On the Delhi Metro

As the grey train hurtled towards me on that gloomy day, I stood still and waited in anticipation of what lay in store for me aboard. I felt muscles twitch as a general air of uneasiness spread around me. Soon, the grey train opened its doors to us and exclaimed, "HUDA City Centre." My fellow passengers ran helter-skelter and sought desperately to seat themselves. Confused, I read the bright green signs that urged me not to sit on seats reserved for women, the elderly, and physically challenged persons. I wandered down to the next compartment. It was almost empty. I wondered why others didn't join me. Perhaps there's nothing like the warmth of humanity in winter.

In two minutes, we were at the next station, IFFCO Chowk, and in another two minutes, at MG Road station. Office clerks, call center employees, college

students, housewives, children, and senior citizens scrambled in through the doors to find places to sit. I pulled out a book and pretended to read. On my left sat a couple eager to know each other better. This quiet, brooding call-center employee sat listening to his partner's endless explanations for what she perceived as her inadequacies. "You know I feel my English and Hindi are worsening here in Gurgaon. I really did speak well in Bara Banki." Hmmm, muttered her boyfriend. "You know I don't really drink. It was just that one time when my Assamese flatmates forced me to drink and I got so drunk that I puked all night. These Assamese girls do it every week. I just don't know how they manage!" Hmmm, muttered her boyfriend again. "I hope you don't believe all the rumors about me in the office. They're all lies." Let's go, he said this time, the station's here.

"Guru Dronacharya," the announcer screamed. What a delicious irony that the ancient Mahabharata tale about Gurgaon has found favor with the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation in 2010!

In walked Old Father Time himself through the gates. Dressed in a yellow silk kurta and a Nehru jacket, Father Time smiled and seated himself next to me. "Where are you going?" he asked. "Patel Chowk," I replied. "Long way to go, my boy. These coaches are old, you see, but the new ones they've got will be faster and smoother without the jerkiness we have now." Hmmm, I responded, wondering how he knew about the DMRC's plans. I suppose my laconic responses put off the old man. So he began talking to a rotund gentleman who seemed intrigued by the tidbit about the new coaches. "Bhaisahab, there is no hope for us Hindus nowadays. See how the government equivocates when it comes to terrorism. They didn't even want to hang Afzal Guru." Bhaisahab concurred: "And now they speak of Hindu terror. What a travesty!" That comment clearly struck a chord. It promised to pave the way for a long discourse on minority appeasement and Hindu insecurities in contemporary India. But nothing of the sort happened because a young, bespectacled man in a skullcap and sherwani stood beside us. The joys of Indian secularism!

If you look outside from the window of your metro coach

on the Delhi-Gurgaon route, you will discover much that had been hitherto hidden. Greenery everywhere with only small shanties breaking up the verdant landscape. Hardly any people to be seen in this bustling metropolis bursting at its seams. The orderliness of the armed forces inside their residential colonies. The opulence of farmhouses that are exposed now to the public eye. And the elegance of the Qutb Minar towering over Mehrauli. Thereafter, we are creatures of the dark in the underworld. Who knows what's happening above us? A mosque had been demolished that day, in fact, and Mathura Road and its vicinity were jam-packed with cars. But we couldn't know that inside our metro compartments. What we did see and know, however, is that we were packed together with a motley bunch of human specimens with different colors and smells enveloping us. The rough-and-ready manner of democracy, Indian-style.

Aboard the Metro, we were left to decide whether to offer seats to ladies and older people.

Every time someone offered his seat to a lady (not often!)he seemed positively pleased with himself. The elderly were not so lucky. They had to request seats, explaining that they had a long distance to travel, and even then, sitting could not be guaranteed. When an old lady came in at Jorbagh, ostensibly after cleaning some posh houses there, no one bothered when she asked for a seat. She deserved a seat under two of the three categories of the "abnormal" (old and female), but she apparently did not know that the unwritten class dynamics of Delhi had permeated underground into the Metro too. Unwritten also meant unspoken since no one offered an explanation for their rudeness: they simply looked away or continued talking as if they had not heard the woman at all. When I offered my seat to the lady, a young student with his ears plugged to his I-Pod threatened to shove his way ahead of her. I had to physically block his way to let her sit. Everyone looked displeased. An unwritten, unspoken law of the city had been broken.

Another such law concerns women. The DMRC has recently extended North India's zenana culture into the public transport system of the future. A reserved coach for women essentially means segregation. It is quite obvious that the majority of women will choose to avoid getting

their butts pinched or breasts grabbed in the other coaches. But with the new reserved coach for women, the "normal" passengers (male, aged 15-60 years) can rule the roost elsewhere and ignore the bright green signs that dare to impose a kind of civility in the early days of the Metro. Butt-pinching and breast-grabbing are now perfectly acceptable in three-quarters of every Metro train. Indeed, they are vital to maintaining the new zenana culture: "segregate, or else we'll, molest you" is the message to women.

