The Great Opinion Makers

This is w.r.t the article by Chetan Bhagat.  Refer

The Great Opinion Wars: Let the best opinion for India win - The ...

economictimes.indiatimes.com › News › Politics and Nation

My response(one of the hoi polloi) 

It is ironic that the lead article in an English daily about the Great Opinion Wars is by a writer whose claim to fame rests on those very markers that he scoffs at as belonging to the privileged class. According to the celebrity writer, Chetan Bhagat, this privileged class who in earlier times  had assumed the status of worthy opinion makers has now ceded its primacy to the aspirational class and he reckons the great divide between the two groups as the schism between the left wingers and the  right wingers respectively. The genetic markers of the privileged class ( it is difficult to denote this group as privileged class when the writer claims they have forfeited their privileges) are good fluency in spoken English, good education in liberal colleges, hailing from upper middleclass and brought up in metro cities, having connection with their own elite fraternity and using that connection for furthering their  job status without necessarily having merit.

Chetan’s broadside on the privileged class is puzzling as he writes and speaks only in good and flawless English, has been to the prestigious IIT and IIM, hails from urban middle class liberal society, is married to a Tamilian classmate in IIM  and is a celebrity who is a regular TV interviewee.  From his own classification, Chetan belongs to the privileged class which he mocks  at as the intellectuals who had for many years thrust their opinions on the ‘hoi polloi’ –who by inference lacked intellectualism to form their opinion. Chetan ‘s soft corner for the new aspirational class and his effusive praise for their spirit of  nationalism, for their love of tradition and abhorrence of beef, their hatred for Pakistanis  show that after enjoying the advantages of the privileged class, he has switched over with ease to the other side because according to him , the latter  values merit over privileges though he offers no evidential rationale to substantiate his opinion. So the erstwhile opinion maker who had influenced the less privileged people of his country through  his best- selling novels owes his allegiance  now to the rising aspirational class in an eloquent  language  that it does not possess.  So “heads I win, tails you lose” seems to be Chetan’s dictum.

Again Chetan, the opinion maker in his new avatar makes a sweeping generalization that the privileged class has done a lot of wrongs,   has been disconnected from India( baffling for me, one of the hoi polloi because  who else can the privilege class connect with), has mired India in poverty with its left leaning ideas-( a contradiction to his statement that the new millennium has seen India grow in economic power and aspires for something bigger leading to the rise of the aspirational class-),  bred nepotism and thwarted merit( I assume Chetans rise to celebrity status when he was in the privileged class was not a case of patronage sans merit).

After meandering through the two classes- one now without voice but with eloquence of expression and the other with a newly acquired voice without the felicity of expression- Chetan seems to have realized that he may be guilty of a fourth mistake in his life if he arraigns the privileged class and comes with a wisecrack: “In the Great Indian Opinion Wars, may the best opinion for India win whichever side it comes from”- a concluding statement to keep himself on two states.  His change from the campus novel genr  to the non fictional collection of essays and speeches in “What Young India Wants” is symptomatic of the deep seated urge in him to reject the privileged class in which he was brought up and to re-root himself into the aspirational class which, according to this new entrant into aspirational class, desires merit and only merit, jettisons modernity to embrace tradition and  wears nationalism on its sleeves.