Dissent and the Commons

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(from Vocabulary of Commons, article 51)

by Kinjal Sampat, Deepak Srinivasan

Resisting erosion

Dissent and the commons

Dissent as a term stands out as a possible political tool that helps indicate democracy in action. Minority or majority, perhaps defined as ‘freedom fighters’ or insurgents, activists or grassroots citizens, the diverse dissenting collective has been of interest for the politician as the site of possible feedback and support (or lack of support) and for academicians as the site of producing understandings of socio–economic ground realities. Dissenting voices have played a crucial role within any democratic set up that involves interplay between the public and the politic. In this context, democracy should be viewed as it emerges in human socio– political history as a modernising force that civilises and presents a supposedly egalitarian proposition. A contract if you will, between a newly forming ‘equal’ public and elected leaders who ‘serve’, where older orders of monarchy, oligarchy, aristocracy, and theo–politics are challenged and ‘inverted’, dissent in its various forms has brought in this new order, democracy; this being achieved through constant violent or non–violent negotiation. Aspects of this power inversion are important to probe and re–examine so we can understand, within this framework of supposed egalitarian sharing, the transition of control of resources. If understanding modern nations and their construction aids in understanding the nature of control of resources and their transition, examining the vibrancy of a culture of dissent presents the possibilities of a dynamic negotiation, chosen to be kept alive in a breathing democracy.

So what are these resources that we refer to and how are these shared? And in the democracy that we constantly refer to like our own, the grand new 60 odd year old Indian one, how have these resources been defined?

‘Common’ concepts

There has been a rather poor conceptualisation of the notion of common resources within the discourse of national development. In fact, therehas been a near absent debate in ‘mainstream’ consciousness on issues concerning sharing of resources and cost–benefit analysis of this for governing bodies and ‘users’. Increasingly, one also witnesses big moves toward non–protection by the state of crucial renewable and non–renewable natural resources, more since the neoliberal phase operationalised (around 20 years now). How does one link up people’s politics with consumption, sharing and allocation of resources? This is one area that is not very openly discussed or understood well.

Amongst these resources, land has turned into a rather contentious ‘resource’ which is neither viewed as renewable or non–renewable, nor discussed conceptually as shared, not owned or community owned, but is rather blatantly assumed to only swing in status between the duality of private and public (except forest lands, which are at least, constitutionally protected1 ). Here, ‘public’ is a rather ambiguous misnomer because, public is used for state owned land with the assumption that within a democracy the political rises from and is dependently dialogical with its compositional junta. Far from being a representative overseer of public land and public resources, the state is seen to instead initiate brokerage of public land, construing it’s constitutional sovereignty as ownership.2 The paradoxical relationship here is that, a feigning of democracy takes place with an absence of democratic processes that should facilitate dialogue on usage of land, offer adequate and qualitative (not just perfunctory economic) compensation and address grievances effectively (not as vestigial function). Land as non–perishable, commercially mobilised capital offers a ripe site for the legal and illegal, corrupt and strategic, totally cognisant activities of the state. A rather radical demonstrative dissenting needs to emerge to help challenge and re– envision land utility for community purposes.

Another problem with conceptualisation of the commons lies in the articulation of the notion of commons, as well as the categorisation of diverse common holdings, whether material or mental (intellectual). These various embodiments of commons—ranging from physical–geological, essential resources to socio–cultural commons (shared spaces, habitats, both rural and urban as well as virtual media and communication technologies and platforms)—have not been very closely defined in terms of access, rights, roles and meanings for the users. In fact, there has been a denial of rights to access commons as well as lack of transparency in status of commons in this free market era of the Indian economy.

Given such desperate and shambled state of commons in this South Asian region, one would expect to see massive dissenting and uprisings, and this is exactly the situation as it stands. Yet, we see a crisis within this culture of dissent. A growing chasm, both strategic and situational, separates these critiques of state action and class politics from reaching mainstream public discourse. Media spaces are increasingly impoverished and corporatised and the role for communities to participate in this digital era is minuscule. The state on the other hand shows signs of pseudo democratic, totalitarian governance and quashes these voices of intolerance and critique by using strategic violence. Illegal citizenship discourses are instrumentalised against its delegitimised citizens in various parts of the country (peasant, indigenous, gender groups; forest clearings, urban tree felling, non–transparent, unfair SEZ sanctions, massive road and rail infrastructural projects, unauthorised industrial sanctions, etc).

