Thursday, October 17, 2024

Big Brother is watching you

In the year 2024, it’s indeed a surprise to describe the relevance of George Orwell as an author and as a cultural product. Orwell’s endearing fame as a writer and a thinker, and his critique of authoritarianism with the emphasis on disinformation, manifests itself in Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four, two of his dystopian novels translated into an excess of 65 languages. Both books are on best-selling lists even now. Published within a gap of four years in 1945 and 1949, the language of both the novels continues to echo across politics and culture. The world that Orwell prophesied hasn’t come to pass, on the contrary, his words offer sharp lessons for the contemporary world, says Laura Beers in her new book, Orwell’s Ghosts (2024). In her Introduction, the British historian who teaches at American University writes that invocations of Orwell’s words have reached new heights, with both the right and the left appropriating them to suit their ends.

After the January 6, 2021 “insurrection” at Capitol Hill in Washington D.C., Republican senator Josh Hawley compared the cancellation of his book contract to life in Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty Four, notes Beers. The left too, she writes, has embraced the rhetoric of Orwellianism to depict either Donald Trump or Boris Johnson. The term, Orwellian, has been used to depict Vladimir Putin’s “attempts to manage information on the Ukraine war.”

She quotes the literary scholar John Rodden who in a study made a distinction between Orwell the man and “Orwell”, the cultural product, which offers a valuable lens for considering how both Orwell and his books have been repeatedly reappropriated for various political ends.

‘Big Brother’ is still a synonym for a totalitarian surveillance state, which has recently been co-opted as the title of a popular reality show. Orwell questioned the presence of the ‘big brother’ and the surveillance state, contending that both reflect the emergence of a fascist state. The Spanish Civil War was a crucial turning point in Orwell’s life; both the novels came after the civil war, and a newfound commitment to socialism. Had Spain not awakened Orwell to write these iconic books, he would not have championed individual liberty as a cause. Beers says Orwell was a “broad and deep thinker who opposed inequality as fervently as he opposed censorship and tyranny.”

“The real frightening thing about totalitarianism,” said Orwell, “is not that it commits ‘atrocities’ but that it attacks the concept of objective truth; it claims to control the past as well as the future.” The attack on truth and language makes atrocities possible. The atrocities are easy to commit, if truth has been silenced as the first victim. Once people are terrorized into silence, obedience, and lies, it becomes easier for an authoritarian administration to take the next steps. Beers shows why the present generation must value Orwell’s politics and what must be learnt from his thoughts. Although he died in 1950, when he was only 47, his life was full of eventful and interesting episodes. Orwell’s childhood seems to have been divided between the freedom and the pleasure of life outdoors, and the regimentation and misery of the schools he lived at from age eight to eighteen.

Beers says the question that bedeviled Orwell for the final dozen years of his life was whether and how a socialist society could be achieved that offered its citizens economic security and social equality without devolving into authoritarianism. She warns against replacing the complexity of his political thought with a two-dimensional caricature of Orwell as an anti-totalitarian prophet. In considering his writing, Beers draws attention to at least “one blind spot”, his inability to appreciate the negative impact of patriarchal structures on interwar women. “Orwell was a socialist, but decidedly not a feminist,” she notes.

Though he wasn’t exemplary, argues Rebecca Solnit, he was nevertheless courageous and committed. Orwell managed to love both Englishmen and loathe the British Empire, to be an advocate for underdogs and outsiders. “He was a rebel against his own biological condition, and he was a rebel against social conditions; the two were very closely linked together.” Solnit’s Orwell’s Roses challenges the conventional image of Orwell as a gloomy figure always fighting for a cause. The commitment to the things of this world could also be the focus of a spiritual discipline, a warmth he saw Gandhi was lacking. Our job is to make life worth living on this earth, Gandhi had said, because this is the only earth we have.

Orwell’s Ghosts and Orwell’s Roses are two contrasting studies. While the first explores his commitment to political liberty and economic justice, the second examines his aesthetics and ethics. If one were to count Orwell’s single achievement, it would be the fact that he named and described, as no one else had, the way that totalitarianism was a threat not just to liberty and human rights, but to language and consciousness as well. His essays laid the ground for his diverse political thoughts. Without doubt, Orwell is the perfect guide to our own age of upheaval.

Orwell’s sense of social justice was his most outstanding characteristic, his friends attest. In the nearly seventy-five years since his death, the emphasis of his political thought is well established. While we must stand up against oppressive regimes abroad, we must also take ownership of how and why similar populist and anti-democratic tendencies are corrupting our domestic political system. Orwell took a dim view of the role of religion in society; he believed it principally divided society. Revisiting Orwell is like visiting our recent pasts and our current upheaval. The work he did is everyone’s job now.


Orwell’s Roses

by Rebecca Solnit

Granta, London

Extent:308, Price: UK 9.99.


Orwell’s Ghosts

by Laura Beers

Hurst, London

Extent: 222, Price: Rs. 399.

First published at The Hindu, dated Oct 17, 2024.

Wednesday, October 9, 2024

Eat what is not (un)popular

Our choice of food is driven by our cultural standing and the social structure we belong to. What we eat must determine our social status, and it does so by telling us about our identity in the society. The dominant food is what is essentially elitist in its creation. The elitist menu is what each geographical region has on its range, guided primarily by what is hugely popular amongst the elite. What is palatable to the mainstream gets popular coverage and becomes the identity of the region itself. An individual’s eating practices play a vital role in determining social status, which is closely aligned with class divisions.