On my way back, two call-center employees sat beside me all the way to Gurgaon. They seemed less-than-thrilled by their jobs. But they were even less thrilled by their friend Raghu, who seemed to them to be engaged forever in long telephonic conversations with his girlfriend. "What's there to talk to these bitches? They're good to fuck now and then after work. And it's great on the weekends. But there's nothing really to talk to them about." His misogynist co-worker agreed heartily: "I don't waste my time like that. Better to go out drinking with your buddies. Or stay home playing video games. These bitches are so demanding: if you get talking to them, they won't let you do anything else in life." This is how the "normal" passengers of the Metro are expected to behave. The misogyny of the streets is normalized now as it gets braided with the zenana culture of the old courtly elites. This is the culture of neoliberalism: selective appropriation of cultural pasts to reinforce existing power equations.

But neoliberalism is not simply trade liberalization and privatization,as many are wont to believe. The Delhi Metro is a dramatic statement by the Government of India in an era where the rotten core of private sector corporations has come to the fore like never before. Leviathan, too, can be efficient and profitable as it builds critical infrastructure and breathes life anew into the city. The state, as entrepreneur as well as regulator, is the new face of neoliberal reforms in India. If M-NREGA

is its most visible face in rural India today, the Delhi Metro is the blueprint for urban transformations in India today. Move over, Narayan Murthy and the BATF. Metro coaches are awash with public sector advertisements for yoga and naturopathy from the Health Ministry and mobile and internet plans from MTNL and BSNL. The state continue to enforce the writ of the law throughout the metro station. If you spit or travel without tokens, be prepared to pay a hefty fine. If you enter the women's coach forcibly, be prepared to be pulled out by a cop policing the gendered borderlands between the coaches. And don't urinate on the platform or clamber atop the train! The government hopes to impose a distinctly bourgeois civility on those whose notions of morality are characteristically different. It is not clear yet who or what will prevail.

There is no doubt that the Delhi Metro is the best thing to happen to the Capital for decades. Delhi lacks the planning apparatus of Mumbai or Bangalore. It is a segregated city that offers innumerable opportunities to the new migrant even as it blocks off many others. The Metro re-engages the energies of young aspirants to middle-class rank and privilege. It brings the city together in unprecedented ways, yet re-inscribes older prejudices of gender, age, and class in a neoliberal garb. In the stations and trains, the democratic populism of the streets battles the neoliberal moral order directed by the government. Little wonder then that the mall-going India Shining public shies away from the Metro: it is too plebeian for their tastes. And yet their college-going children may well end up sweating and scrambling beside less-privileged passengers who look and smell so different from them. In this tortured, tortuous way, the promise of the modern city comes alive and the century-old legacies of the colonial capital threaten to fall apart.

This Thing Called Neoliberalism

I began studying economics seriously in 11th grade. Mrs. Bindra, who taught us so patiently and enthusiastically, taught us all we needed to know about the historical evolution of the Indian economy over the past century and a half, the basic techniques of statistics, the system of national income accounting, and of course, microeconomic and macroeconomic theory. As I sat with rapt attention and imbibed a fascinating mix of concepts and methods, I marveled at the new intellectual universe it opened up for me. It is possible today to sum up what I learned in four simple statements. Firstly, the Indian economy had been stagnant for most of modern history, first due to colonial exploitation and then due to socialist governmental policies. Secondly, free markets held the key to economic growth and development, because they permitted societies to allocate human and non-human resources most efficiently and profitably. Thirdly, liberal trade policies complemented domestic free markets by expanding consumers' options and producers' markets, and globalization offered developing countries the best way to get out of the poverty trap. Fourthly, the government ought to cut taxes, duties, spending, and regulation, and adopt the role of an umpire who ensures that individuals and corporations acted lawfully, traditional drawbacks such as gender and caste discrimination were eliminated, and markets functioned smoothly.

Today, I know these four propositions form an ideology called neoliberalism. Proponents of neoliberalism argue that these propositions reinforce each other such that free markets, political liberty, and limited government are our best hope for progress and freedom in the 21st century. Critics, however, argue that these interlinked elements of neoliberalism rest on utter lies and deception such that they exacerbate socioeconomic inequalities, increase poverty, and heighten political tensions within countries. Since both sides rely on unshakable ideological convictions to argue their points, we invariably enter an intellectual stalemate. Of course, politically, the proponents of neoliberalism have won in most parts of the world, whether in South Asia, Eastern Europe, Sub-Saharan Africa, East Asia or Latin America.

