationalist parties - the SNP in Scotland, Plaid Cymru in Wales and the Sinn Fein in Northern Ireland - have set out a battle among nations in what is actually a national election.
It's not only among the parties but within them as well that fear, apprehension and insecurity are more predominant than ever before. If reports are to be believed, the right-wingers in the Conservative Party are waiting in the wings to push David Cameron from the pedestal of leadership if he fails to deliver an outright majority. The people on the right in the Conservative Party want to prop up Boris Johnson as the next leader, making the general election of 2015 a make or break for Mr Cameron.
The Labour leader is also under pressure from the trade unionists, despite the best of efforts to distance himself from his largest support base during the party's leadership race. The Tories may have trained their gun around the narrative that Ed 'back stabbed' brother David under pressure from the left hardliners, the Labour leader is facing the heat from the trade unionists and the nationalists SNP and Plaid Cymru who are harping on the traditional political philosophy of the Labour Party, lurching more to the left and with greater credibility.
As the heat and dust of a hectic election campaign settle down, its time for the British electorate and the politicians to seat back and reflect. The negativism that dominated the campaign, can this antagonism bring about any positive change in Britain!
Tirthankar Bandyopadhyay is a journalist and media consultant.
He can be contacted at tirthankarb@hotmail.com
All comments are personal.
Monday
What's missing in this British election campaign
American political strategist Roger Stone once described the general election as a "mass media exercise", and true to his observation the major political parties in Britain are leaving no stone unturned to use, utilise and influence the media to their advantage. While tabloids like the Mirror and the Mail are at daggers drawn when it comes to Labour and the Conservative parties respectively, the Express has sided with the UK Independence Party (UKIP) this time, and The Sun dividing its loyalty between the Tories in Britain and the Scottish National Party (SNP) in Scotland. Among the major broadsheets the tilt of The Guardian with Labour and that of The Telegraph with the Tories are an open secret and they make little effort to conceal or camouflage their stances, and The Times toes a more centrist line.
The debate on public spending is at the heart of this year's election campaign with the major political parties, gauging the public mood, are committing themselves to save the National Health Service (NHS) from any possible cuts, only to be questioned by their rivals on accounting credibility to balance the books and economic trustworthiness to manage the deficit in the long run. In the process, however, each political party is craftily overlooking the lapses in its own spending plan.
The austerity practised by the the Conservative -Lib Dem coalition over the past five years has caused immense hardship to people on low income. The euphoria over employment figures is subdued by the chronic problems in youth unemployment, under employment and ridiculously morbid "zero-hours contract". Prime Minister David Cameron looked helpless when encountered by Jeremy Paxman on the contract which is professed by the Tories, allegedly "to make people's lives more flexible."
The Camerons and the Osbornes are also overlooking the economic realities of under-employment and disguised unemployment. The rising employment figures seem ridiculous when you find a Bulgarian project manager working as a cleaner earning around £8 an hour. The person might not have had any other option but to take up the job, and that added to the employment figures of Mr Cameron, but surely this is under utilisation and misuse of professional skills ultimately resulting in wastage of resources. .
Historically, the Labour Party suffers from lack of trust when it comes to the economy and it has become more so after 13 long years under New Labour, when they professed Labour values but acted more like the Tories at the centre of the party's political spectrum. Although a respectable civil servant has argued that Labour is not to be be blamed for the financial crisis engulfing Britain, but over spending and wasteful spending are detriments to social and economic justices that Labour leadership proudly claims to achieve.
In the midst of claims and counter-claims on public spending, with all political parties trying to show how magnanimous they are, what is missing in the campaign trail is a detailed plan to instil a sense of aspiration in the British society, especially among the youth. No political party has articulated any plan on how to enhance the aspirations of the British youth and influence them to acquire new skills so as to utilise them through gainful employment. Even the UKIP which is constantly crowing against the influx of immigrants from the European Union (EU) and allegedly grabbing the jobs from the British people, are not asking the indigenous people to aspire high or speaking out any plan to make them more enterprising.
