The Maanga

Badri Raina, in a beautiful piece that addresses one aspect of the past week writes,

And to South-Mumbai India we say, ask yourself what sort of unity you are looking for? Such as allows you peaceably and happily to continue to cream off India, or a just unity that, seeing with a “single eye” everywhere, gives in due measure?

There have been a couple of aspects about the events in Bombay and the ‘national mood’ afterward that have struck me as odd. Badri mentions one and the other I have rarely seen mentioned is the schizophrenia of  urban middle class. Amit Verma or Nitin Pai would have written a million times about how inept the government is — how it can’t make a telephone work, a light bulb glow or an airplane fly. Yet, their call at this time is for a SWAT team of the highest ability, a political leadership that’s non-partisan and a first response mechanism that is textbook perfect.

If their answer is, the government has monopoly over the use of of force, I am tempted to take to violence. Which I am not even very good at.

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