Speaker 1: Also media.
Speaker 2: Welcome to ACODAP and here a podcast where sometimes the
Speaker 2: here is the world's largest democracy, and that I think
Speaker 2: I'm actually not sure how many Americans are aware of it.
Speaker 2: This is, in fact India a very basic factor of
Speaker 2: democracies around the world.
Speaker 3: If you're colling either the US or India the world's
Speaker 3: largest democracy, you got to put an asterisk.
Speaker 4: We'll get to that land of asterisks, Age of asterisks.
Speaker 2: Yeah, with you to talk about the age of asterisks
Speaker 2: and maybe how to get out of it is Robert Evans.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, asterisking on that too. Why not?
Speaker 2: Oh boy, And I'm me a long. I guess asterisk
Speaker 2: there too. Sure, I don't know.
Speaker 4: I got nothing, I got nothing. Well, what are we
Speaker 4: talking about today, Maya.
Speaker 2: We are talking about the fact that a couple of
Speaker 2: weeks ago in India, protesters managed to accomplish something that
Speaker 2: is unprecedented in the twelve year reign of Indian Prime
Speaker 2: Minister and enemy of the show, the butcher Gujarad himself
Speaker 2: one Prime Minister.
Speaker 4: Modi Narindra Modi, thank you very much. Yep, hate him,
Speaker 4: Jesus Christ. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: The entire time he has been in power, no one
Speaker 2: has successfully been able to manage to force him to
Speaker 2: make a countet member resign. No, and protesters just did this.
Speaker 4: Yeah, this is the first.
Speaker 3: It's not the first because there was the most recent
Speaker 3: set of elections didn't go great for him. But this
Speaker 3: is like the biggest break in his armor we've seen
Speaker 3: since the Modi regime kind of clanked into place.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and to understand sort of what that means, we
Speaker 2: need to talk a bit about why Robert was like, yeah,
Speaker 2: asteriskth that's a democracy.
Speaker 4: On both this in the US. Yeah, which is that?
Speaker 2: So Mody's ruling party is the BJP, and I would
Speaker 2: classify the BJP as the world's largest fascist party. It
Speaker 2: has a horrifying one hundred and forty million members Jesus
Speaker 2: Age Christ.
Speaker 4: Yeah, not good, very bad. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's also like not the only ultra right
Speaker 2: wing Hindi nationalist party in India, there are also others.
Speaker 2: So yeah, great, great things happening here.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this is why you've had ethnic cleansings against Muslims
Speaker 3: and other non Hindu groups and chunks of India over
Speaker 3: the mooty years.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So they've been in power like effectively uncontested. I mean
Speaker 2: they didn't do great in last lessons, but they held
Speaker 2: on to power and they've been in power for twelve
Speaker 2: years now, during which they have both transformed Indian politics
Speaker 2: and also just continued to get more and more right wing. Yep,
Speaker 2: there's something I think is worth mentioning with the BJP,
Speaker 2: which is that it's not like most political parties, even
Speaker 2: fascist ones, in that it's not like it's a political
Speaker 2: party that like developed up prime military right. The VJP
Speaker 2: was developed as the political wing of, you know, a
Speaker 2: very very far right, anti Muslim like Hindu nationalists parabilitary
Speaker 2: group called the RSS, which is responsible for a whole
Speaker 2: bunch of absolutely hideous crimes even before the BJP took
Speaker 2: power or even existed. So again, like, this is a
Speaker 2: ruling party that is like the political wing of a
Speaker 2: parabilitary not the other way around. And it's been running
Speaker 2: India for twelve years. And as Robert sort of mentioned before,
Speaker 2: the BJP has faced some challenges to their power. They've
Speaker 2: also faced large scale protest movements before, most notably sort
Speaker 2: of the Farmer's protests in twenty twenty and then twenty
Speaker 2: twenty four, which were about attempts to implement right wing
Speaker 2: market reforms to India's like agricultural markets. But they've successfully
Speaker 2: been able to maintain this policy of just refusing to
Speaker 2: dismiss government ministers in the face of protests until now.
Speaker 2: So what has actually been happening.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so these protests.
Speaker 2: Have been rallying under the banner of I guess kind
Speaker 2: of a meme organization or meme.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it started as a as a joke, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it's it's it's called the Cockroach Johnson Party,
Speaker 2: which is named after these comments. They were made by
Speaker 2: India's Chief Justice of like the Indian Supreme Court calling
Speaker 2: young unemployed people, quote, parasites and cockroaches.
Speaker 3: It's a little bit of a reversal of like the
Speaker 3: Hillary Clinton deplorables comment, where this person in politics uses
Speaker 3: a derogatory nickname to refer to a group of people
Speaker 3: he's opposed to and they kind of take it on
Speaker 3: as a badge of honor.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And because it's fascist, right right, it's also yeah, fascist,
Speaker 2: the Chief Justice Supreme Court is calling them cockroaches.
