By Justice (R) Markandey Katju (India)
Two topics have dominated the news in India over the last few weeks, the elections in Bihar and the Indian women’s cricket team winning the World Cup. Both have been celebrated in too many cases loudly, endlessly, and uncritically. And yet, both serve as convenient diversions-and carefully designed spectacles to divert public attention from the real issues that are suffocating millions of Indians.
India today is at the receiving end of an avalanche of social-economic misery: mass poverty, staggering unemployment, one of the world’s highest rates of child malnutrition (every second Indian is undernourished), an almost total absence of quality healthcare and education for the masses, more than 400,000 farmer suicides, and relentless discrimination against women, minorities and Dalits. These are the real crises facing the nation. But instead of facing up to these pressing issues, we are being invited to wallow in electoral theatre and cricketing euphoria.
In my interviews, including one with the journalist Neelu Vyas, I have said that the central question is not whether there was vote theft in Bihar or not, whether Nitish Kumar or Tejashwi Yadav becomes Chief Minister or not. For the overwhelming majority of Biharis trapped in poverty, these outcomes will change little. Their lives will remain characterized by hunger, joblessness and insecurity. In fact, I am afraid Bihar is going into a jungle raj post these elections and I have made that point publicly several times.
The same pattern is repeated for the triumph of the Indian women’s cricket team. While I congratulate the players for their individual accomplishments, I do not see why the nation should go into uncritical celebration. For many Indians, cricket has been one of the great opiums of our society along with religion, Bollywood, astrology, media sensation and a debased political culture. One drug is clearly not sufficient to keep the masses drunk; several are required.
The Roman emperors grasped this logic very well. They used to say:
“If you cannot give the people bread, give them circuses.”
In India today the formula has simply been updated:
“If you cannot provide the people with jobs, food, healthcare, education, or dignity – give them cricket and Bollywood and religion and political drama.”
And so, instead of talking about malnutrition, inequality, agrarian distress or escalating communal tensions, we are told that what is really important nationally is the outcome of a state election or a cricket trophy. This distortion is enthusiastically amplified by the media. Television channels will debate for hours if a team should have four bowlers or five or whether a politician uttered a clever one-liner but they are silent on why half our kids go to bed hungry or millions of Indians have to borrow money to see a doctor.
This obsession with spectacle is not harmless entertainment. It is a deliberate mechanism of depoliticizing suffering. When the nation is otherwise occupied with cheering cricket victories or drowning in electoral melodrama, it becomes easier to overlook the starving farmer, the unemployed graduate and the dying child, the struggling labourer, and the marginalised woman. It is easier to pretend that all is well.
The women’s cricket team victory is not going to eradicate poverty. It will not provide jobs. It will not reduce malnutrition in children or prevent farmer suicides. It will not get Dalits dignity, minorities justice, and women safety. Celebrations that ignore this reality are not a mark of patriotism, they’re a betrayal of the millions whose daily suffering is washed out in the noise of manufactured national pride.
I am not asking others to not celebrate. People are free to rejoice as they like. But I refuse to take part in this charade. To me, such celebrations, when the vast majority of Indians are struggling for survival amount to nothing less than an insult. They distract attention from the real and urgent business of nation-building. They numb critical thinking. They reward escapism rather than problem-solving.
It is not that India lacks talent or resources. It is a lack of seriousness. Unless we understand that bread is more important than circuses, nothing will change. Our task is to speak to the hard socio-economic realities before us not to retreat behind sporting triumphs or political theatrics. Celebrate if you wish. But I will not participate in this pantomime. I owe that much to the 75-80 percent of my people who live in misery and to whom this country still owes bread, not circuses.
