The Good and the Critical

There is an oft repeated cliche "change is the only constant" and as is the case with all cliches, it is very true and i hate the sound of it. This change is a part of all our lives, the petrol prices, inflation, newer moral sensibilities, technology. You walk on the road and you will be assaulted by change from all corners and directions, the newer car model, a "baraat" band blasting away new hits, the newest fashion worn by the chic upper class and aped by the not so chic middle class. This juggernaut won't be slowed in an age of information overload.

As a lazy sunday moved along i engrossed myself in the feature story of today's Hindustan Times, Men of India, it is a great insight into the psyche of the urban indian male from sex to career and changing equations in the relationships between men and women. This came at a time when i was thinking a lot about the potential of arranged marriages over love marriages. The single most damning PRO in the case of arranged marriages is the 1.1% divorce rate in India as compared to the absurd 54% in that heaven of love marriages that is the United States of America. But statistics mean nothing in the case of an individual, for a population stats are more precise, but they couldn't be more wrong for a person, a fitness freak CEO dies at 45, and a corpulent, alcoholic, chain smoker usually sees his 80th. So with my usual pristine and precise logic i say stats can kiss my ass. What concerns me more is that it is up from 0.74% in the last decade, which might not seem like a lot, but any percentage in a nation of a billion has many many people. This increase i believe can be attributed to the change in the mindset of our urban folk.

The women are growing more and more independent, financially that is, and that has thrown the age old power dynamic of an arranged marriage into a massive upheaval, traditionaly the man of the family earned the money and thus had power, a single say over all matters of the family, and the woman would tend to the house, the in laws and most importantly the children of the house, objectively looked at, this power dynamic was skewed too much in the favour of the males and mostly women were hapless viewers to what their lives had become. But keeping that lens of objectivity firmly on my eye, this "system" maintained the stability of a household and children were raised by family not nannies. Subjectively speaking there was a respect to what men did, which today, frankly said, is pretty much absent, women earn and men earn, women can choose not to work but there is no choice of that for a man, as a society we may admiringly look at the women who earn and run the household but still look down upon a man who is not successful in the workplace. The power dynamic has changed but it has changed only for the women, the role of men is still the same and sometimes redundant. My views donot really match my bservations but i'm trying to be critical looking at situations, but it is in our inherent nature to resist change, and maybe this time it is not the old ideas of rigidity that scare me but the new ideas' promise of
anarchy.

The die has been rolled and we are on that unstoppable juggernaut called change, but will it all be for good, is all change good or in Katyayani Bhatia's words being correct is the tough path being critical is the easy one, and i believe feminists have taken the easier path.

Another blog post on power is in the works and that is gonna be even more controversial.....