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Disconnected elite By Chandrabhan Prasad Returning to the assessment of India's elite, let me once again reiterate the point that the elite does not have any ulterior motive. After all, some of the people who own or head news channels are very liberal. The elite in its academic role also fails much like the media does. In other words, the Indian elite as a whole is a problem. Therefore, the hung house campaign for UP should be understood with compassion. The UP election exposed a deeper crisis the elite are trapped in. Their growing irrelevance to India's needs is cultural. As said in previous columns, India's elite didn't evolve through a logical social process. It is thus vulnerable in decoding the social processes at work today. As products of privileges - the elite skipped India's cultural connections in the course of time. As legatees of abundance, it skipped situations of scarcity. This twin nuisance deprived it of opportunities to involve into a productive labour. Since it remained motionless in the march of history, it lost the capacity to understand things in motion. Since the elite didn't get any opportunity to move, it failed to relate to things in motion. The elite therefore, failed in mapping the speed of Mayawati's January 2003 birthday cake which was a spirited speedometer mirroring the new mood of society. Those who had failed in appreciating the import of this had every reason to fail in mapping the speed of the BSP win in the UP elections. The failure to decipher this implication was thus culture-predestined. The elite does not have experience of sharing anything with Dalits. Because of this, it remains unfamiliar with the languages Dalits speak. To the elite, Dalits were always social aliens. This massive cultural disconnect makes the elite intellectual vagabonds. Condemned to living in an absurd cultural environment, the elite sees Dalits through the prism of the past. The previous elite generations had seen Dalits from a distance where they were perceived to be subservient, disparaging pollutants and worthless. Unaccustomed with the life and aspirations of the newly emerging Dalit middle class due to the State's affirmative action, the present day elite continues to retain a stereotype impression of Dalits. In it imagery, a Dalit can't be a winner, independent, acceptable or an achiever. Sandwiched between the past and present where time moved while elite remained motionless, Mayawati's cake or her winning status during the Uttar Pradesh elections, thus, didn't quite fit into the elite's culture-regulated psyche. What was to be a mere cultural question, due to near total cultural-disconnects, the problem became acutely psychosomatic. It is hence not for nothing that a Dalit can become President of India, but not CEO of even a mediocre company. A Dalit can shine as a physician in Washington DC, but he may not be able to enter the news room in India as a journalist. A Dalit can become the employer of non-Dalits in the Silicon Valley, but may not become even an assistant cameraman in news channels back home. Since the elite is mesmerised by its sacred thread, antiquity remains segregated from a large Dalit world and the former becomes incapable in savouring the culture of Dalits. The elite's cultural segregation makes it needlessly fearful of Dalits. The perverse fear of Dalits makes it paranoid of everything Dalit. The hung house campaign of news channels ought to be seen in this context. Even if some of them knew that the BSP was going to win, they could not adjust to the exceptional situation in their mind as Dalits, they were convinced, ought to be losers or dependents at best. India's elite is, thus, a victim of a colossal cultural disconnect which makes it utterly incapable of adjusting with the emerging social realities. Uplifting the elite from its cultural segregation is one of the biggest challenges modern India faces.
