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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.

Mumbai Moves Forward

How Metro-3 is giving the city its time back

For decades, Mumbai’s local trains have been the city’s heartbeat, moving lakhs with unmatched pace and reliability. But the truth is, even with that backbone, commuters are still losing hours every day. Hours lost to traffic, delays, the grind of uncertainty. And when you lose time, you lose opportunity. As someone in the mobility sector, I believe: time isn’t just a convenience, it’s an economic asset.


So, when I look at Metro Line 3, I don’t just see another metro line corridor. I see a reset-button for a city that is too fast to stay stuck. Metro Line 3’s 33.5 km fully underground corridor with trains running at 85 km/hr finally gives Mumbai a way to move that isn’t held back by traffic or the monsoon. It won’t eliminate delays overnight, but it will make everyday travel more predictable and dependable.


Saving even 45 minutes each way gives a commuter almost 400 hours a year back a full workweek every month, or the time to finally upskill or simply have more dinners with family. Scale that to a million commuters, and Mumbai unlocks 400 million hours of human potential every year. This isn’t a minor efficiency tweak it’s time and opportunity returned to the people who power the city.


For years, Mumbaikars have been forced to budget for uncertainty, paying surge-priced cab fares, shelling out for parking, or leaving unreasonably early “just in case” traffic delays arrivals. When mobility becomes more reliable and predictable, it doesn’t just lower stress, it eliminates a recurring cost we’ve all quietly accepted as normal. A typical commuter shifting from cabs to the Metro could save over Rs 2 lakh a year when you factor in both reduced travel costs and the value of nearly 400 hours of time regained annually. This is the change I truly care about: a city that honors the time and earnings of the people who make it move.


With the local trains above and Metro Line 3 below, I see a Mumbai which now moves on two unstoppable tracks. Not just faster but forward.


(The writer is Co-Founder of Yatri-City Travel Guide. Views personal.)

 

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