CITYZEN. Our cities have an opinion problem

The controversy around Sunny Leone in Bengaluru has added another dimension to the debate on fringe groups in our cities. Prompted presumably by her cinematic history, some activists had protested against Leone’s plans to perform at a New Year’s Eve celebration. The Government and the police were ambivalent enough about granting the required permissions to encourage the actor to cancel the programme. This has reinforced a legitimate question which had arisen earlier in the reactions to the film Padmavati : can a fringe group decide what is culturally acceptable in our cities?

The answer is complicated. This complexity becomes evident when we place the Leone episode alongside another protest in the same city. Not too long ago, Bengaluru had seen protests against a steel flyover. It was not that the project did not have its supporters. There were those in north Bengaluru who believed they would benefit from the project. The quicker travel time to Bengaluru airport from the city centre would have also increased the potential earnings of taxi drivers. Yet, the middle class support for the protest ensured the government gave in and cancelled the project. This was celebrated as a victory for civil society.

For anyone interested in the governance of our cities, the two episodes throw up an uncomfortable question: What exactly distinguishes a civil society movement that is to be celebrated from a fringe group that is to be derided?

By definition, a fringe group does not represent a majority. But this would be true of most civil society protests as well. In fact, when we look at the protests against Padmavati in north Indian towns, the so-called fringe groups were able to generate substantial numbers — far greater than the numbers that protested against the steel flyover in Bengaluru.

Once we take the numbers present at the protests out of the equation what distinguishes a fringe group from a civil society protest would usually be that civil society movements have a more rational and morally justified case to make. This is a view that may have been dominant in the past, but is beginning to fray at the edges.

The dependence on rationality in trying to change urban public opinion is not what it was, anywhere in the world. Much has been written about Trump’s reliance on the baser instincts of his constituency. And Indian politicians have, over a much longer period, treated some issues as being matters of faith, and hence not subject to the rules of rational discourse. With rational argument no longer the sole determinant of the direction public discourse will take, the debates in our cities are increasingly between those who would like to take a somewhat old world liberal view, and those who insist their beliefs do not require rational confirmation. We could choose to cloak one in the robes of civil society and the other in the darker image of fringe groups, but the problem remains.

These two diametrically opposed views dominate the discourse in our cities, and they are both eager to take their dispute to the streets.

If this recourse to the streets has not led to violence, it is largely because of an unwritten code that they do not do so at the same time. But even if such niceties do exist today, it may be too much to expect that they would survive the pressures of an increasingly combative public discourse. Indeed, if the aggressive conflict between these groups, which is already evident in TV studios, spills over onto the streets, the possibility of violence cannot be ruled out. Ideally such disputes would be resolved, or at least made less intnse, through dialogue. But the contempt on both sides takes this option off the table. Far from seeking to understand the position being taken by the other side, there is typically little effort to keep from shouting at each other. In these circumstances, any expectation of a meeting ground between the two groups would be misplaced.

The task of ensuring the conflict does not spill on to the streets would then fall on other institutions. Other major cities in the world have fallen back on their elected institutions to arrive at a broad consensus. This option is unfortunately very constrained in Indian cities. Civil society typically has little more than contempt for elected representatives. Elected representatives in turn are not beyond using fringe groups to promote their agenda. But unless we can get the discourse between the two groups into elected bodies, Indian streets could be witness to much worse than traffic congestion.

The writer teaches at the School of Social Science, National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bengaluru