Deja Vu: "The Change We Need"

Last night, watching the US elections unfold, I was reminded inexorably of the very first South African elections on that country's long march to "liberation."

I lived in Johannesburg for the year preceding the historic 1994 elections that finally ended apartheid, signalled most importantly by universal franchise, and brought Mandela to office.

In the run-up to the election day, there was disbelief, suspicion, and fear. Amongst the Afrikaaners, there was complete conviction that the "blacks" would rise to loot and pillage once apartheid ended. My Afrikaaner boss explained in all seriousness that "it was a long African tradition that house servants would rise up across the land in a pre-planned attack to kill their white masters in their sleep."

On the other end of town, and that is where I spent an awful lot of my non-working hours, there were people hoping against hope that change would indeed come: Xulus, Xhosas, Bustars and so many others: a rainbow coalition of people hoping to finally be able to exercise their right to vote, to count as human beings. And they were afraid too, and with far greater reason. They had lived through the Soweto riots, the police beatings and secret killings, the "morality" laws and ridiculous race determined employment and education laws.

On election day, they told me again and again, they would go to the polling stations. But they were convinced that the SA army, police - at the time still overwhelmingly Afrikaaner - would be ready to gun them down at the poll booths. Yet there was a steely determination: that they would march to their deaths if it were needed in order to insist on their right to vote.

Newspapers were full of interminable copy about potential rioting and violence that would erupt on and after election day. And yet when election day came there was nothing more than an incredible stoicism as millions lined up to vote, most for the first time in their lives. And when the news finally broke of ANC victory, there was joy, tears, disbelief that change had indeed come to the land.

Last night, I felt a strange sense of deja vu: Yes there was more money on display at the elections and at the victory celebrations. People lining up to vote were far better dressed, far more affluent than the millions that I had observed years earlier. The fireworks, the lights, the clothes at the celebrations come at a price that I can not even begin to imagine.

But much was the same. First, the images of long lines along poll booths, reports of people waiting for hours to cast their ballot. The determination of voters who were going to make their voice heard over the din of history. And then that Obama victory speech. The myriad faces filled with joy, tears, disbelief.

Even some of the words in reports as disparate as Salon, Huffington Post and NYTimes are achingly similar. "Hope", "change", "never thought it would be in my lifetime," and of course, "an African-American in office."

It is indeed a momentous day for America, to have elected its first minority president. Let us not doubt that! Just as it was a historic day in South Africa when Nelson Mandela celebrated an ANC victory in the Joburg CBD.

But call me a cynic. Or may be I am just getting old (what a thought!). But I have clear memories of the shining moment of hope and how it was shattered in South Africa. How "change" was blocked and subverted by corporate interests - and yes, many of those are American corporate interests. How despite that historic vote and an African in office, nothing changed in the daily lives of the people who had participated in the electoral process with such optimism. How despite the best intentions, Mandela could do little to bring any real change to those men and women who had looked to him to lead them to a new reality.

And I look back to past Democratic administrations: under the Democrats, America still went to war to serve corporate interests regardless of morality and justice. And it was a Democrat Secretary of State that told the US Congress that "half a million dead children" was an "acceptable price" for serving US interests. Finally, it was a Democrat administration that put "extraordinary rendition" in place.

Yes, the 2008 US elections are historic. Yes, yesterday was a breathtaking demonstration of human will harnessed to political purpose.

But will it mean change? I sincerely hope so! Unfortunately the cynic insists on speaking its mind. And I am reminded of that 1994 day of hope, when millions had hoped for the "change we need" and have since been disappointed.

A Modest Proposal: With Apologies to Mr. Swift

I was back in Delhi just after the 2004 US elections. In the taxi from IGI into the city, I ended up with a rather voluble Sikh driver. After enquiring after my family, job, marital status, income (usual Indian-style small talk), he asked a question that stumped me. "Madam," he asked, and you know things are going to go bad when a sentence starts with that - "why can't the Americans get their voting machines to work? We had 100% electronic voting and if the machines can work here in India, then why can't the Americans make theirs work?"

I didn't have an answer for this half-literate yet world-savvy driver from Ludhiana back in 2004, and I have to confess, I still don't have a reasonable response. Even in a country of its size, India's 2003 general elections were a logistical exercise of mind-blowing proportions, involving a voter list nearly three times the size of the US one; elephants, trucks, trains and airplanes ferried voting machines and election officers to remote parts of the country to ensure that citizens could exercise their fundamental democratic right; and in a country of innumerable political parties and unacceptable levels of illiteracy, people turned up to use voting machines to cast their ballots. Forget computers, a nmber of these voters had never had seen anything powered by electricity. Yet they turned up in hundreds of millions to vote, and while there were anomalies, there wasn't an election blooper of the scale that America has indulged in over the past decade.

