Molestation and mass attack on ‘youth of higher
socio-economic class’ is becoming a prevalent trend in Indian urban cities
which is unsially coined as ‘social stigma’. Though the blame is on ‘social perverts and mob behavior’
but the real cause remains somewhere else.
The varied economic and socio-psychological
difference between the “have” and “have not” in India are widening faster with
the rapid wealth accumulation among the ‘creamy layers’. As per an article
published in India Today (dated. Oct. 23rd, 2011) “India is shining for only a
select few. The impressive economic growth of our country has brought smiles on
the faces of the rich and the powerful even as the rest suffer in distress and
drudgery. This was revealed by the human development report (HDR) released by
Planning Commission deputy chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia”. The report also
stated “In India, the distribution of assets is extremely unequal, with the top
5 per cent of the households possessing 38 per cent of the total assets and the
bottom 60 per cent of households owning a mere 13 per cent. The disparity is
more glaring in the urban areas where 60 per cent of the households at the
bottom own just 10 per cent of the assets. It is not just the gaping income
inequality that is alarming. The difference in the consumption expenditure
between the rich and poor households has also increased both in rural and urban
areas between 1993-94 and 2004-05. The report paints a grim picture on the
poverty front. It clearly states that despite the economy growing at 6 per cent
this is not enough to reduce poverty in the country. In fact, the rate of
decline in poverty in India is not in sync with the high rate of economic
growth, which is evident from the fact that the number of poor people in the
country has barely fallen over a 30-year period. In 1973-74, the number of poor
in India stood at 332 million. The figure remained the same in the next decade,
registering a marginal decline in 1993- 94 (320 million) and witnessing a
stagnancy in again 2004-05, the report states.”
80% of your likely income is determined at birth
by your citizenship and the income class of your parents, says Milanovic, an
economist at the World Bank’s Development Research Group. With intelligence,
hard work and luck, you can move up in your country’s income distribution, but
it may do little to improve your ranking among the almost 7 billion people in
the world unless your country, too, forges ahead. Sometimes, if constrained by
access to education and income mobility, you can’t even pull ahead in your own
country. That, in a nutshell, is the story behind global inequality. And, at a
time when the incomes of the world’s top 1.75% earners exceed those of the
bottom 77%, it raises all sorts of questions, such as the role of development,
international migration and the global equality of opportunity, says Milanovic,
one of the world’s leading experts on inequality.
The Right to Education Act in India, passed in
2009, mandates that private schools set aside 25% of admissions for low-income,
underprivileged and disabled students. This act, though ensures that the
children of varied class / socio-economic status study together but it doesn’t
ensure that there will not be any ‘frustration’ among those kids from
low-income group seating in the same class with higher income group and
understanding that their parents are actually ‘poor’! The article published at The Wall Street
Journal presents the case of Sri Ram
school in Delhi. “Yet the most notable results so far are frustration and
disappointment as the separations that define Indian society—between rich and
poor, employer and servant, English-speaker and Hindi-speaker—are upended. This
has led even some supporters of the experiment to conclude that the chasm
between the top and bottom of Indian society is too great to overcome…Shri Ram
itself is challenging the law in the Supreme Court, arguing in part that the
government exceeded its authority in imposing the quotas. "We have a
social obligation to bridge the gap between rich and poor," says Manju
Bharat Ram, Shri Ram's founder. "But sometimes the gap is just too
wide."… Some parents, having encouraged their household staff to enroll
their children, are also grappling with a profound change in the nature of
their relationship with their servants. The article quoted Ms. Sharma, the
51-year-old principal, who felt this jolt herself two years ago when Chan
Kumari, a floor-mopper in her home, enrolled her son, Vipin, at Shri Ram.
That's when the school first adopted a similar quota for underprivileged kids
under a local Delhi law, increasing it to 25% this year, when the federal Right
to Education Act took effect. "I was horrified. A parent in my school,
mopping my floors—I just couldn't handle it," says Ms. Sharma. "I
can't sit across the table from someone who sweeps my floors."
The ‘dikhawa’ of wealth as a growing need of
exhibitionism of one’s belonging is rapid among the younger population of
‘creamy layers’. Saldanha (2002) articulated well in his article “MUSIC, SPACE,
IDENTITY:GEOGRAPHIES OF YOUTH CULTURE IN BANGALORE” : “By driving away from
parents and school, the car provides the possibility of creating own space and
time. The car is fetishized, specially by boys, who integrate the technics and
aesthetics of the thing into their sexual culturesince the car stereo has been
widely available, driving around became driving on a soundtrack. In the car,
you play music for friends. It can be played louder than at home, and loud
music urges the driver to speed up, and speeding up makes the outside seem even
more hectic. In the car, you can smoke and drink and make out. For the wealthy
youth of Bangalore, driving around is a very urban, very modern, very
non-Indian matter.. In Indian cities, motor vehicles symbolize strong
classiŽcations of social
groups. Rich youth have enough time and money to enjoy driving around –
petrol is relatively costly. Rich youth can afford a bribe when any problems
should arise with the cops. Rich youth give a cultural (as opposed to
functional) meaning to these rides through what they do inside the car: playing
Western pop, gossiping, flirting, preparing themselves for the evening out.