On the other hand, the culture of dissent has been co–opted the world over in many segments either through strategic CSR–corporate (culprit) funding, or through civil society interventions and the presence of NGOs.3 Furthermore, a deeper malaise, an increasingly intolerant middle class with morals that reflect merciless apathy towards any culture of dissent has emerged.

Law, media and their neoliberal puppeteers

This chapter tries to locate dissent strategically, in the present socio– economic order. First, it looks critically at the spaces of dissent which are rather shrinking one would argue in the present times and secondly it pitches it as one of the most important tools today to be used for a more democratic appropriation of commons. The 1990s represent a very different time for India. The initiation of processes of liberalisation and globalisation had far too many direct influences on the social sphere but what it as done at another level is to give a new cultural identity to the minority Indian middle classes. This class was the one that stood to gain the most from the liberalising of the economy.

A process of de–politicisation of the middle class by creating a cleft from everyday political affairs and simultaneously engaging its energies in becoming a homogenised ideal societal model began, through strategic media and educational programming. On the other hand the so–called free market economy was neither free nor independent of political structures, forming in fact, a venn diagram. Hence what we see here is a slight shift from C Wright Mills’ (1956) elite theory.4 For one, the tools and mechanisms of acquiring this power has changed: the military as Mills pointed out is still used, but the importance of supra national laws and media in creating an under layer of hegemonic middle class ideology is something that requires due attention. Secondly while one sees a sort of retreat of middle class from active day to day politics and a lower caste assertion in day to day (as well as electoral) politics, it is the overlapping of political and new economic structures, their embeddedness and their farcical independent image that now works to the advantage of this class.

The apparent distancing of this new middle class from everyday politics is complemented by their overarching presence in forms of media that speak to the masses—namely mainstream news or entertainment media. The hero of Hindi films has changed.5 A farmer in a far away village or a construction worker in the city does not figure in any ‘mainstream’ narrative, the hero now owns it all. He is urbane, well educated and works in a multinational corporate establishment. On the other hand in a news–obsessed society another transformation of a similar kind is under way—what Satish Deshpande calls ‘from proxy to portrait’.6 Until the 1970s and 80s middle class journalists who claimed to talk / represent the ‘mass’ of India’s poor now claims that ‘aam admi’ category for themselves. The middle class though statistically a small segment, in popular discourse most well represents Indian societal aspirations, aesthetics and dominant pervasive economics. The interests of the lower class/ subaltern groups are partially represented; their dissent ignored (auto sector workers strike Gurgaon)7 and also systematically acted against.

If media is an arm that controls and orchestrates mass psycho–politics, the other middle class controlled operative that helps sustain loops of dominance by regulating behaviour is legal discourse. In general, the perception of arbitration in popular democracies the world over is that it occupies space outside politics. This image may be attributed to a certain level of expertise required in interpreting constitutional language that often gets conflated with attributes of impartiality connoted as an essence to ‘reasonable and rationale’ functioning. The positioning of the judiciary in the Indian federal system also contributes in a major way to this image. Judiciary consists of ‘experts’ rather than representatives, is independent of the parliament and has its own detailed structural hierarchy. In principle, it is to be accessible by all ‘citizens’ it ensures the dispensing of justice on certain egalitarian fundamental principles enshrined in the constitution.

However legal anthropologists/sociologists have been urging us to consider the court as not just an institution for impartial arbitration but as one that is deeply entrenched in political processes. The political and legal are (connected) interspersed with each other. Sociologists like Kannibiran8 argue that the constitution in itself is a political document. While talking about law, class and commons we may need to also hark back and analyse the introduction of law as a way to protect private property. In a sense then, this has a lineage to marking and appropriating commons to serve certain class/ownership interests. It is no surprise that most market fundamentalist, free market proponents urge for the legal to limit its function to its original imagination—that of protecting private property. This history of legally marking out the commons, defining their legal and illegal use and criminalising traditional practices that were centred around these naturally available commons can be traced through the colonial period, like for example, as seen in the history of Bastar (Chhattisgarh).

Gopinath Mohanty’s novel Paraja9 based on a story of a family belonging to the ‘Paraja’ tribe is a nuanced account addressing the issues of exploitation of tribal communities. Ever colonial laws were introduced, commons were marked and appropriated in a non democratic fashion, illegalising and alienating communities, making them illegal in their own land and finally pitting laws of community against trans–regional laws or national laws.