Speaker 4: Jesus Christ. Yeah, this party is like obviously a joke.
Speaker 2: It's like CJP like cockroach instead of BJP, et cetera,
Speaker 2: et cetera. That the main focus of these protests are
Speaker 2: a series of scandals in India's education system, and it
Speaker 2: feels kind of redundant to say, like, oh, yeah, like
Speaker 2: what kind of education do you get? Has a huge
Speaker 2: amount of you know, sort of determinants in like what
Speaker 2: your life turns out to be and what your economic
Speaker 2: conditions turns out to be in a sort of more
Speaker 2: intense version of like the way that American sanitized testing works.
Speaker 2: But there are a bunch of these sanitized tests that
Speaker 2: you take that can determine a whole bunch about what
Speaker 2: your future is going to be. And I think mostly obviously,
Speaker 2: there have been a couple of big scandals recently, but
Speaker 2: the most famous one is called the Neat scandal. Neat
Speaker 2: and Eat is is basically it's India's like pre med exam. Basically, Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's this huge exam that everyone who wants to go
Speaker 2: into pre med has to take and get a certain
Speaker 2: grade on. As I understand it, basically, yeah, so it's
Speaker 2: one of these especially for kids who like aren't rich,
Speaker 2: it's like a massive barrier that you have to get
Speaker 2: past if you want to like have a better life. Basically, Yeah,
Speaker 2: and these tests, and specifically the meat in particular. I mean,
Speaker 2: this is just the one if you want to become
Speaker 2: a doctor. But like you know, there's a huge number
Speaker 2: of people taking these tests. I'm going to quote from
Speaker 2: Al Jazeera nearly two point three million test takers across
Speaker 2: in and at examination centers in Doa, Dubai, Singapore and
Speaker 2: Kampman Dou appeared for the neat this year on May third,
Speaker 2: battling out for less than one hundred and thirty thousand
Speaker 2: spots in medical colleges. So a very small percentage of
Speaker 2: these of these two point three million people who are
Speaker 2: taking this test can even possibly get a score good
Speaker 2: enough to get them into a very small number of
Speaker 2: spots in these medical colleges. And then it turns out
Speaker 2: for this year's test that the answers to the test
Speaker 2: had been leaked ahead of time and were being sold
Speaker 2: on a telegram channels, And this turns into a massive
Speaker 2: scandal and the government forces the students to take the
Speaker 2: test again, and this is a complete disaster. Of eleven
Speaker 2: students died by suicide as the result of it.
Speaker 3: Good God, it's really bad, because it's like a mix
Speaker 3: of everything you've heard about, particularly in Southeast Asia. You've
Speaker 3: got a lot of like pressure as a kid to
Speaker 3: do well in exams like this because there's not both
Speaker 3: for cultural leases and because there's not other ways legally
Speaker 3: to like get those jobs if your family is not rich.
Speaker 3: And also the people whose families are rich, like often
Speaker 3: can pay to get the answers ahead of time, which
Speaker 3: is what the leak of this shows, right, Like the
Speaker 3: fact that it leaks out is because people's rich kids
Speaker 3: are getting these yeah. Well, and and also like if
Speaker 3: you're rich enough, you can send your kid to like
Speaker 3: a private college, right right, that too, you know, but
Speaker 3: if you're a working class kid, it's you cannot afford
Speaker 3: one of these one of these private universities. Yeah, and
Speaker 3: so your only way in is through these tests exactly.
Speaker 3: And these tests are also you know, they're like they're
Speaker 3: like a huge sort of extraction engine inside of the
Speaker 3: Indian economy where like, you know, one of the things
Speaker 3: that Alda Zero talks about is the story of this
Speaker 3: twenty one year old kid who is one of the
Speaker 3: people who died by suicide, who in order to get
Speaker 3: through these tests, you have to go through these like
Speaker 3: massive extremely expensive coaching centers. Effectively in order to study
Speaker 3: enough for it, and these things are these things are
Speaker 3: really expensive, to the point where this kid's family like
Speaker 3: sold their ancestral lands in order to be able to
Speaker 3: pay for test coaching so this kid could become a doctor.
Speaker 3: And she had passed the test after like not getting
Speaker 3: high enough scores like the previous two times, and then
Speaker 3: he had to take it again. There's stories like this
Speaker 3: all over India and it's just a nightmare. Yeah, So
Speaker 3: much of this too shouldn't be separated from the broader
Speaker 3: issues gen Z and Jin's Alpha are having all over
Speaker 3: the world, right, Yeah, like this is part of that.
