Chowkidars have proven the ‘intellectuals’ wrong

The biggest lesson of all from the Lok Sabha Elections of 2019 is to be learnt not by UPA, NDA, BJP, Congress, AAP or the communists but by the Media and all its celebrity journalists and ‘intellectuals’ or the so-called “Samajhdaars” of India.

The lesson is loud and clear that the common people (chowkidars) of India are more samjhdaar than all the Samajhdaars of India and the world (read TIME & ilk). The lesson is that the common man can see through the samajhdaar’s samajhdaari and the “news ke naam pe dukandaari” (business and propaganda in name of news & views).

The samajhdaars may continue to shout from the rooftops that “chowkidar chor hai” but the common man can see that the chowkidar may not be perfect at everything but surely that there is no fault in his “chowkidari.” The media may claim that they never themselves said “chowkidar chor hai” but the common man can see that the media was only too happy to echo this charge and play along with the Pradhaan ‘Samjhdaar’ who levelled these charges. The same holds good for that section of the samajhdaars that projects the chowkidar as some kind of an avatar who needs to be deified. The common man, I believe, sees through them as well.

The problem with most people living in this exalted La La Land of their own is that they think they know about everything just because they can write about everything. But the world today with internet and social media is a different beast and this beast has mauled the samajhdaars once too many.

The samajhdaars may try hard to create a perception of “minorities under attack” in India but the ordinary folks on the ground can see through this when they see the minorities and majority happily sipping chai and eating Haleem together at the nearest roadside joint without bothering about who is who / what.

The samajhdaars may think they know more about GST, without ever having filed a GST Return in their life but they would not be able to fool the ordinary trader actually benefitting from the ease of GST. I myself am one who has dealt with the archaic system of VAT, CST, C-Forms, Excise, Service Tax and all and can’t thank GST enough. Yes, the GST portal can be made more efficient but GST itself is a real blessing. But who is to explain this to the samajhdaars who are hell-bent on convincing beneficiaries like me that what we experience first-hand is not reality but what is projected to us, in form of a Gabbar Singh Tax, is!!

Who is to tell these samajhdaars that standing in the “queue” in demonetisation was the last of the worries for the common folks. The ordinary person is used to a queue everywhere. It is only the elite ones who are not and their cribbing about standing in queue only betrayed their sense of elitism and disconnect with the ordinary folks. The pleasure of seeing the elite join them in the queues, I am told by many among the chowkidars, chaiwallahs and pakodawaallahs, has been one of the greatest pleasures that the Chowkidar has given the ordinary folks in the tenure of this government.

The samajhdaars can continue to cry hoarse about rural and agrarian distress but the fact is that the rural folks are better off today than they were earlier. This is not to say that all ills are cured and that the villages have become a utopia but to state the simple fact the rural folks are definitely not worse off today, as the samajhdaars would like them and us to believe. One can understand the truth of rural distress from the simple metric of availability of migrant labor from states like UP, Bihar and Orissa etc. I have a manufacturing unit of my own which, like most other units across India, survives on the strength of migrant labor. In the last two years, there has been a great shortage of migrant labour which also resulted in significant increase in the daily wages. Many folks could not get labour in the harvest and festival seasons in spite of willing to pay nearly 20% to 30% extra! This is something that I had never seen before. You may answer for yourselves – if the labourers were truly in distress –  “would they leave the job and go back to the village?” And even if they went back due to some unavoidable reason, “Would they not come back in spite of being offered 20% – 30% hike in pay?”

Mind you, the above is not just my experience but that of folks across Industries and across states of India. On reading articles and stories about Agrarian distress, I made calls to several large-scale employers and labour contractors across India and each one of them was grappling with similar problems of labour shortage and increased wages. (Sample this conversation that I had with one of my friends in Chattisgarh).

Thus, it all boils down to what we ordinary folks give primacy to – to our own experience or to some bunkum that some condescending Samajhdaar pontificates to us from his own distant La La Land!

By giving the verdict resoundingly in favor of the Chowkidar, who has been hounded and castigated all through his tenure by all the Samajhdaars, the ordinary folks have firmly and clearly answered what they give primacy to. It’s now up to the Samajhdaars of India if they want to wake up to this ground reality or continue to live in their state of blissful ignorance.