Anna and the logic behind hunger strikes

As a kid, whenever I sat down to do my homework, it felt like I was doing someone a big favor. The only thing I ever got in return was for all the trouble was “no punishment”. Now what kind of an incentive is “no punishment”? I knew right away, that life isn’t fair but luckily I found a way around.

I realized saying things like “I won’t eat till I get a new pencil box to complete my math homework” or “I won’t eat unless you let me watch TV for half an hour” usually gets good returns. And it worked for the first few times. When I was eight years old, I started a similar hunger strike but my Mom shot back saying “Fine, sleep hungry and get punished at school tomorrow!” That was the moment I was convinced that "not-eating" is not a good strategy to get things done in the adult world! Clearly, I am not cut out for Indian politics!

Notes on Anna

Unlike a lot of young people in India, I did not get all worked up about my support for Anna Hazare’s successful fast-unto-death. By the time I found time to do some research and pick a side, it was all over...

I am absolutely convinced about Anna Hazare’s good intentions but a little disillusioned with the solutions he proposed. Let’s not delve into details. I can't help but notice that hunger strikes still remain the most potent weapon in Indian politics. It is probably the most important legacy of Gandhi after the hundreds of M.G Roads with potholes and tons of black money with his face printed on it!

Question

A professional hunger-striker?

Why are hunger strikes considered to be peaceful? Isn’t it an insanely passive aggressive thing to do? You are threatening to kill yourself for heaven’s sake! By what stretch of imagination is threatening to kill a person peaceful? I agree it is better than threatening to kill other people but that makes it only “relatively peaceful” or put it in a better way “peaceful only when quoted out of context!” Why do we omit the relative part of it?

Although Anna’s fast was ‘Gandhian’ in every sense of the term and not even a window pane was broken as a consequence of his fast, it is not the case for most of the hunger strikes that happen. For most politicians it is just a wonderful way to get a lot of attention, re-energize their bases and pump some enthusiasm into their party workers and basically kick some political ass!

Hunger Strikes as a Choreographed Media Event

Hunger strikes (especially when politicians do it) are always accompanied by enforced bandhs. Enforced bandhs as we all know makes traffic worse. Plus, there is always a chance for sporadic violence and ‘stuff’ burning activities where stuff begins with an effigy and ends with a fresh fleet of Volvo buses! If you play it safe and stay at home, you have to live with the News anchors on TV going frenzy and blazing live visuals of ugly-looking politicians sitting under a tree and not eating while better looking Bollywood celebs voice their support to the cause!

We see at least one major league politician go on a hunger strike every two or three months. Isn’t it vaguely suspicious that politicians never die in one of these fast-unto-deaths? Isn’t there enough evidence to suggest that not eating will lead to death? I decided to do some research on hunger strikes and I have some interesting results.

An Illustrated History of Hunger Strikes

Given that hundreds of people have got themselves into fasts-unto-death and that not all of them are successful, one wonders why the over all number of deaths is surprisingly low at four!

Why are politicians not dying of hunger?

Whenever a politician goes on a fast – his colleagues and the media are instantly worried about his health. Just after a couple of days, the docs shift him to a hospital and “force” feed him intravenously. Now that’s cheating isn’t it?

The whole point of a fast is to degenerate the body slowly by denying all nutrition. By injecting glucose water (with all the essential proteins and vitamins) into the bloodstream, they’re not denying nutrition to the body. They’re just cutting out the middleman (i.e. the digestive system) from the nutrition cycle! Technically it’s just dieting!

You see, fasting is a relatively simple game. There is only one rule: “Do not eat!” but with the saline bottles and the injections, it has been reduced to “You may eat but not with your hands!” making it very easy to pull off political stunts with choreographed media coverage which sometimes may involve the channels flashing the hunger-striker’s blood pressure and blood glucose levels live on TV!

P.S: I have written most of this post way back in December and have been waiting for someone to go on an indefinite hunger-strike. What can I say, I am like that! 

News is always entertaining if you read it after a month!

Don't believe me? Let me illustrate!

Prologue:

If you’re a politician planning to go on an indefinite fast in Andhra Pradesh and wondering what time of the year is good – December it is! The summers are too hot and dehydrating. The monsoons are not conducive for sitting in open grounds in public places. January has Sankranti – the most important festival for Telugu people which leaves December to be the perfect month for fasting.

December continues to be the most entertaining month. Unexpected cyclonic rains damaged the winter crop in coastal regions of the state. The govt. promptly announced a Rs. 400 crore relief package along with interest waivers on loans. But few politicians were of the opinion that 400 crore is not enough! What followed was a three way passive aggressive non-violent battle of the hungry, for the hungry by the power-hungry! Let’s look at the events as they happened.