Speaker 3: Like this is we are fucked. We have no way
Speaker 3: of making it in the economy you've left us, and
Speaker 3: one of the tiny slim slippers of a way to
Speaker 3: get ahead is just a scam too.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I get it. They should be pissed.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And like it's it's particularly intense in Indio because
Speaker 2: there's a story recently that CNM was talking about where
Speaker 2: there's a study that showed that there's a forty percent
Speaker 2: unemployment rate for graduates under the age of twenty five.
Speaker 4: Good God, that is nightmare.
Speaker 3: I ish that's end of civilization kind of shit, like
Speaker 3: any sane government would be worried about a revolution in
Speaker 3: these conditions.
Speaker 2: Those are the kind of unemployment levels that got you
Speaker 2: the Arab spring, right, Like, yep, that's that's how this
Speaker 2: stuff happens. And Facebook, yeah, and Twitter, I guess yeah,
Speaker 2: well yeah, Facebook playing both sides on that one.
Speaker 4: Sha I ran.
Speaker 3: Yeah, a variety of foreign intelligence agencies from all over
Speaker 3: the world, a lot of things.
Speaker 4: Like, yeah, a lot of things.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and speaking of things that have a lot of
Speaker 2: problems that the education system as well, like there's other
Speaker 2: issues with it, right the BJP again, they've been in
Speaker 2: power for twelve years, so they've installed a bunch of
Speaker 2: rs guys like in the Department of Education, and so
Speaker 2: you get this curriculum that in something that I think
Speaker 2: is very familiar to Americans where you're just getting all
Speaker 2: of this right wing nationalist bullshit just like attempting to
Speaker 2: be pumped into the education system. They're doing that too. Yeah,
Speaker 2: And conditions over this are bad enough that yeah, people
Speaker 2: take to the streets.
Speaker 4: Yeah, as they should and did. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's it's I don't know, like a lot of
Speaker 2: the stuff reading this, it was like, oh, I've like
Speaker 2: I've like been in this protest like so so originally
Speaker 2: these originally the protests are not that large in scale,
Speaker 2: but there's a there's a big march on July twentieth,
Speaker 2: that's you know, like a march at the Parliament and
Speaker 2: there's a giant police attack on it. That's it's an
Speaker 2: attempt to crush the movement entirely, and it doesn't work.
Speaker 2: It does exactly the opposite. It has you know, a
Speaker 2: very very familiar pattern of a bunch of people watch
Speaker 2: like a bunch of like actual literal children who are protesting,
Speaker 2: like the answers to the test got sold to a
Speaker 2: bunch of rich kids. Then they get the shit beat
Speaker 2: out of it. This suddenly like accelerates the protest massively
Speaker 2: and massively increases the number of people who are in
Speaker 2: the streets. And you know, this eventually does the unthinkable,
Speaker 2: which is for the government to make the Minister of
Speaker 2: Education resigned, and they're also able to get some reforms.
Speaker 2: The Modi government in theory says it's going to address
Speaker 2: like some of the kind of like bureaucratic things around
Speaker 2: why it's so easy to get these questions. They also
Speaker 2: promise not to arrest any of the protesters a thing
Speaker 2: that is never true. They they are every single time
Speaker 2: you promise this, they are always lying.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah yeah.
Speaker 2: But is also the thing that a government does when
Speaker 2: it is scared.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a sign that they know they can't start
Speaker 3: talking about cracking heads from the jump.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2: And I think we're going to get a bit into
Speaker 2: more of the reason why the government was so alarmed
Speaker 2: about this later. But one of the things where I
Speaker 2: think this probably unfortunately was good strategic timing by the
Speaker 2: government is that these were these protests were sort of
Speaker 2: like crystallizing into these more general like antimody protests, and
Speaker 2: by sort of heading it off at the past here
Speaker 2: over an issue where like in theory, the BJP also
Speaker 2: wants the tests to work normally, although obviously this does
Speaker 2: beg the question like, okay, so if it's government officials
Speaker 2: who are selling the answers to the tests, like who
Speaker 2: is running the governments?
Speaker 4: Which is you know?
Speaker 2: Another part of this, and another thing that is a
Speaker 2: part of this is these products and services.
Speaker 4: Robert, Oh god, I love a good product and a
Speaker 4: good service. Ugh, we're back.
Speaker 3: We're filled with the bounty of products and services and
Speaker 3: we're ready to hear more about the cockroach Janta.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so again kind of very familiar to a lot
Speaker 2: of protests that we have seen over our lives. These
Speaker 2: are very very social media driven protests in a way
Speaker 2: that's also similar to a lot of the protests that
Speaker 2: have been happening in actually particularly in neighboring regions protesting
Speaker 2: like Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, et cetera, et cetera. And
Speaker 2: you know, if you want any of like the Instagram
Speaker 2: reels or whatever from these, god.