Years of post-war social security and welfare have rendered a large section of the British population susceptible to state patronisation in the form of benefit. Even a couple of years ago people would compare their entitlement from benefit and remuneration from jobs and in a substantial number of cases the former overtaking the later.
Entitlement (to benefit) irrespective of achievement (enhancement of employability skills and job prospects) may be arguably good social justice but not necessarily wise economics. The system of entitlement without any commitment to deliver, prevalent over the years, has subjected the working population to stunted aspiration, limited or no entrepreneurial skills and above all a flawed sense of self respect.
Tightening of benefits and monitoring (carried out by the staff at the Job Centre Plus) have resulted a new form of systemic fraud by which young people attend further education colleges, work placements and skill centres, to save their benefits, but hardly pick up any knowledge or skill from there (mainly due aspirational deficits), making bulk of the public expenditure to train them wasteful.
The major political parties competing on public spending and those like the UKIP taking the vexed path of blaming the immigrants for everything ill and evil in Britain should first chart out their plans not only about allocating the taxpayers' money but how they will instill a sense of dignity and enterprise among the working population, a large proportion of whom are otherwise unemployed.
They ought not lose sight of the fact that austerity is an imposition but aspiration is an achievement.
Tirthankar Bandyopadhyay is a journalist and media commentator.
He can be contacted at tirthankarb@hotmail.com
All comments are personal.
The debate on public spending is at the heart of this year's election campaign with the major political parties, gauging the public mood, are committing themselves to save the National Health Service (NHS) from any possible cuts, only to be questioned by their rivals on accounting credibility to balance the books and economic trustworthiness to manage the deficit in the long run. In the process, however, each political party is craftily overlooking the lapses in its own spending plan.
The austerity practised by the the Conservative -Lib Dem coalition over the past five years has caused immense hardship to people on low income. The euphoria over employment figures is subdued by the chronic problems in youth unemployment, under employment and ridiculously morbid "zero-hours contract". Prime Minister David Cameron looked helpless when encountered by Jeremy Paxman on the contract which is professed by the Tories, allegedly "to make people's lives more flexible."
The Camerons and the Osbornes are also overlooking the economic realities of under-employment and disguised unemployment. The rising employment figures seem ridiculous when you find a Bulgarian project manager working as a cleaner earning around £8 an hour. The person might not have had any other option but to take up the job, and that added to the employment figures of Mr Cameron, but surely this is under utilisation and misuse of professional skills ultimately resulting in wastage of resources. .
Historically, the Labour Party suffers from lack of trust when it comes to the economy and it has become more so after 13 long years under New Labour, when they professed Labour values but acted more like the Tories at the centre of the party's political spectrum. Although a respectable civil servant has argued that Labour is not to be be blamed for the financial crisis engulfing Britain, but over spending and wasteful spending are detriments to social and economic justices that Labour leadership proudly claims to achieve.
In the midst of claims and counter-claims on public spending, with all political parties trying to show how magnanimous they are, what is missing in the campaign trail is a detailed plan to instil a sense of aspiration in the British society, especially among the youth. No political party has articulated any plan on how to enhance the aspirations of the British youth and influence them to acquire new skills so as to utilise them through gainful employment. Even the UKIP which is constantly crowing against the influx of immigrants from the European Union (EU) and allegedly grabbing the jobs from the British people, are not asking the indigenous people to aspire high or speaking out any plan to make them more enterprising.
Years of post-war social security and welfare have rendered a large section of the British population susceptible to state patronisation in the form of benefit. Even a couple of years ago people would compare their entitlement from benefit and remuneration from jobs and in a substantial number of cases the former overtaking the later.
Entitlement (to benefit) irrespective of achievement (enhancement of employability skills and job prospects) may be arguably good social justice but not necessarily wise economics. The system of entitlement without any commitment to deliver, prevalent over the years, has subjected the working population to stunted aspiration, limited or no entrepreneurial skills and above all a flawed sense of self respect.