Chapter 1: Y. S. Jaganmohan Reddy

If a person holding a government job dies young while in duty or otherwise, the govt. arranges for his son/daughter/spouse to have the deceased person’s job to ensure financial security for the family. Y. S Jagan thought that the same rule applied for the post of Chief Minister too! So when his father Y. S Rajashekhara Reddy died in a helicopter crash, Jagan felt he deserved to be the CM but Sonia told him it doesn’t work that way.

What ensued was a long, hard and bitter break-up with the congress party which resulted in Jagan starting his own political party. Being the youngest political party craving for attention, Jagan felt that he can best serve the affected farmers by going on a fast for two days (conveniently over a weekend).

Chapter 2: Chandrababu Naidu

People have long been telling him that he had no right to feel sorry for the poor farmers because he neglected them when he was the Chief Minister. But deep inside, Naidu is not the kind of a person who wouldn't help farmers if there is an opportunity to make breaking news.

Being the fiercely competitive person he is, Naidu tried to out-help Jagan by demanding even more than what Jagan is demanding for the farmers! While Jagan demanded only better compensation, Naidu wanted the cyclone to be declared as a National calamity! Jagan went on a two day fast over the weekend. Naidu did an indefinite fast which lasted 8 days (falling one short of KCR’s 9 day fast last December)

Chapter 3: The Congress

Needless to say, the congress didn't give a rat’s ass about their colleagues in the opposition. However, all the fast and the furious business brought back memories of being in the opposition for a few congress MPs and in a fit of nostalgia, they announced that they are going on a fast even though what they wanted was a phone call away!

They demanded that criminal cases against criminal students (who had fun burning buses and damaging public property protesting for a separate Telangana last December) be dropped by the govt. The MPs skipped a meal and the cases were dropped!

Chapter 4: The Media

Three hunger strikes from the three biggest parties in a span of ten days! The breaking news media couldn't have asked for a better Christmas present. Both Jagan’s and Naidu’s fasts were covered exclusively by the media. The usual attractions like media’s hyperactive concern for their health, trying to extract redundant information medical from doctors with poor communication skills, bus burning ceremonies and intravenous force feeding etc. were a huge hit!

Often, the media was confused on who deserved more attention. A lot of celebrities visited Jagan during his fast whereas Naidu’s health was failing. Ordinary folks, these are no ordinary dilemmas for the media to solve!

NTV (Naidu’s friend channel) led from the front by flashing Naidu’s live blood pressure and blood sugar levels setting the standard for covering future hunger strikes! Notable performances from the print media include The Times of India as it rose to the occasion and declared Jagan as the winner in a sort-of-editorial piece titled “Y. S Jagan's fast better than Naidu's?”

Chapter 5: The Farmers

Farmers? What farmers?

The Implications of the Pigeon-Fool Principle

For those who have not read the pigeon-fool principle, please click here before reading further.

The pigeon-fool principle though intended to look funny on the outside, is much more than a mere extrapolation of a funny incident. It is, like a lot of funny things, reality at a higher level. The results of the poll are compiled and as of now, there were over 100 hundred people who read the blog entry but only 36 have decided to vote with almost 90% (31/36) of them preferring pigeon poop over the fool’s mucus on their shirts. The result though hardly surprising made me ask myself, Why the difference?

If you look at the situation objectively, both pigeon poop and fool's mucus have very similar outcomes when they fall on our shirt. Both are equally unfortunate and equally disgusting things to happen to anyone, they take the same amount of effort to wipe and wash the stain etc. But still people are biased towards one of the options! This proves my notion that, given a choice between two equally bad options, people choose the familiar one.

The beauty of the whole argument lies in the parallel we can draw with the elections in India. In most of the constituencies, people are forced to choose between pigeon poop (congress) and fool’s mucus (BJP and allies) and people choose the familiar pigeon poop. And not surprisingly, a lot of people choose not to vote at all (Voter turnout was 43% in Mumbai and 35% for my poll, which is good enough considering that TATA Tea did not sponsor a “Jaago Re” campaign for my blog). Hence even after 5 years of dismal governance, the congress party is back to power in Maharashtra.

Unless we figure out a way where deserving people can rise up to the leadership level, India will always remain a flawed democracy that is more of a “Deeply-Hippocratic-Cheaply-Oligarchic-Republic” as opposed to the “Sovereign-Socialist-Secular-Democratic-Republic” we are supposed to be going by my 7th class civics text book.

P.S: the content of this blog turned out to be much more serious than intended by the author (me) but what the hell!



P.P.S: The artist (me again) intended the bird to look like a pigeon and the guy like he has a cold and he is not sure how successful he is.