They don’t just go somewhere… Driving around in a cooled ivory tower. A
solipsistic inside that coheres when you
know that because you’re there, you’re eluding something. Often, young Bangaloreans
skip school, homework, tuition or family get-togethers to go for a ride. And
thus, at least phenomenologically, the conspicuous consumption of the car
creates a break-away from everything that the old India stands for: poverty,
chaos, ignorance, useless education, duty, fanaticism, collectivism, sexual
segregation, sluggishness and the absence of style… The pleasure
of being looked at interacted with the pleasure of dancing. Sexy clothes
are pretty pointless if you don’t let yourself be admired from all sides while
dancing. Hence the comparison was made quite quickly, both by myself and by the
participants, between the Whitefield pool party and the MTV programme The
Grind. The Grindis basically a collection of good-looking youths in swimwear,
dancing suggestively in a summer setting, all trying their
best to attract the camera lens.
Only, in Whitefield there wasn’t any camera. There were peepers, though. Over the surrounding walls, poor
workers from neighbouring farms
were watching the
party bustle. An interesting, perverse form of
exhibitionism/voyeurism came into being.
The global youth knew very well
that they were
being watched, that these
local others had probably never heard such loud pop music,
never seen so much liquor and tight tops
together before. They knew
that every three
free-of-charge vodkas they drank added up to the weekly salary of
the peeping Toms behind the wall. But they feigned an indifference for the
fascination they produced amongst the lower classes, just as they do when they
drive around. They feigned, because they were thoroughly aware of the
visibility of their Western fashion, music, behaviour and wealth. To a
certain extent this visibility
is inevitable in a modern
space like Bangalore. And provoking
culture shock can be fun
for both sides. Yet, the workings of power in this
situation are undeniable. There was, in Whitefield, an ambiguous balance
between exhibitionism and voyeurism, a delicate consensus on the rationality of
power; the poor devils could also have been rudely chased away…”
Incidentally, till date most of the ‘mass
molestation’ cases in India took place outside the bars / pubs or in some
places that can be noted as ‘places of socio-economic discrimination’ (ie. rave
party houses, resorts, gardens, malls etc.)! In one of the recent incidents
that occurred at Guahat a 17-year-old girl, who is pursuing studies in fashion
designing in the national capital, was attacked when she was returning home
after celebrating the birthday of her friend, a teenaged girl, at a bar. The
girl was subjected to assault and molestation for nearly half an hour before
being rescued by some passers-by. The similar incidents occur every year in the
capital during the “new year bash” (mostly outside, after the party gets over
and drunk girls wait for the drive home).
In one such incident at Gurgaon a young girl was allegedly molested by a
group of New Year revellers. The police had to resort to lathicharge to prevent
the group of 25-30 people from harassing the girl outside a pub, media reports
said. While the ‘creamy layers’ were
celebrating inside the clubs, at M.G. Road, in public space the ‘mass’ started
celebrating “new year”. Windscreens of more than two dozen cars were smashed,
hooligans danced atop cars and traffic was held up, before some policemen
baton-charged the crowd. The victim stated “I was horrified to see boys
touching me and passing derogatory comments. They were many of them and they
lifted me up. They were taking me away but the police saved me that night or I
would not have been alive today,” she said. An eyewitness, Rajesh Kumar, said,
“They were touching her initially and ended up tearing her clothes. They were
passing lewd remarks in the middle of the road. I was shocked to see what could
happen on Gurgaon roads.”
The anguish is majorly among the fastest growing
middle class and lower middle class. Them, who is in the duality of lifestyle
due to the rapid economic growth,.
The so called ‘extremist’ religious-political
groups such as “Ram Sene’ are also attacking the places of socio-economic
discrimination in the name of ‘purification’ of the society as ‘moral policing’. These political parties understood that the
fastest way to gain popularity among the ‘have not’ in India is the social bashing
against ‘have’ in the name of moral policing.
The mass molestation and planned moral policing in
India are varied ways to take ‘revenge’ and express anguish against the ‘other’
socio-economic class.
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