Can born again lib elites ever shake off the Left-Right binary in looking at our glorious republic even as they feverishly hype up the blinding flash of corporate cash? Barkha Dutt’s article in Washington Post titled ‘The Taj Mahal could be adopted by a corporation. India’s Liberals need to get over it’ is so clouded by socialist references that it is almost goofy and farcical.
The article, instead of looking at the benefits and challenges that tourism minister KJ Alphons proposed in his Adopt-a-Heritage-Site to corporate houses, has bizarrely screeched to liberal-bashing and rebuke.
After avowedly professing her proficiency in modern Indian history – from the origins of Mughal Red Fort, to its stark symbolism in our modern democracy, of nationhood, diversity and pluralism – Dutt then chides liberals-socialists (they soon merge in the latter half of the article and here is yet another freaky analogy as they cannot be more differing – one is permissive, the other, dogmatic!) for “the(ir) instinctive resistance to the idea of big-bucks corporations taking control of India’s heritage sites.”
Er, socialist-liberal critics are not genetically programmed to denounce corporate money, but can’t one legitimately raise questions about corporate favouritism and crony capitalism? Look around you – Lalit Modi, Nirav Modi, Vijay Mallya… apart from the billions of dollars that the Adanis, Ruias, Anil Ambani etc, have taken away from taxpayers and not returned to banks, is a corporate scandal that would shock and awe uber-capitalists anywhere in the world.
Dutt then calls out the so-called hypocrisy of liberal attitudes when she admonishes them for being on the pay-roll of private sector media houses, university chairs and colleges, hospitals, NGOs, etc.
Really? Do beneficiaries have to genuflect before corporate czars and kiss the ground they walk on because they have suddenly developed a social corporate conscience? Dutt breezily mixes up corporate philanthropy and CSR by sneering at human rights groups and students among others who receive grants from the private sector.
It is like saying that students who study at Birla Institute of Technology or Tata Institute of Social Sciences have no business challenging capitalism or free markets; or that Dalmia Cement’s adoption of the Red Fort is like Azim Premji or Shiv Nader foundations funding NGOs and human rights groups.
More importantly, do corporate houses not baulk at industrial labour laws, supervision, guidelines, and regulation? All Dutt needs to do is look at her own bust-up with a private media house to see how capricious and faithless corporate bosses can be. And she is asking us to trust corporations implicitly?
But marauding, unregulated corporations are not a concern at all for Dutt. It is the liberal’s smug self-image as an aesthete and arbiter of good taste that makes them cringe at Dalmia Cement and other companies taking over culture and heritage, she writes.
Then in a moment of complete illogicality and senselessness, Dutt confuses management with restoration to articulate her sneer at Lib paranoia. In a stream of unconsciousness, Dutt swamps the liberals with scorn and contempt as she morphs resemblances and similarities in a giant mix up of accusations and rebukes.
She brings up global parallels with “Adopt a Heritage Site”, likening it to Italian luxury brand Tod’s taking the tab for the restoration of the Colosseum in Rome, and international jeweller Bulgari for paying for the restoration of the Spanish Steps. Hey Dutt, can you spot the difference here?
Tourism ministry officials agree corporate houses could have picked up the tab to restore the thousands of heritage towns, smaller havelis, baulis, shrines, etc, which are being destroyed for lack of funds; and ask what is the logic of having corporate houses adopt premier, blue chip monuments which grab most government funding anyway? That too, to look after toilets, ticketing, crowd-sourcing, restaurants? Aha, can’t you see a business opportunity here? Contracts, contracts, contracts to source services!
Dutt then laments that the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) which manages the monuments is cash-starved and overworked. Then, why does she not ask Dalmia Cements etc, to pick the tab just like Tod’s and Bulgari did, rather than promote cronyism and give revenue-generating monuments on a silver plate? Dalmia has got a five-year contract to adopt Red Fort for a paltry sum of Rs 25 crore.
Then she leaps straight into the deep hole comparing the amazing restoration of Humayun’s Tomb by the Aga Khan Foundation to Dalmia’s takeover of Red Fort, even though the former has trail-blazed in restoration work of heritage sites all over the world, while Dalmia Cements, which has no expertise at all in conservation work, gets a giant sponsorship for looking after toilets and cafes.
It gets worse – she agrees with Alphons that tourist arrivals in India are abysmal not because the infrastructure is so shabby – from safety and security of tourists, to road and air connectivity – but because of the stinking toilets and the mess around monuments!
She even sniffs somewhere that India’s glory lies in her tombstones and marvels at tourism in Spain, which gets 82 million tourists a year as compared to India’s 10 million tourist traffic.
If Dutt and the tourism minister had cared to look at Spain more closely, they would insist on the promotion of India’s beaches to surf and party, cruise in game parks, ski and trek in the Himalayas, bump around in desert safaris, like tourists do from Madrid to Marbella. But alas, where’s the infrastructure and facilities, recreation and resorts, even for 20 million visitors here?
Blame the liberals. And Dutt finally comes to her real gripe about them – their intrinsic suspicion of the Modi government. She agrees with the BJP when they angrily ask of Libs – you lauded the Aga Khan Foundation’s restoration of Humayun’s Tomb under the Congress government, why do you slam the heritage adoption policy promoted by the BJP?
Huh?
Her suspicions grow to mortal anxiety when she argues it is the “gladiator collision between the Right and Left over India’s history… (and) at the heart of liberal apprehensions is the fear of right-wing prejudice and the rewriting of the content at museums and heritage sites”.
Well, she could have informed her readers that one prominent Dalmia forefather is a senior member of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad and a co-accused in the Babri Masjid demolition case. Another founder, the late Ramkrishna Dalmia, formed the Anti-Cow Slaughter League and was the first to call for a cow slaughter ban. More importantly, with Modi’s Hindutva politics of hate, is it any wonder there is deep distrust and suspicion about any new policy on heritage and culture?
It’s laughable that Dutt is reassured by the tourism minister who has guaranteed that all commercial activity at the heritage sites will be subject to more government and ministerial approval!
If it’s too late to be socialist chic, as Dutt concludes, she must be told it’s passé to be a socialist hick.
Newslaundry is a reader-supported, ad-free, independent news outlet based out of New Delhi. Support their journalism, here.
