Every time there is violence in the city, there are phone calls and utter disbelief in the voices of friends and relatives. Are you still living in the same Bengaluru, peaceful, quiet, full of men and women of civility and poise, they ask. Or, if it is the cricketer Bishan Bedi, he begins with “How could the city of Chandra and Vishy and Rahul and Anil become so violent?”
The conversion from pensioners’ paradise to garden city to garbage city to hotbed of violence is complete.
How did we get this way? Was the Cauvery violence a testimony to the government’s incompetence or its complicity? However genuine the cause, how can we condone the effect? The loss following Black Monday’s carnage was put at 25,000 crores. How many cusecs of water were needed to douse the fires was never calculated.
Either the whole reaction was planned and made to look “spontaneous” or there is a combination of dissatisfaction, unhappiness and frustration that simmers beneath the skin of Bengaluru and breaks through easily. It was not the poor or deprived who were seen “protesting” on television screens, but youths of some education, even means, determined to make a point.
But it was not always clear what that point was. The message was lost because of the medium. It was, as many realized, an opportunity to settle old scores and lay the basis for future enmity. The cause was quickly rendered irrelevant. It was not unusual to see a passer-by occasionally throw a stone or help overturn a car preparatory to setting it on fire.
If Bengaluru were a patient on a psychiatrist’s couch, how would the conversation go? Would the city explain its irrationality as stemming from a perceived insult? Or, would it talk about the compromises forced upon its citizens on a daily basis by an indifferent government?
In any case, when did bus-burning become an avenue for self-expression? I once suggested that Bengaluru should build a shelter for condemned buses where those looking to vent their anger may be allowed to set vehicles on fire. Perhaps, now is the time.
The elements that attract protestors’ ire are the police (representing authority), glass buildings (money), public vehicles (the government), private vehicles (otherness). You can join the dots here, but the picture remains unclear.
Theories abound. The disenfranchised, the excluded, those out to impress their future constituencies with their manliness and readiness to do anything for any cause shape the violence. Perhaps, this is what comes of excluding a large portion of the population from the benefits that a small percentage enjoys.
Daily wage earners suffer, small shops lose business, and the very people for whom the protestors are ostensibly protesting feel the pain the most.
The Cauvery issue is genuine. But solutions suggested by experts often come up against the sluice gates of political thinking which open only to allow politically convenient ideas to flow through.
Can we afford to have the burning bus as the symbol of modern Bengaluru?
Suresh Menon is Contributing Editor, The Hindu
