Why India needs its "liberal elite" to step out into the great wide open – Economic Times

Roughly two decades ago, a former CEO of a multinational consumer goods company walked into the Mumbai office of a business magazine, met up with the senior editors and popped the question: Could I get some help to meet a common man? The CEO who had recently retired was on his way to becoming a full-time writer. To many of us wet-behind-the-ears sub-editors and reporters accustomed to taking the local train from the boondocks to get to work, the request of this palpably pro-market head honcho seemed amusing and drenched in irony.

Even more, considering that we had just moved from South Mumbais commercial haven, Nariman Point, to what was then still a landscape dotted with smoking chimneys of textile mills. The siren of the sprawling factory across the road blared a few times a day to indicate a change of shift and a sea of humanity waxing and waning through the giant gates. The busy street had ample street food and beverages to choose from: vada pav, dosa, sev kurmura (puffed rice, if you insist), cutting chai.

It would be difficult not to bump into a common man even if you tried. The good CEO may have eventually met his desired choice of humanity, with some help from the magazine staff. We never doubted his liberal streak he was volubly pro-reforms, pro-competition and there was little to suggest that he did not believe in an individuals freedom of choice. Its just that he evidently hadnt met individuals of hues and shades. Liberal elite and the inevitable left liberal that favourite oxymoron of the right wing and its avid chroniclers are sobriquets liberally hurled to describe anyone not conforming with the ruling dispensation. If youre not right, youre liberal. It isnt that easy.

#NotInMyName protests in Mumbai (above) and at Jantar Mantar, Delhi, on June 28

Liberalism Lite At the #NotInMyName protest last week in New Delhi, plenty of those who turned up would have qualified as champagne socialists, or the liberal elite. Pro-market for many would perhaps mean first stop Khan Market, and pluralism a Sunday chat with driver, security guard, nanny and maid. Their idea of liberalism would include customary references to either their exquisite cultivated tastes (lattedrinking, sushi-eating, as Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean was portrayed) or intellect (and its product), or degrees (and their effect) or all of the three and periodic railing against fascists and bigots over Chardonnay.

Thats not unwelcome in climes when human beings are being targeted for their caste, colour, creed and choice of food and dress. To be sure, the limousine liberals are needed like never before to make their presence felt at protest rallies. Its just that its time to drive that limousine out of metropolitan towers or, better still, leave it with the driver and step out into the great unknown. Small-town India and the small-town mindset are well and truly misnomers in todays India, with Bharat benefiting from economic reform and pro-market policies.

Thats taken care of the mindset problem, as well. For long, the small town syndrome not just in India was a phrase used to describe a narrow and parochial way of thinking. As the twain of urban and rural meets, thanks to migration from and development in the hinterland, you are as likely to encounter the small town mentality in a big city.

The Indian urban liberal is in many ways akin to the bunch Trevor Floyd, a theatre artist and contributor to HuffPost, recently described as Americas coastal liberal elite. In an opinion piece titled Dont Tell Me About Small Towns, Floyd writes: The coastal liberal elite and small town conservatives often view each other in monolothic ways.

The liberals think everyone from a small town is closed minded, conservative, and unambitious; the town folk think liberals are people who live elsewhere, who dont understand small town life, and who care too much about Beyonc, memes and global warming. He goes on to say that leaves liberals who are from small, rural towns, and those that still live there forgotten and unheard both on the opinion pages of the New York Times and the headlines of conservative sites like Breitbart and InfoWars.

Replace Beyonce with, well, Beyonce, and theres a familiar ring to that urban-small town dichotomy. A commonality between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Donald Trump is that they won the trust of the small-town non-elite. Uttar Pradesh was won despite the pain of demonetisation because a chunk of voters from Ghaziabad to Ghazipur was told it was good for them. Trump, despite all his obvious warts that were magnified on prime time, had non-city slickers believing in him because he empathised with their struggles.

Can the apparently pro-choice, feminist, pro-gay, tree-hugging Delhi liberal empathise with a distant not just physically working class? Is the Muslim in Muzaffarnagar less progressive than the Muslim in South Delhi? Shouldnt Tahir from Salempur in northeast Delhi who ferried a few to Jantar Mantar in his Uber taxi also have been a participant in #NotInMy-Name? Is the Dalit in JNU as excluded as her counterpart in Shabbirpur village? Ever wondered how many farmers in small-town India may be pro-market, proreform? And, yes, its tough fighting the prejudice of the faction in your social set thats agnostic to climate change, but what would it take to find mind space for Indias cross-dressers and transsexuals?

These may not be tough questions to answer if the #NotInMyName roadshow travels beyond urban outposts of sporadic activism. The idea of liberty at the end of the day is a state of mind. If the small-town mentality can be rid of, so can the culture of elite liberalism. What liberalism in the Indian context needs is a wider base beyond the cities, and deeper interpretation beyond selective causes. A good starting point will be Mehsana in the coming week.

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Why India needs its "liberal elite" to step out into the great wide open - Economic Times