Speaker 4: I don't know.
Speaker 2: It's it's so just depressingly familiar in a lot of
Speaker 2: ways where it's very funny reading people talking about this
Speaker 2: because they're like, ah, it's these like irony meme driven
Speaker 2: you know, like kids making these like irony meme driven
Speaker 2: things about like getting the shit beaten out in by
Speaker 2: riot police and like, you know, it's like people doing
Speaker 2: fit checks and then like getting like beaten with batons,
Speaker 2: and it's like, oh, yeah, okay, we've all been there.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I've been having a very like I'm feeling old moment
Speaker 2: watching these because it's like, oh god, I remember these
Speaker 2: from like twenty thirteen when we were doing the same
Speaker 2: shit and.
Speaker 3: Well, That's one of the tough things too as you
Speaker 3: get older, is both you know, and this is less
Speaker 3: the case when we're talking about a foreign movement, because
Speaker 3: I don't think I have any ability to influence that.
Speaker 3: When you're talking to like younger activists, it's a mix
Speaker 3: of wanting to like let them know about the pitfalls
Speaker 3: and problems that previous generations have encountered when you see them,
Speaker 3: you know, kind of heading in that same direction, and
Speaker 3: also not wanting to be like, well, just because I'm
Speaker 3: burnt out doesn't mean you should because I mean I should, Yeah,
Speaker 3: Like you shouldn't be excited about this thing just because
Speaker 3: I can't get excited anymore.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And it's like, you know, and that's always the thing
Speaker 2: with these kind of protests. It's like sometimes you win, yeah,
Speaker 2: and sometimes you win, and there's there's never God. David
Speaker 2: Graeber had this quote I forget who, Yes.
Speaker 3: Well, I know the one you're talking about where he's
Speaker 3: he's talking about like the dealing with like the surprise
Speaker 3: of victory.
Speaker 2: Oh, I was actually gonna do a different one. Oh, Okay,
Speaker 2: that one's also good. But he had this quote with
Speaker 2: a revolutionary in Egypt, like from the twenty eleven like
Speaker 2: uprising there, and you know, she had this quote where
Speaker 2: it was like, you do these protests all the time,
Speaker 2: and sometimes thirty people show up and you're depressed, and
Speaker 2: sometimes one hundred people show up and you know, you're
Speaker 2: really happy, and then one day, eight hundred thousand people
Speaker 2: show up and you kind of forgot that could happen. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and that's kind of what this is, right, where it's like, yeah,
Speaker 2: that's that's exactly how it goes.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 3: It starts as like a bit from a dude who's
Speaker 3: not even in India at the time, right, He's at
Speaker 3: a school in the US, and he and so he
Speaker 3: just makes this kind of meme page and it takes off.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then suddenly you know, you actually have And
Speaker 2: part of this is also like weird stuff about how
Speaker 2: algorithms work. But like, part of what's been happening here
Speaker 2: too is that there's been a huge shift in the
Speaker 2: regime in India's ability to control social media, which something
Speaker 2: they've been very very good at up until this point.
Speaker 2: They've been really good at controlling both sort of online
Speaker 2: discourse and also have taken almost complete control over just
Speaker 2: the regular mainstream media and these protests and like the
Speaker 2: way that people are just sort of casually being like hey,
Speaker 2: fitcheck going out to a protest, and like the way
Speaker 2: that the self spread algorithmically, and the way that you know,
Speaker 2: you have people going out for protest stuff, but that
Speaker 2: also mixes with just you know, people who are going
Speaker 2: out just to film it for like their Instagram reels
Speaker 2: and it. But all of all of them end up
Speaker 2: like in the streets, and you get the situation where
Speaker 2: like the mainstream media is just like absolutely refuses to
Speaker 2: talk about the protest whatsoever. But then you know, if
Speaker 2: you're like on Instagram, you're on any social media site,
Speaker 2: it's the only thing you're seeing. And this kind of
Speaker 2: weakens the control that the BGP has been able to
Speaker 2: maintain over all of these spaces. Yeah, but that doesn't
Speaker 2: mean that like they've you know, lost control completely. You know,
Speaker 2: the BGP is like kind of in their counterattack phase
Speaker 2: right now, and you get a really bleak look at
Speaker 2: how like right wing governments with longstanding sort of right
Speaker 2: wing online basis and media bases work where yeah, they
Speaker 2: do these like harassment campaigns against women who went.