Tightening of benefits and monitoring (carried out by the staff at the Job Centre Plus) have resulted a new form of systemic fraud by which young people attend further education colleges, work placements and skill centres, to save their benefits, but hardly pick up any knowledge or skill from there (mainly due aspirational deficits), making bulk of the public expenditure to train them wasteful.
The major political parties competing on public spending and those like the UKIP taking the vexed path of blaming the immigrants for everything ill and evil in Britain should first chart out their plans not only about allocating the taxpayers' money but how they will instill a sense of dignity and enterprise among the working population, a large proportion of whom are otherwise unemployed.
They ought not lose sight of the fact that austerity is an imposition but aspiration is an achievement.
Tirthankar Bandyopadhyay is a journalist and media commentator.
He can be contacted at tirthankarb@hotmail.com
All comments are personal.
Saturday
Suffer they do, but for whose sin
I was woken up this morning by the terrible news that an earthquake of high magnitude shook large parts of India. The grey morning in London coupled with drizzles after a week of glorious sunshine made me pensive and apprehensive too.
My home state of West Bengal in India has been voting in the second phase of civic elections today. The first phase and the campaign have been marred by violence and bloodshed. I dialed my parents to make the cursory Saturday call and inquire about their health, the heat and dust in a normally sweltering April, the political and social tension surrounding the polls and added to that today was how they coped with the tremor that shook large parts of India.
My parents in Kolkata, relations in North Bengal and the North East of India are all fine. Relieved, I switched on the television set and tuned in an Indian news channel not for the news on the tremor, but to keep myself abreast about the possible poll violence in West Bengal. Little did I know that large swathes of the Himalayan kingdom of Nepal were razed to the ground as tremors struck only to be followed by regular aftershocks.
The heart wrenching footage of people running amok, cracks on multi-storied buildings, uprooted trees, broken temples and monuments and casualties came as a pall of gloom. Many faces crossed my imagination. My former colleagues in the BBC Nepali Service, many of whom were deputed to Kathmandu from London. My good friends Rabindra Mishra, Yubaraj Ghimire and Jitendra Raut - all former colleagues in the BBC.
I suddenly recalled 'Daiju' - an elderly person with wrinkles crisscrossing his face, who looked after us well at a guest house in Gaurikund on our way to Kedarnath in the late 1980's. Daiju then told me that after a few years he longed to retire in his home town in Nepal and spend a peaceful life with his grandchildren. Since we left Gaurikund, I was never in touch with Daiju, but somehow his affection crossed my mind as I imagined that he might be in Nepal now and feared about his well being.
The name of 'Sundar' also cropped up in my mind, although I have never seen or spoken to him in my lifetime. Sundar was a Nepali boy who accompanied my father to Kolkata in the 1960s. My father was visiting Darjeeling and poor Sundar wanted to travel to Kolkata with him. He stayed at our ancestral house in Belgharia for a few years, helping my late grandmother in her household chores and being like the fifth son in the family. In the process he grew from being a boy to a man. But as politics in Bengal became tense with the rise of the radical left, Sundar had to be sent back to Darjeeling for his own safety. Notwithstanding Sundar's departure, he remained so ingrained in the memory of our family that even I heard about him from my grandmother, father and uncles long after he was gone. I imagined that Sundar might be with his family in Nepal and feared that the high-magnitude tremor struck the place where he lived.
As the news of the terrible loss of life, property and heritage trickled in through out the day, the faceless number of hundreds of affected people was embodied in those I knew or was aware of. I was reminded of a comment made by one of our teachers in school. "Disasters happen when nature takes its own action", he told us quoting a German philosopher, whose name I couldn't remember. Taken aback by the extent of the disaster in Nepal, I tried finding out who the German philosopher was. And I did as the day unfolded and night fell in quake struck Nepal.
Wrote Frederick Engels in 1876 in "The Part played by Labour in the Transition from Ape to Man":
All comments are personal.
