Vinay Kumar
Hello and welcome to the 93rd edition of the Weekly Vine. This week we run the rule over the three Cs in the news: clubs, cockroaches, and CBSE answer-sheet mismatches. We also explain why the Pope is worried about Artificial Intelligence, why Tulsi Gabbard had to leave the Trump administration, and make an impassioned defence of the Delhi Gymkhana.
The three Cs bugging Indian democracy
Now, this could just be the rising heat, which is something that ought to bug us a lot more, but if you switched on Indian news channels this week, you’d see three Cs bugging Indian democracy: clubs, CBSE answer sheets and the Cockroach Janata Party. That is, the Delhi Gymkhana Club being served an eviction notice, the rise of a political phenomenon called the Cockroach Janata Party, and the recent fracas over answer-sheet mismatches from CBSE.
So, let’s break down each issue Vine-style.
The Delhi Gymkhana Club is one of the capital’s oldest and most private clubs, counting among its members senior bureaucrats, judges, diplomats, military officers and the old Delhi establishment, the crème de la crème of society whose Man Fridays have Man Fridays. It’s the sort of place that has a 30-year wait for membership, where you probably need to be God’s son to get a look-in.
Now, the Centre has served the aforementioned crème de la crème an eviction notice, asking the club to vacate the land and stating that it is needed for defence, security and public infrastructure purposes. In the latest hearing, the Delhi High Court, while refusing to grant interim relief against the Centre’s move, recorded the government’s assurance that there would be no forcible eviction.
There are three proper overlapping issues here. The first is legal: whether a government can reclaim land in this manner. The second is about public land: opponents argue that such prime real estate should not remain with a private club with limited membership. The third is about heritage and institutions: supporters argue that the move threatens one of India’s premier clubs. But one assumes it boils down to a tussle between an older elite and a newer one, one that cannot fathom that it has lost power, and another that is angry at not being invited to the club.
The second C bothering folks is the recent fracas over CBSE’s On-Screen Marking System, or OSM.
Now, what is OSM? In the olden days, answer sheets were physically sent to examiners to check. Now they are uploaded to a digital system, where evaluators check scanned copies.
A student named Vedant Shrivastava claimed that when he checked his answer sheet, the script shown to him was not his. CBSE admitted that there had been a mismatch and provided him with the correct one. This was among various complaints from students about wrong answer sheets, poor-quality scans, portal issues and more. It comes on the heels of the NEET scandal. NEET is the exam where we pick young people to decide who is smart enough to cut us open, and the latest CBSE mess has raised serious questions about the sanctity of examinations.
In modern India, without starting a criminal enterprise or joining politics, there is seldom any difference between the two, exams are one of the few things that can still guarantee upward social mobility irrespective of the circumstances of one’s birth. So when that system is compromised, it doesn’t merely create administrative anxiety. It creates existential panic. A wrong answer sheet is not a clerical mistake in India. It is a glitch in the national promise.
And finally, we have perhaps a reaction to the aforementioned peccadilloes: the Cockroach Janata Party, or CJP.
The ostensible brainchild of a youngster once associated with AAP, the movement exploded after some choice comments comparing activists to insects. Parties can spring out of movements, as AAP did from India Against Corruption, and in recent days, the CJP has been handed the Obama treatment. Now, for those who don’t peruse the Vine every week, Obama Delulu refers to the phenomenon where any seasonally popular leader or movement is given the mantle of liberal patron saint who will bring balance to the Force and restore the world to its natural order.
Any time a person or movement gets sufficient oxygen of publicity, we start thinking it, or he, is the next Obama. But cold, hard reality often begs to differ. Having a grievance is fine, but we live in a democracy, and in one, the only way to elicit real change is to challenge the executive. That means not just giving vent to frustration, but showing how one would do things differently from the powers that be.
So CJP might be a yardstick of Gen Z angst, but unlike our neighbours, the only way to facilitate real change is through the ballot. And that only happens through blood, tears, slogging, and years of hard work. Not Instagram hashtags.