Speaker 4: Out protesting they should do.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like it's all the stuff that you're familiar with, right,
Speaker 2: Like they'll show clips if people like on news channels
Speaker 2: and then people will like dox them and like start
Speaker 2: stalking them and they get threats and.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I've heard people had to like hide and stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 3: especially like female activists while they were during the protests.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2: And it's also you know, it's like it's like large
Speaker 2: scale threats of sexual violence are yep, a very common
Speaker 2: part of this, and that's god, yes, you know, that's
Speaker 2: like how these people are able to maintain power. But
Speaker 2: even as this sort of visual kind of attack is
Speaker 2: happening and it's extremely brutal and it's really a mess,
Speaker 2: the control of the mainstream media is also slipping. One
Speaker 2: of the things I learned like reading about this is
Speaker 2: there's a term that I guess generally kind of like
Speaker 2: opposition people are using with the protesters also used where
Speaker 2: they call they call the like the mainstream press like
Speaker 2: goaty media, which is like it's like lap in Hindi.
Speaker 2: So it's it's basically like calling them like lapdog media
Speaker 2: instead of being watchdogs, which I love.
Speaker 4: I don't know, I like it a lot. Yeah, I
Speaker 4: did too, that's great. It's like it's good.
Speaker 2: I don't know, I don't I don't know exactly how
Speaker 2: to steal that for us, but I love it.
Speaker 4: It's great. Yeah, I should be thinking about that. Yeah.
Speaker 2: But part of the problem with having, you know, this
Speaker 2: kind of like incredible degree of like media centralization that
Speaker 2: the regime has been able to pull together is that,
Speaker 2: you know, after being in power for so long, having
Speaker 2: their narrative be like completely hegemonic for so long, they're
Speaker 2: running into like the cracks, you know, these sort of
Speaker 2: cracks forming in their nationalist messaging because like they're running
Speaker 2: into the fundamental problem that you can't eat national pride.
Speaker 2: And so if if literally the entire media all the
Speaker 2: time is trying to ignore that these protests are happening,
Speaker 2: and then also was telling you that your country is
Speaker 2: great and like Modi is great and you're such a
Speaker 2: world great world leader, but then you know you can't
Speaker 2: feed your family, that that's an actual problem. Yeah, absolutely, yeah,
Speaker 2: and like and like normally, the way that nationalists would
Speaker 2: sort of deal with this is to be like, yeah,
Speaker 2: you don't have jobs and your economy sucks because of
Speaker 2: like some either immigrant group or in this case, it
Speaker 2: would sort of like you should probably be doing this
Speaker 2: with Muslims, but they've been in power for so long
Speaker 2: that it's like kind of hard to do that because
Speaker 2: it's like this is your country now, right, like you
Speaker 2: have taken control of it. And yet Yeah, and this
Speaker 2: kind of feeds into this, you know, question at a
Speaker 2: broader level about what these protests are actually about, because
Speaker 2: on a very basic level, they're about education perform and
Speaker 2: they're about these tests, and they're about the education system
Speaker 2: as a whole. But on a broader level, it's more
Speaker 2: complicated because these protests, as you know, protests often do
Speaker 2: function as a sort of aggregator of different kinds of
Speaker 2: struggle with you know, different beliefs and motivations, and you
Speaker 2: get a whole bunch of different kinds of people.
Speaker 4: In the street.
Speaker 2: I want to read this quote from an interview Frontline
Speaker 2: India did with the guy who was the founder of
Speaker 2: the CJAP, which is to say, just like the guy
Speaker 2: who made the meme that went viral, Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3: That is how he got the job, so to speak.
Speaker 3: And he's done a really good job, by the way,
Speaker 3: Like I think he's been really responsible. Yeah, he could
Speaker 3: not have anticipated this happening, but he seems to be
Speaker 3: really dedicated to the cause.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I want to quote him here talking about
Speaker 2: what the ideology of this party, if it existed, would
Speaker 2: be the ideology of the CJP, and many of our
Speaker 2: young people are also very progressive, liberal, secular, will be secular,
Speaker 2: democratic and socialist, and we strive for social justice. And
Speaker 2: he also mentions three people that he's you know, he's
Speaker 2: he's inspired by, and two of them I think are
Speaker 2: kind of not particularly surprising given this kind of like
Speaker 2: this is kind of what like secular, progressive, democratic y
Speaker 2: politics look like, which is he mentions Gandhi and Nehru.
Speaker 2: But what's interesting and what I haven't seen literally at
Speaker 2: all in any other coverage at this protest, is that
Speaker 2: the third person that he mentions is Ambedkar. Which, yeah,
Speaker 2: I assume you, having been there and spend a deep
Speaker 2: amount of time in India, I assume you know who
Speaker 2: Ambedkar is.
Speaker 4: No, no, no, I don't know. Really interesting, Okay, not
Speaker 4: in a meaningful way.
Speaker 2: Now, this is actually kind of a good proxy. I
Speaker 2: assume people listening to the show know who Gandhi is.
Speaker 2: You've probably at least heard of Nehru who was the
Speaker 2: first Arime Minister of India.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: MBITCR is a lot less well known. He's another one
Speaker 2: of the very important sort of independence era figures in India.