In the context of a city this relationship is even more complex. The ‘proper/ legal citizens’ are the ones who have a rightful access to these commons and in turn the citizenship of an individual is accorded. Hence what one sees here is a somewhat inverted process, where an individual’s legality is decided upon assessment of her usage of commons. To state an example, squatting is a crime only in context of the city where a ‘proper’ urban citizen is defined by an address. The state can withdraw from all it’s responsibilities of providing sanitation, water, schooling to all penumbral citizens sans address documents.

Thus, a tripartite nexus can be established between the law, the media and the neoliberal economy in restricting discursive critique on the current status of commons. The aspect being argued for here is that these instruments of modern democracy might need to be reevaluated, realigned, creative, radical, conceptual and operative frameworks.

Capitalist India?

India’s case is interesting to analyse for it further complicates the above–mentioned matrix. India does not, at least in principle position itself as a capitalist country. Also neoliberal policies are only selectively applied. While a few sectors have absolutely no government control, the government wholly owns some others.10 However, privatisation of public utilities is carried on unhindered in this not so capitalist society. What happens as a consequence is that the state turns an active actor ushering in neo liberal policies. This leads to an inherent contradiction: the privatisation process leads to the retreat of state. Hence at one end the state has complete monopoly over appropriating the commons and on the other, while doing so, it systematically retreats from the public sphere and positions itself as unaccountable to ground effects of such privatisation.

Ideas of inclusive growth or development are thus replaced by rhetoric like better efficiency and value derived through market competition. This absolution of responsibility of the state would also result in heavy monitoring and surveillance of the commons and public realms, increased investment in crime control coupled with usage of ‘extreme intolerance’ rhetoric and demands for harsher forms of punishment. These symptoms are reminiscent of what writer, researcher Philomena Mariani describes in her account of neoliberal emergence in American governance.11 One is thus left with narrow definitions of permissible citizenship and democratic participation, as well as access to the commons and participation in crucial resource utility and management decisions.

From fuzziness to fullness: Illegality

Partha Chatterjee, in his work on Indian cities12 lingers on this idea/ premise observing the transformation in imagination of spaces. He points out the early ideological stances in forms of city planning, which considered the poor as integral to portraying reality. Chatterjee sites this example: in the 1960s and 70s the railway ministry took into account the sections of population that will travel ticketless while formulating budget projections, whereas officially, ticketless travelling was an offence. There seemed to exist this other layer of accommodation within structural legal, official fronts. In the neoliberal state of today, however, population groups are banished from the imagination of spaces that are now tagged ‘Shanghai–Mumbai’ or ‘Bangalore, India’s Singapore’. Complimenting their absence in planning is the fact that the last decade has seen massive demolitions and clean up drives in almost all metropolitan cities in the country. These drives began in the late 1980s alongside relaxation of various laws related to land like the Urban Land Ceiling and Coastal Regulation. These regulations had hitherto disallowed land that was the commons to be monopolised by a few rich in the city.

This phenomenon is not only restricted at governmental/administrative and legal levels. A whole lot of ‘citizen groups’ since the 1990s have tried to reclaim spaces in cities, mobilising aware middle class citizens around the green agenda. The inherent contradiction in this kind of reclamation is that the population group which exploits the environment the most, mobilises itself for the benefit of the city by reclaiming its green spaces. This, they do by ridding themselves of the squalor. (For a detailed account of middle class mobilisations read Janaki Nair on protests of citizen groups in Bengaluru at Cubbon Park). This sort of non–inclusive ecological activism has also had detrimental effects and violation of rights for many ‘fringe’ communities inhabiting the city. With little means to register a protest, often, urban communities outside the purview of the urban middle class (despite maintaining relations of economic and service centric transactions, like street vendors13 ) are deprived of their right to occupy and utilise urban space.

