top of page

By:

Correspondent

23 August 2024 at 4:29:04 pm

Red Romance

For long, the Naxalite in news was recognisable by the gun. But the more insidious version of Naxalism has never needed a rifle. It has thrived in varsity classrooms and newspaper and magazine columns, fostered by men and women sympathetic to it. These academics and other members of the so-called intelligentsia have long enjoyed their status as ‘respectable dissenters’ even when their politics offered intellectual alibis for Naxals carrying guns. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s recent...

Red Romance

For long, the Naxalite in news was recognisable by the gun. But the more insidious version of Naxalism has never needed a rifle. It has thrived in varsity classrooms and newspaper and magazine columns, fostered by men and women sympathetic to it. These academics and other members of the so-called intelligentsia have long enjoyed their status as ‘respectable dissenters’ even when their politics offered intellectual alibis for Naxals carrying guns. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s recent Independence Day warning about “dimaagi Naxals” should therefore not be dismissed as another political label. His larger point was that an insurgency does not survive on ammunition alone. It survives on ideas and people willing to make violence appear morally fashionable. The most revealing feature of India’s Maoist movement was never simply its brutality. It was the strange attraction it exercised over sections of the metropolitan Left elite. The Naxalite with an AK-47 could be transformed into a romantic revolutionary while the policeman he killed became an instrument of an oppressive state. This was not merely naïveté. At its ugliest, it was the intellectual laundering of political violence. The fantasy of the romantic revolutionary has always been seductive. In this narrative, amplified through sympathetic media priding itself on telling ‘truth to power,’ India was not a constitutional democracy struggling with inequality and corruption but an inherently illegitimate state waiting to be overthrown. In the minds of this elite Left, Maoist violence has often been recast as resistance while attacks on infrastructure as blows against capitalism. The armed overthrow of the Indian republic was the liberation they craved for. Some of India’s most celebrated intellectuals have flirted dangerously close to that moral inversion. The issue here is whether intellectual prestige can be used to sanitise an ideology whose practitioners have murdered civilians, policemen and public servants and terrorised some of India’s poorest districts. A university cannot be the place where Maoist romanticism acquires the legitimacy of a fashionable campus cause. Professors who turn armed insurgents into heroic revolutionaries are not merely exercising academic freedom. If they knowingly excuse violence, they are helping to construct the moral vocabulary that makes violence possible. Let’s be clear here. A professor who criticises the Indian state is not a Naxal while a journalist who exposes state excesses is not an enemy of India. But an intellectual who repeatedly excuses, glorifies or rationalises political violence cannot hide behind the word ‘dissent.’ India has paid an enormous price for the Maoist fantasy. Thousands have died. Entire regions were held back by fear while development was obstructed. The people supposedly being liberated were often the first to suffer. The armed Naxal is now being pushed towards extinction. But the Indian republic cannot afford to leave behind the romantic mythology that made the gun respectable. A democracy can tolerate dissent. It should never be expected to tolerate the glorification of those who seek its violent destruction.

Bridge to nowhere

The tragic collapse of a rusty footbridge in Pune district exposes Maharashtra’s decaying infrastructure, unregulated tourism and political cynicism.

Pune: The recent crumbling of an iron footbridge over the Indrayani River in Kundmala, Maval taluka, killing four and injuring several more, has become yet another symbol of the convergence between state negligence and India’s runaway tourism boom. As monsoon-swollen waters rushed beneath it, the 470-foot-long, 4-foot-wide relic of the past gave way under the weight of more than a hundred tourists and five motorcycles, many of them leaning over to take in the view or a selfie.


That such a structure, known to be corroded and clearly marked as unsafe, was still being used by the public is damning enough. But the bridge’s collapse is merely the latest consequence of a wider malaise in Maharashtra’s governance: a combination of infrastructural decay, political opportunism and a tourism culture that now borders on addiction.