My home state of West Bengal in India has been voting in the second phase of civic elections today. The first phase and the campaign have been marred by violence and bloodshed. I dialed my parents to make the cursory Saturday call and inquire about their health, the heat and dust in a normally sweltering April, the political and social tension surrounding the polls and added to that today was how they coped with the tremor that shook large parts of India.
My parents in Kolkata, relations in North Bengal and the North East of India are all fine. Relieved, I switched on the television set and tuned in an Indian news channel not for the news on the tremor, but to keep myself abreast about the possible poll violence in West Bengal. Little did I know that large swathes of the Himalayan kingdom of Nepal were razed to the ground as tremors struck only to be followed by regular aftershocks.
Nepal earthquake: How you can help victims of the Kathmandu disaster
The heart wrenching footage of people running amok, cracks on multi-storied buildings, uprooted trees, broken temples and monuments and casualties came as a pall of gloom. Many faces crossed my imagination. My former colleagues in the BBC Nepali Service, many of whom were deputed to Kathmandu from London. My good friends Rabindra Mishra, Yubaraj Ghimire and Jitendra Raut - all former colleagues in the BBC.
I suddenly recalled 'Daiju' - an elderly person with wrinkles crisscrossing his face, who looked after us well at a guest house in Gaurikund on our way to Kedarnath in the late 1980's. Daiju then told me that after a few years he longed to retire in his home town in Nepal and spend a peaceful life with his grandchildren. Since we left Gaurikund, I was never in touch with Daiju, but somehow his affection crossed my mind as I imagined that he might be in Nepal now and feared about his well being.
The name of 'Sundar' also cropped up in my mind, although I have never seen or spoken to him in my lifetime. Sundar was a Nepali boy who accompanied my father to Kolkata in the 1960s. My father was visiting Darjeeling and poor Sundar wanted to travel to Kolkata with him. He stayed at our ancestral house in Belgharia for a few years, helping my late grandmother in her household chores and being like the fifth son in the family. In the process he grew from being a boy to a man. But as politics in Bengal became tense with the rise of the radical left, Sundar had to be sent back to Darjeeling for his own safety. Notwithstanding Sundar's departure, he remained so ingrained in the memory of our family that even I heard about him from my grandmother, father and uncles long after he was gone. I imagined that Sundar might be with his family in Nepal and feared that the high-magnitude tremor struck the place where he lived.
As the news of the terrible loss of life, property and heritage trickled in through out the day, the faceless number of hundreds of affected people was embodied in those I knew or was aware of. I was reminded of a comment made by one of our teachers in school. "Disasters happen when nature takes its own action", he told us quoting a German philosopher, whose name I couldn't remember. Taken aback by the extent of the disaster in Nepal, I tried finding out who the German philosopher was. And I did as the day unfolded and night fell in quake struck Nepal.
Wrote Frederick Engels in 1876 in "The Part played by Labour in the Transition from Ape to Man":
"Let us not, however, flatter ourselves over much on account of our human victories over nature. For each such victory nature takes its revenge on us. Each victory, it is true, in the first place brings about the results we expected, but in the second and third places it has quite different, unforeseen effects which only too often cancel the first."The "victory" that Engels talked about might have added to the comfort of the rich and the relatively well off but it was the poor people of Nepal who were bearing its brunt.
Please donate generously to help the Nepalese people. I have done so myself.
Tirthankar Bandyopadhyay is a journalist and media consultant.
He can be contacted at tirthankarb@hotmail.comAll comments are personal.
Sunday
Why India's Daughter is a non-starter
I watched Leslie Udwin's documentary "India's Daughter" for the third time. The last time when the heat and dust have settled and the humdrum gone. Still my views on the documentary haven't changed. The perverse mindset of the perpetrators of the heinous crime and those defending them is not India-specific but universal in nature.
I pondered over the issue for sometime now and tried some social experimentation in my day to day life. Despite the unsophisticated process of my social experimentation and the rudimentary nature of the outcome, the trend available demonstrated that whenever someone does something illegal and unethical, there is a broad tendency to defend it.