Reflections on dissent

Delegitimising dissent

Similar contestations are experienced for all forms of common property/ resources outside city spaces. While the administration stance is that of harnessing the resources for a planned and sustained development of the country, similar population groups always face the brunt of this development. There is a process of ‘othering’ that happens, those who want development and those who are against the national interests. A George Bush or a Lenin who would say, ‘If you are not with us then you are with the enemy’. This phenomenon is common to all movements/ people’s struggles in India whatever be their nature, violent or non–violent. Not only are the leaders of these movements brandished as those against national interests but any form of association with dissenting groups is suspect. Dr. Binayak Sen’s14 arrest and branding as maoist sympathiser by the state, media and police is an example that reveals the future of dissent. This psycho political drama has continued in similar contexts in the past decade by using armed forces and the police that uses retention, interrogation and booking methods that are inherently unlawful and unconstitutional.15

One needs to take a moment to identify two simultaneous processes are operant. One is the implication that ‘national interest’ is not the sum total of the interest of all communities but it is rather like in synecdoche where the interests of one group take over and represent larger categorical general interest. By then juxtaposing this ‘othering’ process with the control of the minority middle class over media and law, this image of the other is constantly echoed and internalised. The voice of the other is systematically then overlooked, silenced and often criminalised so as to promote this homogeneity in the idea of development. Again this process takes place at various levels. While one will discuss at length the overt ways of silencing these dissenting voices but it is their absence from pedagogical practices, mainstream media and the overarching legal—philosophical ideology that penetrates the subconscious of the society.

Denoting an exclusive space for dissent, the creation of Azad Maidan in Mumbai is a good example for overt ways of silencing dissent. Here is a case where foremost, dissent gets spatially limited and a process of alienation from this ‘disruption’ can be achieved. Any form of protest was seen as disrupting regular life of the citizens. This in a way differentiated the protesters from normal citizens, made reclamation of any other public space for dissenting illegal, and in a sense helped the entire administrative machinery ignore such dissent as they were now spatially confined. The other more covert silencing of protests has been against the allocation of land to TATA motors in Singur by the Left wing ruling party. The violent strategies and methods used in this case demonstrate the media–law–and–political– power nexus used to criminalise an entire geographic village/settlement/ community.16 That is to say that the structures that exclude a whole lot of population, be it Right wing or Left will move towards a certain military form of authority against democratic principles.

Stigma of dissenting publics

What is a dissenting voice? Is it the non–agreeable component in a dialogue gone awry, or is it a voice that raises issues of critical politics when no equal and fair dialogue has been established? Also, is dissent critique, or voice for justice, or attention seeking and troublemaking? It depends on who tells the story. Perhaps then, to define dissent, one might need to get specifically to cases where dissent was expressed as well as to closely look at forms of dissent, which might be beyond the scope of this chapter.

With brevity, if one were to scale the breath of locations for dissent, from political lobbying to non–violent protests, from ‘violent’ insurgencies to passive–aggressive civil disobedience movements, this region continues to see it all. From ‘subaltern groups’ to middle class ‘citizens’, from political leaders to trade and labour union leaders, from journalists to academics, there have been many historic processes and events of dissent. And the sites of dissent have been as important as the context. Is it an ongoing movement in the middle of the Narmada valley, or in caste or oppressive feudalism ridden regions of Bihar, Bengal or Andhra Pradesh, or is the dissent of women from village of Mandal in the upper Alakananda valley (of the then Uttar Pradesh region), locally mobilised to hug trees, and yet others—activists with slogans on urban city streets?

Sites of action thus seem to hint at this interdependent relationship between dissent and the commons. When the commons belonging to a community is threatened using invasive economic or political forces, the resultant cultural, geographic loss would prompt the interdependent community to resist. In a world where older contexts and interactions of community have been replaced through urbanisation, isolation, re– grouping and alienation, the presence of these common sites, like streets, public spaces, parks and other non–private social spaces and virtual forums (increasingly tending towards the internet) allow for a dissenting public to re–connect and reform their sense of communities in flux. Ultimately, a coming together of the sites of dissent, whether for preservation of commons, or as assertion of commonality, would determine an emergence of a larger resistance that would be heeded to. These resistances would lead to dialogue on the evidently ecological and intangible contexts, like culture and gender, to emerge and challenge the prevalent, one–track political and economic discourse.

Contesting the culture of dissent

The aesthetics of the dissenting groups also seems to indicate how mobilisation happens, who participates and if the media will pick it up; these perceptions and permissibilities being shaped within an emblematic element of our pedagogic system, the school history lesson. Subliminal messages on the aesthetics of dissent are presented in sub–textual tone—alluding to dissent as ‘pre–modern’ while references and study of Indian independence and ‘modern Indian history’ are dealt with in the classroom. These judgments/contexts of approval of dissent acquire imprecise cultural connotations and stay embedded. For example, Gandhi’s quite modern ‘quit foreign economy’ call—the swadesi movement—is distorted through reinterpretation of swadesi as an apolitical, simplified act of cultural loyalty and traditionalist morality.

