As I walk down almost any road, street or avenue in India, I see them all around. People without faces, people condemned to share the dust bin of history and a life of no consequence or of any meaning on any grand scale. Condemned to oblivion, these masses exist as insentient blobs with no capacity or right to contribute to society in any meaningful way. That place is reserved for the few who live in paradise and like Gods from Mount Olympus they descend only to pontificate about how one should live; what is right and what is wrong, even though they themselves are not to be judged or scrutinized if they don’t follow what they preach. They are the sultans of public discourse; their birthright is based on their elevated hierarchical position. Most of them can act outrageously and they will be immune to any personal harm. Some of them might even howl loudly on the side of the disenfranchised and about how the system is skewed in favor of the ‘haves’ while all along secretly enjoying the fruits of the system they criticize.
As for the poverty stricken and lowly riff raff, their count grows as the insensitive juggernaut of the cult of worship of mammon thrives and where the few and powerful free wheel through life with a narcissistic sense of the ‘selfie syndrome’. The fantasy of their existence is forced down the throats of the masses for vicarious consumption by the media pandering to the powerful and the privileged. Sure, the hoi polloi are permitted to dream about impossible dreams that will never ever come to pass and like an addicted gambler they are losers, always hoping someday they will win. Luck, they think will drench them sometime but that never ever happens. However, they are allowed to participate as active attendants to those ordained to rule the minds and pulse of the nation.
The disenfranchised is the mob whose social condition ensures their further deterioration both in body and mind and ensures a departure from any richness of culture, art, and above all human dignity. They are condemned to live in a world of perpetual hope of elevating themselves to the level of those who have been bestowed with wealth and success. They are seen but never heard as there language has no serious tool of communication. They take more animalistic forms courtesy the carefully crafted discourse of the spokesmen of the privileged, served by a sycophant following of the media which at best takes a few jabs at their masters to appear as undaunted and free.
Out of these slum dogs only a minuscule and almost negligible number would ever achieve real upward mobility and success and riches. Very few indeed, almost as few as the ones who are expected to win a big prize in a lottery. These will be the ones who will inevitably brag about the hardships they endured to reach where they did. That they have ‘arrived” they would make sure to convey and attribute it to some great quality of their personality and a superhuman effort on their part which was so heroic. They, in their minds, are the proverbial cream that is bound to come to the top no matter what; they will make sure to remind everyone where they were before and emphasize” and look at me now!”