Pope vs AI
The fictional misanthrope Dr House would often joke that if one could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people. Of course, the savant made those observations before Donald Trump became president, an event so catastrophic that it has forced the most openly religious person in the world to act as a voice of reason.
With the democratic powers of his home country electing the presidential version of Pope Alexander VI, a man whose foreign policy is based on nepotistic self-aggrandisement, it has fallen on the first American Pope to provide a moral compass to his countrymen and much of the WENA world. And now, like every manager in every corporate office, he’s also talking about Artificial Intelligence. Thankfully, it’s not with the zest of the corporate honcho who thinks AI can replace all sorts of wasteful workers, so the only ones making money are the CEO and shareholders.
In his first encyclical, titled Magnifica Humanitas, or Magnificent Humanity, the Pope warns of the dangers of Artificial Intelligence, comparing it to the Tower of Babel and stating: “Humanity, created by God in all its grandeur, is today facing a pivotal choice: either to construct a new Tower of Babel or to build the city in which God and humanity dwell together.”
But what exactly is the Tower of Babel? What is an encyclical? Why is the Pope talking about Artificial Intelligence? And can he be the voice of reason against largely atheist tech bros who might find Christ when it suits their narrative? And why are the sons of Abraham worried about a Deus Ex Machina?
DO NOT INVITE
That another Donnie angel would be cast out of St PETERSBURG – the nickname for the Washington swamp around Donald Trump that is the living embodiment of the Peter’s Principle – was inevitable. The only question was who? The smart money was on either Kash Patel, whose self-aggrandising behaviour had started to grate on the self-aggrandiser-in-chief, or Tulsi Gabbard, whose anti-war stance was increasingly at odds with the Trump administration’s moves. Turns out, it was the honorary desi who went first as Gabbard, an avid surfer, found herself offboarded.
Now her departure was inevitable, with aides openly joking that DNI, the acronym for Director of National Intelligence, ought to stand for Do Not Invite.
Postscript by Prasad Sanyal
There is, I admit, something deeply unbecoming about defending a club. Especially a club sitting on 27.3 acres of Lutyens’ Delhi, on government land, with a notional land value now being discussed at around Rs 27,000 crore, investments reportedly running into hundreds of crores, and a waiting list so long that a child may apply at birth and receive membership sometime after India has colonised Mars and formed a subcommittee to examine parking. The Centre has now asked the club to vacate, citing defence and security-related use. Before that came dues, disputes, committees, notices, legal wrangling and the usual Indian administrative opera in which everyone is technically correct and spiritually exhausted. So yes, the optics are dreadful.
A country of potholes, exam leaks, broken pavements, polluted lungs and restless ambition cannot be expected to organise a candlelight vigil because a few people may lose access to a verandah where time moved slowly, the soda was cold, and someone’s grandfather once mispronounced Nehru with authority.
Post Postscript
Word of the Week: Gymkhana
The word gymkhana is one of those strange little gifts of British India: part sport, part club, part colonial afterlife. Its exact origins are debated, but it is generally believed to have emerged from the Hindi-Urdu gend-khana, meaning a ball house or place for games. The British took the word, polished it, anglicised it, and turned it into a social institution.
A gymkhana was never merely a place to play tennis, ride horses or sip something cold while pretending the sun was not trying to kill you. It was a sorting machine. It decided who belonged inside the gates, who waited outside them, and who served drinks while history changed hands. The British left. The gates remained.
Book of the Week: The Metamorphosis
Given that we are talking about cockroaches, it is the perfect time to revisit Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis, in which Gregor Samsa wakes up one morning to find that he has turned into a giant insect. It is a fantastic book and a quintessential Kafka work. But what makes it feel especially apt this week is that a group of youngsters, frustrated with an increasingly Kafkaesque bureaucratic system where free will often feels like an illusion, have turned to another Kafkaesque creation to voice their angst: the cockroach.
Disclaimer
Views expressed above are the author’s own.
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