These undertones for struggle seem to suggest quite subtly, that the nation and it’s democratic modernity would grant, by virtue of it’s constitutional contract, everything that is wise and seen as required by the ‘father/patriarch’, the Indian state. What would result in a democracy as a critical, questioning and participative publics is reduced to mute obedient and subservient subjects—praja or mindless messy masses—junta.

Using the aesthetic to reinterpret his dissent (loin cloth, nude aging masculinity, stick, charka, benevolent smile), a dissenting Gandhi is presented as an apolitical saint devoid of materialism and is reduced to a relic of the past, with no context or relevance in modern events. Similarly, the categorisation and empty eulogising of ‘extremists’ like Subash Chandra Bose or Bhaghat Singh also order to mind, different fictionalised aesthetics—fetishising a coat and the hat in the case of Bhagat Singh for example—as providing ‘legitimate lineage’ for the post–independent State to justify demands of hyper–patriotism from the civilian and legitimisation of building forces of militarised defence. The state co–opts such lineages to legitimise its problematic military and militant rule in ‘problem areas’ of the country and region (Kashmir, the North East, Sri Lanka, etc) and impinges on the middle class, militancy or nationalist extremism as guardian of nationality.

This partial ‘making myths’ of Indian history within split tonal narratives of pre–modern and modern (the modernising nation being placed squarely within a latter ‘golden’ period of nation building and opportunity access) has resulted in meticulous splitting in the ‘publicness’. Citizenry of the nation’s many socio–economic fragments is slotted into oversimplified triads of civilian, peasant, soldier (with differential citizenship rights). These are further classified and declassified and granted or denied citizenship through the aamadmi discourse, using media as a site of instrumentation of this rhetoric (radio and TV). Thus, post–independent, modern day dissent is delegitimised within the dominant public narrative. The Indian state triumphs in the fact that it has it’s middle classes interpret dissent in the public sphere as pre–modern and non–contextual (activism led by idealist jholawalas) or illegal and illegitimate (peasant, adivasi and other subaltern group struggles).

Formally, the nation and the publics eulogise the largest dissent in our conscious memory—the Indian independence movement led by Gandhi—but the formation of nation seems to have delegitimised the existent contexts to express dissatisfaction with government systems, with justice and with constitutional limitations. A systematic alienation from the culture and context of dissent has been achieved, particularly through mainstream middle class that seems to grow in size and, more importantly, exerts economic muscle. Pedagogical spaces and documentation and communication of history also seem culpable in this process. Dissent fetishised as the Indian independence movement alone in the school space secures legitimacy only when a pre–independent India fights for swaraj. Under British rule, these ‘illegal’ public dissenting acts are dubbed as acts of fighting for freedom. A vacuum then exists post Indian independence in terms of stating, documenting and acknowledging reasons for dissent, the struggles for dialogue, successes and fallouts while working towards an Indian union, the consequent economic crises of the 1960s, Nehruvian development plans and their violence and other threats to Indian democratic expression.

Protest and campaign

Political expression in urban metropolis has turned ritualised morcha or dharna, (to use local terms for protests), terms loaded with derisive and derogatory connotations for nuisance causing or disruptive agents. The middle class tends to deride and ignore nonconformist dissenters. Politicians tend to isolate and place out of context, dissenting publics, away from any political site of action. In New Delhi, the country’s capital, for example, protestors have been moved out and away from the parliament houses and from view of politicians two decades ago.

Some recent alarming developments like sanctification drives in cities that rid us of ‘undesirable Indianness’ are somewhat strategic and haphazard operations to weed out occupants of all sorts—protestors, walkers, hawkers, beggars, playing children, lovers. These drives have been underway with intent to squash expression by attacking and criminalising mere public presence.17

In Bengaluru, similar drives to control and make citizenship and access exclusive18 and public presence into a serviced existence have cropped up since governing bodies set about sprucing up and moulding the city into a ‘city clone’—‘Bangalore to Singapore’.19 Singapore, as many know, has moved towards banning all forms of public acts of dissent20 and it looks like Bengaluru would be pushed into such a space as well. The ‘modern day’ south Asian/Indian pavement/street thus becomes a contested and political site for public expression and protest calling for a mix of conventional and creative reclamation of space.