Speaker 2: But he is the guy around which like the anti
Speaker 2: cast movement rallies.
Speaker 4: Was it was he in the fifties or sixties.
Speaker 2: No, he like first starts this in like the like
Speaker 2: the twenties and thirties, and then he's alive through independence.
Speaker 4: Oh okay really that era?
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, yeah, he's he's around like in the era
Speaker 2: of like revolutionary struggle against the.
Speaker 4: British creed independence yeah yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: And then he you know, he like survives through independence
Speaker 2: and gets to see some of.
Speaker 3: That the partition of India and all that good stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 3: all the fun things happen.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And this is a period, you know, if you look
Speaker 2: at like the nineteen ten's, twenties, thirties, this is a
Speaker 2: period both about the anti colonial struggle and then also
Speaker 2: like what the struggle is going to be, right, Like,
Speaker 2: who's whose vision of India is going to come out
Speaker 2: of a post independence world if there is one? And
Speaker 2: Mbitcr's thing here is yes, like we want like we
Speaker 2: want independence and we want socialism because you know, a
Speaker 2: lot of the people of the like Nahry was technic
Speaker 2: is like a kind of socialist right, like a lot
Speaker 2: of a lot of the independence activists are. But he's
Speaker 2: also in a position of we need to get rid
Speaker 2: of the cast system because he sees it as like correctly,
Speaker 2: as like an incredibly powerful sort of force of oppression
Speaker 2: in Indian society, and he thinks that that's not something
Speaker 2: that they should like wait until independence to deal with.
Speaker 2: And so he's a very very important like leader in
Speaker 2: the anti cast movements, and he's probably I think he's
Speaker 2: probably just like their best known intellectual. I would really
Speaker 2: recommend reading his book, The Annihilation of Cast. Well, I
Speaker 2: say book, it's like that it's not that long. Yeah,
Speaker 2: Like it's probably like my favorite thing I've read and
Speaker 2: from the writers of that era. It's an address that
Speaker 2: he's making basically to both I guess you'd call it
Speaker 2: like more conservative pro in dependence activists and then also
Speaker 2: to the socialists to be like, hey, you should also
Speaker 2: talk about cast at the same time you're talking about
Speaker 2: British oppression and also class The CJP founder like mentions
Speaker 2: this because he's from a low cast background, and he
Speaker 2: goes like, yeah, like no, like I wouldn't have been
Speaker 2: able to go to school in the United States and
Speaker 2: like have the successes that I've had in my life
Speaker 2: without ambicar. I thought this was really interesting because it's
Speaker 2: not mentioned in any other reporting, even though it's like
Speaker 2: in an interview he's said, and also, I think this
Speaker 2: is a dynamic here that is like not well understood
Speaker 2: in most places, that like, this is a still operative
Speaker 2: system of oppression that people are still fighting against, and
Speaker 2: that is relevant enough to be like one of the
Speaker 2: things that gets mentioned by the guy who starts this movement.
Speaker 2: And that's not to say the rest of the movement
Speaker 2: like necessarily is exactly this focused on it. Which is
Speaker 2: one of the parts of this movement that's both why
Speaker 2: it succeeded and also one of the kind of messy
Speaker 2: parts of it. Right, is that on the one hand,
Speaker 2: this has become a really or full vehicle for these
Speaker 2: sort of like broadly secular like pro democracy, like antibody,
Speaker 2: anti dictatorship students, and there's always been like a fairly
Speaker 2: large like cohort of you know, sort of like young
Speaker 2: left leaning or leftist students. I mean there was a
Speaker 2: whole i don't know what you'd call it, like social
Speaker 2: panic slash government purge against this idea of like quote
Speaker 2: unquote urban Naxles, which was supposed to be like oh,
Speaker 2: there's like these like urban versions of like the nax
Speaker 2: like communist guerrillas that are in the universities, which is,
Speaker 2: you know, in a lot of ways, very similar to
Speaker 2: but a significantly more advanced and repressive version of the
Speaker 2: stuff that like you see the Trump administration doing in
Speaker 2: the US education system and the sort of like witch
Speaker 2: hunts over you know, Palestine and stuff like that. So
Speaker 2: you know, you have that group of sort of like
Speaker 2: center left and leftist students to where a lot of
Speaker 2: people who started the protest movement. But also there's also
Speaker 2: just like BJP kids, yeah, who are in the streets
Speaker 2: because they're like, yeah, like we all got fucked in our.
Speaker 3: Tests because bullshit. Yeah, yeah, it's the same reason. Now
Speaker 3: you've got a decent chunk at least like a third
Speaker 3: of the twenty or something percent of the people who
Speaker 3: voted for Trump in twenty twenty four are more people
Speaker 3: who'd voted for Biden or for.