What the poor (or the Dalits) eat every day? The social walls of caste and class are so strong that the upper castes never get to know about the food culture of the lower castes. In other words, the food culture of the upper caste/class has been considered the food culture of the entire society. Come to think of it, the food culture of most marginalized social groups continues to get ignored. Written as a memoir with recipes, Shahu Patole's Dalit Kitchens of Marathwada explores the politics of food culture and how it reinforces social divisions. However, food also holds the transformative power to connect communities and preserve cultural identity.

Like the food culture of Punjab is narrowed down to makke-ki-roti and sarson-ka-saag, and the Konkan region gets distinction as a land for fish, curry, and crab, the Maharashtra as a whole is summed up into puran poli, aloo bonda, and kande poha. The identity of regions is equated to particular dishes, all belonging to the upper-class. In the process, a vast local biodiversity gets missed out. Many traditions and practices are equally lost, and so are essential components of the recipe. These recipes can’t be recreated as these are based on the local products, local practices, and local wisdom.

Dalit kitchens offer an exquisite culinary landscape. The wide variants of bhakri are in vogue but only the generic is commonly consumed - pithala bhakri (gram-flour and sorghum roti), khandeshi bhakri (mashed eggplant curry), varhadi bhakri (coarsely ground chillies and garlic) and many others are often ignored.

Food chronicler Shahu Patole has drawn the rich repository of dalit culinary traditions. Cooking is a time-consuming process, women being at the centre of what finally gets cooked. That is not all, cooking entails a great deal of attention to detail, and warmth and affection. Far from being documented, the cooking practice is only sustained through inter-generational transfer of recipe. What is ignored gets lost forever! Patole has made a pioneering effort to document dalit food culture and history, through the culinary practices of two communities – Mahar and Mang.

Why should the dalit kitchens get such a significance? Should the culinary skills of the poor be counted? What is its use in the social structure? They are probably so far in the social and cultural façade to deserve any attention. Yet, they deserve attention. For instance, many beans are best suited under dry situations and may have multiple usage under varying climatic conditions. As dalits use less oil for cooking, the recipe could be healthy. There could be numerous uses the dalit recipe can be put to, provided it gets systematically studied.

Dalit Kitchens of Marathwada is a book of culture and customs. It shows many culinary traditions as special dishes. There is something novel about their novel food culture. However, there is little doubt that dalit food culture was often ignored. Many dalits don’t acknowledge what their forefathers ate, the deep-rooted shame and guilt continue to disturb them. The process of erasing social history has already begun. It would be rather naïve to assume that the woke writers and bloggers are oblivious to this development.

Dalit Kitchens of Marathwada
by Shahu Patole
HarperCollins, New Delhi
Extent: 356, Price: Rs. 599.

Commissioned by the Hindustan Times, Printed on www.raagdelhi.com on Oct 8, 2024. 

Monday, October 7, 2024

Transition to a renewable economy

The good news is that many businesses have started seeing growth opportunities in the green economy, and the bad news is that the urgency of transiting to a renewable resource-based economy is still at a distance from making a credible impact. Given the current pace of transition to renewable economy, it may seem a matter of two steps forward and one step back.  But Steven Cohen remains optimistic about the glass getting full as the transition passes the tipping point of popular acceptance. Such is the urgency that politically polarized countries may have little reason to avoid a unified response. 

Environmentally Sustainable Growth focuses on how the maintenance of material wealth without jeopardizing natural ecosystems in the United States has run apace, as a model in ecological leadership for the developing countries. Quoting the environmental sustainability initiatives by over a hundred leading private companies, Cohen makes it clear that government’s proactive role is critical for on-the-ground action by the private sector. Can use of smartphone technologies to invent products that consume fewer resources than traditional business models be reason enough to be valued in this transition? Often discounted, wealth accumulation by the tech-giants rarely generates enough income opportunities for the society to actively contribute to the transition. This is likely to be a stumbling block in the proposed transition to the renewable economy.    

New technologies, new services, new knowledge and new jobs are emerging, but there remain plenty of unsustainable business practices in the world. And the people who benefit from those businesses do not shy about defending it. No wonder, therefore, that those whose jobs are under threat offer resistance to sustainability everywhere. Given the fact that the transition to renewable economy will mainly take place in the private sector, developing robust and non-partisan regulatory mechanism by the government is critical to ensure that the benefits get equitable shared across the society. Cohen describes a range of public policy and infrastructure initiatives that can encourage cleaner production but doesn’t emphasize its impact on socio-economic realities of the participating societies.

The director of the Earth Institute’s Research Program on Sustainability Policy and Management at the Columbia University, Steven Cohen offers a pragmatic approach on how societies can transform themselves to become more sustainable. Written with rigor and concern, Cohen proposes a set of inter-related pragmatic responses to environmental challenges but cautions that the transition to environmental sustainability will only take place in stages. Optimistic expectations are that the transition in the United States will be well underway by 2030, and largely completed by mid-century. The book depicts an appealing and equitable future that assures quality of life while protecting the planet.

Environmentally Sustainable Growth is an ambitious and optimistic undertaking to trigger credible response from governments, institutions and the society to survive and thrive. Counting inherent goodness in people, Cohen lays stress on breaking through ignorance, blind ideology and misplaced priorities to make the planet a valuable habitat for all living creatures, now and in future. It is a multidisciplinary book that will be informative for students, practitioners, analysts, and academics whose work focuses on environmental sustainability.

Cohen counts environmental crises as an opportunity to forge our collective wisdom to transit into another way of living possibility.  

Environmentally Sustainable Growth 
by Steven Cohen
Columbia University Press, New York
Extent: 216 pages, Price: US$ 30 

First published in the Hindustan Times (Premium), Oct 8, 2024.