‘Campaign’ on the other hand, is a term operating within activism, politics, journalism and advertising providing unique angles through which to process its operant connotations. As terminology, it requires wise subjective examination if one were to arrive at a campaign’s located intent. A longer multipronged process involving public protests, dialogue with diverse stakeholders (state and public), lobbying, sensitisation drives and digital activism, processes that can intersect with research, excavating information and mobilising legal processes, allow a campaign to operate with longer vision and to produce tangible outcomes. However, an independent and critical approach to the term campaign needs to be underway. Studying campaigns that have been instrumental in redefining commons discourse can be useful in understanding dissent as short term voicing out of public discontentment along with following up and anchoring the discontentment within processes that might facilitate a substantial addressing of problems/critique.

Digital promises

Massive proliferation of communications technology due to decreasing production costs and affordability coupled with a lack of regulation policies have allowed creative community usage in the past. Over the years, technologies like radio, TV, cable transmission technology and the internet have emerged and been appropriated by both the state and the publics. Media policy has not been far behind. ‘Progressive’ policies such as Ministry of Information and Broadcasting’s Community Radio Guidelines21 emerged in 2006 following a strategic and long drawn nationwide contestation for community air space. This was a nationwide NGO and media practitoner led movement towards acquiring community participation in radio media production and management since the Supreme Court ruled that radio waves are public property in 1995.22 Yet, there are multiple hurdles set in place by articulation and demonstration of ‘community’, processes for acquiring licenses and securing clearance. Media for social change is imagined as only pertaining to ‘rural’ populations and various other segments and sectors cannot access policy benefits even if they did manage to transcend technological and digital divides. The ministry is also eyeing control of analog TV, strategic elimination of cable TV networks in the coming years and putting in place telecom related new media regulations. Free and open software movements, (their philosophies more than their products) might have given rise to direct unregulated community affordability and access23 to new media hardware like mobile phones, with potential for expression expanding. Despite this euphoria, very few campaigns and dissenting critiques have mobilised and operationalised through new media tools and often fall short of generating enough ‘motility’ to participate and radicalise.

Acquiring agency: Vandal visual art

North America in the 1970s, New York city especially, saw youth gang members (comprising black youth) painting slogans, figures and symbols on city subway trains and downtown city walls. While quite a few graffiti messages carried radical political ideas, most youth gangs perceived the activity as not expression of content alone, but as self produced as well. The act itself aimed at reclaiming downtown urban spaces. People against such graffiti i.e. the administration and certain white citizen groups, viewed this act very differently. That graffiti later came to be celebrated by art magazines and in pop art exhibitions did not in any way contribute towards changing the attitude of administration towards it. ‘Vandalism’, the very legal term used, under which graffiti art gets criminalised. The state, on the other hand, commissioned public art murals—the graffiti and the murals were in a sense, similar competing mediums in public spheres, yet the legitimacy of one outdid the other.

However, graffiti art has captured the imaginations of Europe and the Americas with the youth and artists from various segments of society, participating in representing their articulation of the city. Graffiti art in India has been seen as wall slogans and art and political posters of the Left or of popular entertainment cinema. Of late, the Indian state has also come down heavily on poster art and film posters, using precisely the same argument—that of vandalism. In the light of global city envisioning and with questions of permissible aesthetics, the state now hopes to control and propagate rhetoric it pleases by cutting off access to common spaces like walls that formed the pulse of urban cross class dialogue and as political reclamation.

Performance as communication: Street theatre

Street theatre as a medium in India has been used for communicating political messages by many groups that were Left leaning. Theatre artists and thinkers like Safdar Hashmi,24 with communist convictions but no apparent political affiliations also took up to the form to communicate and dialogue about contentious contemporary political issues. Today, street theatre has become a medium of communication for NGOs and the form is seeing a decline in the spontaneous nature of community expression, uprising and dissent. The medium presents a lot of potential for reclaiming public communication and dialogue, as well as exchange of political views through expression. Many groups, some like the Bengaluru based Maraa25 (a media and arts collective) have begun to ask questions of aesthetics in forms of protest that could lead to a more dialogical and participative dissenting. By reinventing performance for the public space, the forums and collectives hope to connect back to longer processes of dialogue and to create a context for understanding dissent. This becomes a political act in the face of increased policing and governmental control of protests and gatherings. Performance thus brings to the fore a reclamation of both spaces and reinterpretation of rights in the hyper–regulated nationalised state.