Speaker 4: Hillary a few years earlier.
Speaker 3: Right there are people who maybe they went for this guy,
Speaker 3: but as soon as it stops working for them, as
Speaker 3: soon as like the fascistm isn't delivering what it promises,
Speaker 3: they'll get pissed. They'll get out wide, up with the streets. Yeah,
Speaker 3: you don't have to like them to recognize that as
Speaker 3: a phenomenon.
Speaker 4: Yep. Yeah.
Speaker 2: There's a kind of like third phenomenon too, which is,
Speaker 2: as these protests go on, you get more and more
Speaker 2: of different kinds of like both rural and urban workers,
Speaker 2: more urban workers and real workers. But this is you know,
Speaker 2: the thing about education protests at their core is that
Speaker 2: this is something that cuts across like rural urban divides
Speaker 2: to an extent in the sense that like both poor
Speaker 2: rural kids and poor urban kids are still getting fucked
Speaker 2: by this, you know, like by the exam system. But
Speaker 2: then you know, you get workers starting to join it
Speaker 2: who also have these I think, I don't know the
Speaker 2: way that commentators talk about it is that they're unconnected.
Speaker 2: I think they're a lot more connected than that. But
Speaker 2: you know, you get you get you get these workers
Speaker 2: with these like cost of living crisis concerns, who who
Speaker 2: are also joining this protest, And I guess part of
Speaker 2: this is a girl who spent a lot of time
Speaker 2: studying and writing aboutmen. But this is kind of the
Speaker 2: exact class composition of Timen and how those protests unfold
Speaker 2: it where you have its origins in like this, in
Speaker 2: this specific student movement thing that has kind of specific
Speaker 2: student movement grievances that then you know, goes into the
Speaker 2: streets around their specific demands, and then everyone watches them
Speaker 2: get the ship beaten out of them, and that brings
Speaker 2: more and more people into the streets who have their
Speaker 2: own kind of specific demands around like the economic conditions
Speaker 2: they're in. And this is a very common like composition
Speaker 2: for for revolts. I mean, it's it's the basis of
Speaker 2: everything from like I mean God, like it's part of
Speaker 2: the basis of the French Revolution. You can look at
Speaker 2: like May sixty eight, like you know, so the revolts
Speaker 2: against Pinochet, like I mean, occupy is like a lot
Speaker 2: to a large extent, like this class base, right, if
Speaker 2: you have a bunch of students who are very concerned
Speaker 2: about debt, and then that brings in a bunch of
Speaker 2: more working class people who are like not students anymore.
Speaker 2: But that's also what makes it dangerous. It's a very
Speaker 2: old kind of alliance, and it's a kind of alliance
Speaker 2: that can always materialize because students and poor workers are
Speaker 2: some of the first people to feel when the economic
Speaker 2: tides are shifting, and that like constantly creates these kind
Speaker 2: of uprisings, right, and you know, they're dangerous enough that
Speaker 2: if you look at the last thirty years of Chinese politics,
Speaker 2: a whole bunch of of the politics of modern China
Speaker 2: are about specifically making sure that this exact coalition doesn't
Speaker 2: form again. So you know, when the old working class
Speaker 2: is sort of crushed with the like remains the welfare
Speaker 2: state in the nineties, like, there's a very deliberate attempt
Speaker 2: to buy off the students at the same time to
Speaker 2: make sure they never make common cause. And like any
Speaker 2: time you've seen sort of student worker actions since then,
Speaker 2: there's this massive crackdown on it because the Chinese government
Speaker 2: understands that this is this is a very very dangerous
Speaker 2: political coalition, and it's a political coalition that has outlasted
Speaker 2: I mean literally like a lot of the working classes
Speaker 2: that were originally in these uprisings, like the French revolutionary
Speaker 2: like artis in class like that doesn't exist anymore, right,
Speaker 2: Like the industrial working class in like France or like
Speaker 2: Italy in the sixties, Like that also doesn't exist anymore,
Speaker 2: but you still see this like specific configuration of classes
Speaker 2: doing these protest movements. Yeah, there's obviously always a lot
Speaker 2: of different motivations, and conflict against the state tends to
Speaker 2: be the thing that can like solidify a kind of
Speaker 2: identity that allows you to do any kind of mass movements, right,
Speaker 2: Like this is like one of the few things that
Speaker 2: can you know, fighting the police and having the state
Speaker 2: repress you, and then having the states as a force
Speaker 2: you can fight against concretely that just appears when you
Speaker 2: oppose it, like is one of the things that like
Speaker 2: makes these kinds of protest stupens work. And then also
Speaker 2: underneath that the economy is broken in a lot of
Speaker 2: the ways you saw like in like twenty eighteen and
Speaker 2: twenty nineteen, which is like I think the last big
Speaker 2: cycle of these mass protests where you have this economic instability,
Speaker 2: and what I think is particularly similar between now and
Speaker 2: like twenty eighteen, was that technically speaking, if you look
Speaker 2: at the economy in India right now, as long as
Speaker 2: you ignore the youth unemployment rate. It looks like the
Speaker 2: economy is growing.