I am neither a psychiatrist nor a psychoanalyst or a criminologist and hence can't delve into the reasons behind such an action. At a superficial level though it seems that the defence mechanism sets in through which one justifies his actions both within oneself and outside, and this is a universal phenomenon.
So what Udwin showed in her film is universal and not specific to India and hence there is no justification to ban it in India. In fact, by banning it the Indian Government has provided the film with the much needed political succour to keep it afloat, not because of the content but by virtue of the political controversy. The controversy notwithstanding, the documentary has failed to reveal anything that was hitherto unknown to us.
My problem is mainly with Udwin's methodology. The way the perpetrators were given a platform to articulate their views and justify their actions, and that too unchallenged, defy all norms of effective and responsible journalism. My feeling is that Udwin being a veteran in documentary making was aware of this methodological lapse and hence allowed herself to be swayed by sensation and emotion, Recall how Udwin kept on stating in interviews that she herself was abused. However unfortunate it is, this in no way makes one any more competent to direct a documentary on the said issue.
In the final analysis, Leslie Udwin's India's Daughter managed to create some surrealistic ripples but failed to take us even an inch further from where we were before.
The controversy surrounding the documentary on the gang rape of a paramedic in Delhi in December 2012, however, raises questions similar to the critique of the development model professed by the West in the post-war years. The assumption that the West is a moderniser and has an obligation to civilise humanity encouraged them to thrust upon development models and processes without trying to understand the essence of prosperity for individual nations in the global South. The homogeneity in western society and the inability of the policymakers and development practitioners to appreciate diversity are the biggest detriments for the one-size fits all prescription of the West.
It seems that the framework used by Leslie Udwin when conceptualising India's Daughter suffers from the same shortcomings.
Tirthankar Bandyopadhyay is a journalist and media consultant.
He can be contacted at tirthankarb@hotmail.com
All comments are personal.
I pondered over the issue for sometime now and tried some social experimentation in my day to day life. Despite the unsophisticated process of my social experimentation and the rudimentary nature of the outcome, the trend available demonstrated that whenever someone does something illegal and unethical, there is a broad tendency to defend it.
I am neither a psychiatrist nor a psychoanalyst or a criminologist and hence can't delve into the reasons behind such an action. At a superficial level though it seems that the defence mechanism sets in through which one justifies his actions both within oneself and outside, and this is a universal phenomenon.
So what Udwin showed in her film is universal and not specific to India and hence there is no justification to ban it in India. In fact, by banning it the Indian Government has provided the film with the much needed political succour to keep it afloat, not because of the content but by virtue of the political controversy. The controversy notwithstanding, the documentary has failed to reveal anything that was hitherto unknown to us.
My problem is mainly with Udwin's methodology. The way the perpetrators were given a platform to articulate their views and justify their actions, and that too unchallenged, defy all norms of effective and responsible journalism. My feeling is that Udwin being a veteran in documentary making was aware of this methodological lapse and hence allowed herself to be swayed by sensation and emotion, Recall how Udwin kept on stating in interviews that she herself was abused. However unfortunate it is, this in no way makes one any more competent to direct a documentary on the said issue.
In the final analysis, Leslie Udwin's India's Daughter managed to create some surrealistic ripples but failed to take us even an inch further from where we were before.
The controversy surrounding the documentary on the gang rape of a paramedic in Delhi in December 2012, however, raises questions similar to the critique of the development model professed by the West in the post-war years. The assumption that the West is a moderniser and has an obligation to civilise humanity encouraged them to thrust upon development models and processes without trying to understand the essence of prosperity for individual nations in the global South. The homogeneity in western society and the inability of the policymakers and development practitioners to appreciate diversity are the biggest detriments for the one-size fits all prescription of the West.
It seems that the framework used by Leslie Udwin when conceptualising India's Daughter suffers from the same shortcomings.
Tirthankar Bandyopadhyay is a journalist and media consultant.
He can be contacted at tirthankarb@hotmail.com
All comments are personal.
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