Endnotes

1 Forest Rights Act, (FRA) (2006).

2 Ramanathan, Usha, A Word on Eminent Domain. Published in Lyla Mehta ed., Displaced by Development—Confronting Marginalisation and Gender Injustice, (2009), p. 133.

3 Chossudovsky, Michael, Manufacturing Dissent’: the Anti–globalization Movement is Funded by the Corporate Elites. The People’s Movement has been Hijacked. Globalresearch, (Sept 20, 2010) http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=21110

4 Mills, Wright C, The Power Elite, New York, Oxford University Press 1956.

5 Srinivas, Alam, Horizon In The Middle. A playful reverie about the changing faces of the Indian middle class, as reflected by Bollywood. Outlook Magazine. (21 May 2007) http://www.outlookindia.com/printarticle.aspx?234684

6 Deshpande, Satish, After Culture: Renewed Agendas for the Political Economy of India Cultural Dynamics, (July 1998) 10: p 147–169.

7 Gurgaon auto unions’ strike turns violent. Zee News, (October 20, 2009). http:// www.zeenews.com/news571977.html

8 Kannabiran K G, The wages of impunity, power justice and human rights, Delhi, Orient Longman 2003.

9 Mohanty, Gopinath, Paraja (English translation by B.K.Das from original Oriya novel Paraja, 1945) Oxford University Press, Delhi 1987.

10 Public Enterprises Survey, (2005–06) .http://dpe.nic.in/survey0506/vol1/vol1ch6.pdf

11 Mariani, Philomena, ‘Overview: Law, Order, and Neoliberalism.’ Social Justice 28:3 (2001): 2–4. http://www.socialjusticejournal.org/SJEdits/85Edit.html

12 Chatterjee, Partha, ‘Are Indian Cities Becoming Bourgeois at Last?’. Indira Chandrasekhar and Peter C. Seel ed., Body.City: Siting Contemporary Culture in India, Berlin and New Delhi, 2003 p 172.

13 Street vendors plan protest against eviction. The Hindu (Bangalore, 10/09/2009) http://www.hindu.com/2009/09/10/stories/2009091060550400.htm

14 Wikipedia.org. Dr Binayak Sen. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binayak_Sen

15 Mehta, Swati. Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative Report, ‘Feudal Forces, Democratic Nations: Police accountability in Commonwealth South Asia 2007. www.humanrightsinitiative.org/.../feudal_forces_democratic_nations_police_ acctability_in_cw_south_asia.pdf

16 CNN–IBN, (Jan 10, 2008) Nano rules Autoexpo India, amid Singur protests. http:/ /ibnlive.in.com/news/nano–rules–autoexpo–india–amid–singur–protests/56189–3.html

17 Menon, Nivedita Levelling the playing field before the Commonwealth Games, (Mar 21, 2010). http://kafila.org/2010/03/21/levelling–the–playing–field–before–the– commonwealth–games/

18 Protest over government park ID cards, Press Coverage Report, Environment Support Group, ESG.ORG. Bangalore 2009. http://www.esgindia.org/campaigns/commons/press/Protest_Coverage.pdf

19 Nair, Janaki. Singapore Is Not Bangalore’s Destiny. Economic and Political Weekly, (Apr. 29—May 5, 2000). Vol.35, No.18 pp.1512–1514; http://www.jstor.org/pss/4409222

20 Qing, KohGui, Singapore bans Myanmar protest at ASEAN summit. Reuters.com. (Sat Nov 17, 2007). http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSSIN377820071117

21 Community Radio Guidelines. Ministry of Information and Broadcasting.GoI 2006. http://www.mib.nic.in/ShowContent.aspx?uid1=2&uid2=3&uid3=0&uid4= 0&uid5=0&uid6=0&uid7

22 The airwaves are the people’s property The Supreme Court ruling of 1995. India Together (July 2001). http://www.indiatogether.org/campaigns/freeinfo/sc95.htm

23 Though many hurdles to access–affordability still remain.

24 Wikipedia.org. SafdarHashmi. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safdar_Hashmi

25 Maraa website. www.maraa.in