Speaker 4: Things are good.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it's like the same thing as the US,
Speaker 2: where it's like, well, I mean the economic indicators have
Speaker 2: been getting worse, but like you know, technically speaking, it
Speaker 2: looks like the US economy is growing, but if you're
Speaker 2: living under it, it's like, no, it's not. And there's
Speaker 2: all of these sort of cracks and ripples in the
Speaker 2: global economy in twenty eighteen was like this where like
Speaker 2: the American economy was like doing fine, and a lot
Speaker 2: of like the major economies were in theory doing fine.
Speaker 2: But then you know, there was a series of currency
Speaker 2: like crises and like there were like these economic collapses. Yeah,
Speaker 2: there's like this hyperinflation in Turkey. You get these things
Speaker 2: in like Chile, and then you know, you start seeing
Speaker 2: these protests. You get like Haiti, you get the yellow ves,
Speaker 2: you see like Hong Kong Lebanon a rock god like
Speaker 2: Iran for the first time of this giant cycle of
Speaker 2: protests in Iran me and Maar like even like Russia
Speaker 2: briefly goes up. And I'm bringing this up to say
Speaker 2: that like one of the things about a protest like this,
Speaker 2: right and there's been several other ones that were very
Speaker 2: big protests in Indonesia over the last couple of months.
Speaker 2: These protests often a recur and b are in some
Speaker 2: ways an early warning signal before like there's going to
Speaker 2: be another giant round of these kind of protests.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean I hope, all right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I think there's a decent chance of
Speaker 2: it because like, you know, the economy still hasn't like
Speaker 2: hit rock bottom yet. No, and in the way that
Speaker 2: like you know, you saw that in twenty twenty where like, yeah,
Speaker 2: the bottom finally fell out of the economy with COVID.
Speaker 3: Furthermore, maybe this is putting it a little bit too strongly,
Speaker 3: but like the people who do not like the regime
Speaker 3: at particularly the activists, have like tasted a little blood
Speaker 3: now yeah. Yeah, Like it's really hard once people win,
Speaker 3: once a movement wins, for it to not try to
Speaker 3: keep winning, right, That's kind of a natural instinct.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And and the BJP is is, you know, obviously doing
Speaker 2: its best to do to.
Speaker 4: Suppress this, yeah, to suppress or co opt yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2: But the problem that they're facing is is the fundamental
Speaker 2: problem of all of the regimes everywhere, which is that, like,
Speaker 2: it's a lot harder to maintain one of these kinds
Speaker 2: of regimes when you have been in power for a
Speaker 2: long time and suddenly the economy implodes. And that's coming
Speaker 2: for India the same way that's coming for the rest
Speaker 2: of the world. And also in very specific ways of
Speaker 2: like you know, we've talked about I've talked about on
Speaker 2: this show elsewhere, the effects of the blockade of the
Speaker 2: shrade'formuz has been devastating in India in a way that
Speaker 2: it hasn't been in the US. Yeap, and you know,
Speaker 2: you also have like heat waves that are also you know,
Speaker 2: both economically and just like living devastating. There was an
Speaker 2: expression in the Hong Kong protest that they were drawing
Speaker 2: from a Mao quote but also it's way older than Mao,
Speaker 2: as like Mao says in the thing where he says it.
Speaker 2: But the Hong konger has had this line that like
Speaker 2: a single spark can start a prairie fire, and the
Speaker 2: thing about the Indian economy is that it is throwing
Speaker 2: sparks off everywhere. And that doesn't mean that every individual
Speaker 2: spark is going to be the one that starts the fire,
Speaker 2: but it means that as as you continue to get
Speaker 2: more and more sparks, the odds that you see another
Speaker 2: one of these revolts increases, and hopefully the odds that
Speaker 2: one of these protests and one of these movements can
Speaker 2: finally knock off the fascists and yeah, fundamentally transform Indian
Speaker 2: society rices.
Speaker 4: Yep, or at least get mody out.
Speaker 3: Yeah, just at a bare minimum, you know, I'll take
Speaker 3: the minimum if that's what it is. Oh God, Okay, Well,
Speaker 3: thank you Mia, and thank you the cockroach Janta over
Speaker 3: in India.
Speaker 4: Good work.
Speaker 3: Hell yeah, y'all, that is actually really nice to see.
Speaker 4: Fucking rocks. Give them hell proud of you.
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