The country may become militarily impressive, pile on GDP and the durbar of the ruling party may fill with the wealthy indebted to the rulers for their riches.
But the spontaneous camaraderie of a free people will diminish and with it, our shared ownership of the country, warns Shyam G Menon.
The Program
In 2018-2019, two accidents triggered a worldwide suspension of flights by the aircraft type involved till the exact reason for mishap was ascertained and rectified.
At its heart lay a flight stabilising program. Its role was to sense and correct the tendency of the aircraft (its engines were bigger than those used before in that aircraft series) to push its nose up during certain maneuvers.
By installing the program borrowed from another aircraft type, the manufacturer hoped to keep the new aircraft within an existing family of planes that pilots were already familiar with and thus reduce pilot training cost at the users' end.
The two accidents put a question mark on the approach.
Imagine, but recognise limits
In India's flight with a BJP-crew in the cockpit, Hindutva has had the same effect as the controversial flight stabilising program.
By mixing ancient religion with the politics of a modern nation, you extend the benefit of continuity and familiarity.
Telling a religion that it is in danger regiments its followers at no extra cost.
Every time a different trend threatens to take charge -- the run up to the state elections of early 2022 being an example -- the old returns to stifle it, much like the controversial program did for the two flights beset by mishap.
Post-election, what you got was a bewildered citizenry; particularly those who assumed lessons had been learnt -- you had their stunned silence as equivalent of a crash site.
A favourite with India Inc, the BJP is the wealthiest party around.
If it was market competition and loss of erstwhile market leadership that allegedly forced the aircraft manufacturer to install the controversial program as a short cut to success, Hindutva's latest dose has both served state elections well and tracked the continued demand for a convergent political, social and economic discourse that delivers the GDP, India and its companies crave.
The BJP, like every aircraft manufacturer diligently studying the aviation business to grow market share, has mastered our politics from aircraft type to overall market and customer needs.
We have ended up with a politics that has been reduced to a marketing strategy; one in which the nature of life sought by the people in all their diversity, counts for little.
Only seats do and what political parties do to get those seats.
If reviving the bogey of Hindutva serves the purpose, then Hindutva it is.
The above is a simplistic way of seeing things.
If one revisits the aircraft example, then what caused the program to cut in and usurp control from the pilots was a sensor deciding that certain maneuvers were dangerous.
That too, a single sensor lacking the benefit of double-checking, which safety systems typically feature.
Months later, independent investigators would conclude that the plane may actually have been better off without the program the sensor triggered.
That was afterwards; the classic 'in retrospect.'
At the time of accident, there was only the sensor concluding a maneuver as potentially hazardous and onboard systems directing the program to take over.
After repeated BJP victories, the question to ask is -- why is India's sensor perennially erring on the side of Hindutva?
Why are potential departures from it arrested and returned to status quo? The answer probably lay in structural shifts that favour politics of the BJP-RSS sort.
The new management tool-- insecurity
First, the level of population and rat race we have as idiom of daily Indian life prompts a minefield of insecurities; one in which blame games thrive and a degree of authority to discipline the chaotic whole is condoned.
Hindutva hosts a generous dose of blame games. It is comfortable with authority too.
Second, as a people we do nothing to reduce the insecurity within our giant population.
Marriage, raising family, acquiring property, amassing possessions -- this continues to be the gold standard of existence.
That is fine, except, it is an invitation to fight for more money and generally install money as life's guiding force.
The greater the centrality of money, the greater the prospects of the political Right because their convergent discourse and regimentation is valuable to India Inc as a delivery mechanism for economic policy and growth.
Third, we have an Opposition that is yet to decide what the priority should be -- mounting a challenge to Right-Wing politics or protecting private turf and dynastic control?
Those arguing that the BJP wins partly because of an incompetent opposition are correct.
Our Opposition is yet to grasp the full scale of what they are up against, most notable of which are the committed, hydra-headed cadre that does the groundwork for the BJP and the relentless wave Right Wing propaganda has been. The two, exhaust competition.
Fourth, industry loves a population that is insecure and desperate for money.
Herein fits the drift some commentators have correctly highlighted -- the Indian State's silent transformation from a welfare State to a charitable one.
To be cared for -- even, to belong -- no longer feels like a birthright.
It is something to be sustained with effort. Simply put - to continue existing, one must work.
Insecurity drives people to work. And what they produce must be sold and bought; voila -- a market.
Further, it would seem that recruiters love people wedded to the settled life as opposed to the freewheeling type because the former promises a compliant worker.
If the ruling political dispensation is of the genre that loves to keep people insecure and seeking salvation by money, that is a bonus for industry.
Some of us would have sensed insecurity's use as a political tool to make people fall in line, when we stood confused and scared in the queues of demonetisation. It is an old technique.
We are yet to acknowledge the real value of an adjunct to that insecurity -- digitisation.
Digitisation made monetisation more widespread than before. It enabled deeper revenue-capture by businesses and those owning the digital pathways.
We are now officially humans pickled in money. Surviving outside this regimented edifice has become difficult and for those who dare, it is a lonely journey. Who wants to be alone?
Hindutva without the above-mentioned architecture welding regimentation to a claimed national purpose and a loyalty program delivering rewards, seems unlikely.
Viewed clinically, it is a modern-day gilded trap exploiting the insecurities of India's huge population for political and economic gain.
Like most evangelical spins on religion, it sees itself as flawless, celebrates marriage and family (thus getting people on its side) and deifies the centrality of money (doesn't the ruling dispensation love making poster boys of our billionaires?).
Any surprise then, why Indian industry adores the BJP-RSS combine? Once you have an ideal like this, it is easy for sensors/censors to go to work.
Our sensors will keep beeping for the 'stabilizing' program to intervene at the slightest suspicion of course altered.
Only a minority among us will notice the long-term effect this has on our sense of freedom and appreciation for it.
The rest will be happy to find self-expression in money even as life slips into a more directive, authoritarian set-up.
More country for some
In politics, things don't go down like an airplane.
How the Congress is accused of slowly destroying itself through life in a self-endorsing, uncritical cocoon; that is what awaits India if the dominant BJP continues without a democratic check.
The country may become militarily impressive, pile on GDP and the durbar of the ruling party may fill with the wealthy indebted to the rulers for their riches.
But the spontaneous camaraderie of a free people will diminish and with it, our shared ownership of the country.
Already, some sections have withdrawn for their own mental peace.
We will become a country that means more to some and less to others.
As the BJP basks in the glory of its triumph in Uttar Pradesh, it is important to remember that what UP wants is not necessarily what the rest of India seeks.
There are states that imagine differently.
However, what UP wants is what the rest of India may (eventually) get -- that is the blunt end of India's electoral reality, influenced as it is by the size of every state's population which in turn determines seats and political clout.
It's what happened to the pilots of those two aircraft. They wanted control of their planes to keep them on the course they wished to. The sensor and program decided otherwise. Ironically, in the name of safety.
Shyam G Menon is a Mumbai-based columnist.
Feature Presentation: Aslam Hunani/Rediff.com