Another American election is now less than a week away, and I am still stumped: why is this so difficult in America? Already, even during early voting stages, voting machine goof-ups are being reported and discussed widely. A significant percentage of the citizenry and press are terrified that these elections shall be "stolen" regardless of how they vote - a state of affairs not to be seen even in the worst day's of Laloo's Bihar.

Here is one suggestion for the world's "most powerful democracy": Why not outsource the American elections to the people who know how to run them properly? Bring in India's Election Commission - hell, we can even give you a good price - to run US elections for the future. The EC will bring in machines that work, monitors who actually can spot and report voter fraud, and even ethical codes for campaigns including limitations on hate speech and incitement to violence.

Its a logical proposal: After all, the Americans trust Indians to design their military software and manage sensitive health records and financial data. So isn't it logical to rely on that same efficiency to manage their elections? God knows it would be better than relying on the idiots who ran 2000 and 2004 processes.

Of course there is a caveat: given the economic crisis, the Indian Election Commission just might to be too expensive for the Americans. In that case, perhaps, its time to ask an old and tested resource: Bring in the UN election observers. They may not manage the elections, but they will sure file a lot of reports on the violations. And no better time for it: there are a few hundred out-of-work election observers in Zimbabwe who are looking for a new assignment!

Hypocrisy or Just Plain Ol' Hubris, You Betcha!

For the past few weeks, western media has been running stories on how "Hindus are driving out Christians" in India.

New York Times (never the best of sources, but widely read in that country) ran a headline screaming "Hindus Threat to Christians - Convert of Flee." Lets not forget this is a country where the presidential candidate can malign the opposition with the mere suggestion of being Muslim. And when the fury whipped up by the suggestions gets overt, and some voter declares that the opposition candidate cannot be trusted because "he is an Arab," what does the good ole American war hero respond? Not with a lecture about secularism and democracy and human rights of Arabs. McCain came back with how Obama was a "decent family man." As if Arabs cannot be decent family men! And then the clincher - "he's not!" He's not Arab? He's not Muslim? Why does this matter?

Why am I bringing this up? Well, USA is also the same country that periodically issues reports on "secularism" in India! This is also a country that makes a great song and dance about not issuing a visa to Gujarat CM, Narendra Modi, ostensibly for his Hindu Nationalist stance.

Now I am not defending Modi but the hypocrisy generated by the US is quite breath-taking. Palin's speeches are not that different from Modi, and the responses from her Bible-bashin, good ol' American followers is one that you wouldn't find even in the most illiterate village in Gujarat: calls for "kill him", "traitor", "off with his head." And all this for the opposing candidate, not some vague, nebulous enemy within. Lets put this in perspective - how about Advani whipping up the same frenzy about Sonia, with calls for killing her emanating from BJP supporters? Or how about audience jeering "kill him" for Advani at Mayawati's rallies? I can just imagine the headlines that New York Times would publish then.

Meanwhile, on the other end of the pond, BBC et al have been running similar stories. But then thats Britain for you: empire chala gaya, attitude nahin gaya! And the worst drivel comes from the second/third generation "British-Asians." (Indian press take note as they race to adore any firangi-with-Indian-name/skin).

The Guardian's Randeep Ramesh came up with this week's particular gem, and he wasn't even talking of politics, simply films (but how can you be a self-respecting western journalist without throwing caste into any and all discussions about India! Ramesh - discussing the film Omkara - declares: "Whereas 17th-century audiences in England could make sense of the Moor's existential angst, 21st-century Indians could not countenance an "untouchable" leader – a true outsider in society – preferring instead to make sure he had Brahmin blood."

Umm Mr. Ramesh, ever heard of Mayawati? Or the DMK? Or much of the UP legislative assembly? Or much of the Indian parliament (compared with the Oxbridge crowd that runs the British one). The whole point of the "half-caste" in Omkara - set in rural UP - is that he cannot call on any particular "power" base, including that of Dalit politics. In modern Indian polity, he is the ultimate outsider.

So why do I bring this up? Well, when 70% of the Muslim children in a developed country with a welfare state live in povery (UK statistics), any lectures to India (or any other country) smack of imperialist idiocy. And when presidential campaigns in the "world's greatest country" recycle fears articulated by Hollywood's greatest racist creation ("freed" slaves stuffing ballot boxes in D.W.Griffith's Birth of a Nation/McCain and Palin's smearing of ACORN), and the local media gags itself, then all finger-pointing at India becomes not only hypocritical, but even the veneer of virtue slides right off. Frankly boys, clean up your own houses first!

Meanwhile, why is it that the Indian mainstream media isn't willing to talk about this and instead continues to run completely idiotic articles about how Indian democracy can learn from the Americans?