Local authorities have done little to dispel the impression of ineptitude. Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar said the bridge was “old and rusted” while blaming crowding caused its collapse. This was an admission of administrative failure cloaked in bureaucratic vagueness. Even more tellingly, it was revealed that Rs. 8 crore (roughly $1 million) had been sanctioned for a new bridge before the last state elections. Yet, according to local villagers and opposition leaders, not a single pile of concrete was laid. Only survey markings were made.


Mukund Kirdat of the Aam Aadmi Party has accused the ruling BJP of mere tokenism. Sanjay Raut of the Shiv Sena (UBT) demanding both Ajit Pawar and local MLA Sunil Shelke be held directly accountable. Their allegations find ample support in the facts on the ground. In 2022, then Public Works Minister Ravindra Chavan reportedly ordered a proposal for a new bridge. Nothing came of it.


Thus, the public was left with a metal husk, rusting and visibly weakening, despite repeated warnings. A police signboard cautioning against crowding and vehicular use was found buried under the debris. A concerned citizen even tipped off the police hours before the collapse that the bridge was dangerously overcrowded. Officers briefly intervened and left. The crowds, naturally, returned.


That said, the heedlessness of tourists was also evident. Lured by social media reels and the promise of ‘nature escapes,’ many rode two-wheelers onto the narrow bridge or leaned precariously over its edges for photographs. A flimsy bridge can be condemned and roped off, but in the face of viral content and a long weekend, such barriers are easily ignored.


A wider phenomenon

The tragedy at Kundmala is symptomatic of a subtler, wider phenomenon that is the post-pandemic tourism craze that has gripped India’s middle class. Once confined to occasional holidays, urban wanderlust has become compulsive. Every long weekend sees highways out of Pune and Mumbai choked with SUVs heading to forts, dams and nature retreats in the Western Ghats. The once-quiet hill stations of Panchgani, Wai and Lonavala now witness gridlocks every Saturday and Sunday. Local police forces are overwhelmed.


This influx has transformed the rural economy. In districts like Maval, agriculture is increasingly sidelined in favour of roadside dhabas, Airbnb-style farmhouses and ‘eco-resorts’ with little ecological grounding. While a veneer of prosperity has emerged, the primary beneficiaries are often politically connected landowners or local elites. Farmhouses, according to some insiders, double as venues for political hospitality offering entertainment, and occasionally more, to grease the wheels of bureaucratic favour.


The Lavasa and Aamby Valley projects near Pune demonstrated the early convergence of real estate and escapism. Their partial successes have inspired copycats across Maharashtra. Landowners, eager to cash in, plaster the region with hoardings promising “nature with luxury.” Meanwhile, their haphazard development often flouts zoning rules, water limits and safety norms. The authorities either look the other way or are complicit.


Imposed restrictions

District Collector Jitendra Dudi has now imposed restrictions around popular hotspots like Bhushi Dam and Sinhagad, hoping to curb accidents during the rainy season. He has appealed to tourists to stay away from dangerous zones, including Kundmala, where 14 people have died since 2005. But such appeals rarely suffice against a cultural shift that prizes Instagram moments over personal safety.


Tourism, if properly regulated, can indeed benefit rural communities. But the problem in Maharashtra (and India more broadly) is that such regulation is often reactive, not preventive. Safety audits of existing structures are rare. Crowd-control measures are minimal. Warning signs are ignored. Planning is dictated by the electoral calendar, not public need.


The Kundmala bridge collapse was not an act of God. It was an entirely preventable tragedy, made inevitable by indifference. It reveals, in miniature, how India’s obsession with growth and spectacle, whether in infrastructure or leisure, often overlooks the prosaic but essential work of maintenance and regulation.


If the state government is serious about preventing another such disaster, it must do more than sanction funds. It must spend them and then build and it must regulate crowds before they form. Tourism may fuel the local economy, but if left ungoverned, it will continue to erode the very foundations on which it stands.


Comments

bottom of page