I am afraid I have never been an ideological partisan for either side in this debate. As a skeptic, I tend to focus more on contextual social-fact considerations rather than purely ideological ones. Facts are messy, and ultimately, I think, they undermine the neatness of ideological worldviews on both the left and the right. Three factors stand out for me in assessing neoliberalism and its critics worldwide. Firstly, contrary to what both sides believe, the four propositions I discussed earlier are NOT, in fact, consistent with each other. It is quite possible, as in China, to deny civil liberties and maintain a vast state presence yet exchange socialism for trade liberalization and globalization. Likewise, it is also possible, as in India as in Africa or Eastern Europe or Latin America, to roll back the state and embrace free markets without liberal political consequences. Lastly, it is perfectly possible, as in the United States and Britain, to resist trade liberalization but prioritize limited government and political freedoms. The defenders and opponents of neoliberalism rarely possess the pragmatism to open their eyes wide enough to acknowledge what seems absolutely obvious to laypeople. This is what ideological dogmas do. We should be wary.

Secondly, if neoliberal ideologues and their cheerleaders are correct, then we should observe progress in economic and political terms in our age of globalization. Yet the picture is not so rosy. In the North Atlantic world, socioeconomic inequalities have risen alarmingly over the past three decades, and these account partly for the growth of racism, xenophobia, and other aggressive forms of reactionary politics in recent years. In the Global South, neoliberalism can hardly be called a success. As states have cut spending and privatized public services, we find new oligarchic forms of crony capitalism and violent appropriation and control of resources by private corporations, strongmen and militias/gangs. Consider the kinds of cronyism exposed during the East Asian financial crisis in 1997-98 or in the United States in 2008 or the slew of corporate scams this decade in India. Also consider how neoliberal state reforms have paved the way for lucrative monopolies of armed groups and corporations in West Africa, Latin America, and Afghanistan. This is not progress by any standards.

Thirdly, if neoliberal critics are correct, then we should find doom and gloom everywhere. But we find new social and political formations arising out of the challenges and opportunities created by neoliberal policies. The massive increase in capital flows domestically and internationally means higher incomes and living standards for more people than anytime in human history. While it is true that things are getting better for people at the top and middle rather than at the bottom, it is important not to forget how economic liberalization is creating new entrepreneurial opportunities for rural and semi-urban residents as well as women and minorities in countries such as India. Additionally, where economic and political liberalization actually coincide, political opportunities for citizens also increase. New expressions of Dalit and adivasi politics in India, for example, are as much responses to liberalization as they are expressions of it. People can now vote with their feet to kick out unresponsive politicians and they can even find radical democratic solutions to their problems outside the party system. However, where we do not find liberalization, as is the case ironically in the North Atlantic world, we find economic stagnation and political resignation. Much as critics on the left complain on growing inequality, the problem lies less in markets as in corporate governance and effective state policies. Those were problems well before "neoliberalism" entered our lexicon.

Fine, you might say, both sides are partially correct or partially wrong, but the basic ideological premise in either case is nonetheless defensible. No, I'd respond, because neither side has an adequate theory of political economy to claim any empirical successes. Textbook-style free markets are not necessarily the most efficient way to allocate resources in an economy for two reasons. Firstly, there are social, political, and environmental costs that do not show up in a simple supply-demand diagram. When we factor those into our equations, it will be evident that healthy regulation and policing of markets are optimal: no private actor will be willing to absorb the costs of monitoring and managing markets to ensure their smooth functioning. Secondly, as left critics have argued for a century and a half, free-market economics assumes that everyone has equal access to resources and everyone starts from the same level. This is, of course, patently false, so those who are richer, better educated and with the right family connections are better positioned to profit from markets than the rest of society. As even Adam Smith accepted, education and healthcare cannot be privately organized in a healthy society, so the state needs to assume a pretty large role to ensure everyone has access to schooling and medical facilities. Otherwise, citizenship is rendered meaningless.

But this conclusion should not lead us into stock criticisms of markets that focus on inequality. Yes, the state needs to play a bigger role than neoliberals allow, but when markets are stifled or managed oligarchically, wealth-generation is affected adversely. There is no prospect of pulling millions out of poverty by state policies alone; markets must generate enough wealth and employment opportunities for everyone to be free from scarcity and want. Those on the left need to know that attacking corporations and their defenders in thinktanks and governments is NOT the same thing as attacking free markets. If markets were truly free and open, effective state policies in health and education will lead to a progressive society. Corporate landgrabs, crony capitalism, and warlordism cannot be permitted in such a society. Ultimately, strong welfare states that rule lightly must coexist with an healthy market economy. What is true domestically is also true internationally. If future financial meltdowns and global warming are to be countered effectively, there is no alternative to global state regulation and a global market economy. Despite the vociferous criticism of markets in toto, there are no realistic leftist alternatives to build a different kind of political economy. Neoliberalism as an ideology may be rotten to the core, but without thriving markets, there is no hope for progress whatsoever.