Comments on: The Lumpen Bourgeoisie http://kafila.org/2006/11/19/the-lumpen-bourgeoisie/ media | politics | dissent Sun, 27 May 2012 10:08:59 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.com/ By: Barter – is that what they’re calling it now? « Kafila http://kafila.org/2006/11/19/the-lumpen-bourgeoisie/#comment-5854 Sun, 10 May 2009 18:42:28 +0000 http://www.kafila.org/2006/11/19/the-lumpen-bourgeoisie/#comment-5854 [...] advice to hair salons in exchange for a perm” – the front page story is about our favourite people, the Great Indian Middle [...]

]]> By: Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed http://kafila.org/2006/11/19/the-lumpen-bourgeoisie/#comment-849 Fri, 01 Dec 2006 22:12:04 +0000 http://www.kafila.org/2006/11/19/the-lumpen-bourgeoisie/#comment-849 [...]
I’m wondering about the somewhat shrill and personal nature of your comment (”Blah blah… you know this ‘coz you took this domestic help on a date and then you two got intimate, right after she came she revealed this gem to you.”). Did my post really hurt, then? It really got to you deep inside, didn’t it?
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No it did not hurt ? Not a bit. I do not get hurt by the ridiculous. But I managed to elicit a response so it must have affected you. Good!!. I live too far from Delhi and do not have the means to afford a maid.

Jhollawaalaas (euphemistically called radicals) like you are dime a dozen, and I have heard them, seen them and when I was young even got seduced by the garbage spouted by them. If Jholawaalaas were any good then Soviet Union will be shining example governance and Stalin would have received the Noble peace prize.

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Point # 1 I know this because even the media baying for her blood was forced to concede that there was nothing more to the incident than I have related above..
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Good on you. Use the media as a crutch when it is convenient and then bash it while posturing as radical.

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They are precisely the views of the Indian middle class, which thinks it is its god-given right to decide what a “decent” society should do and not do (mostly it should look after “our” interests).
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It may not be god given but the constitution gives me the right to exercise a judgment that retrieval of a 3 year old child (before its too late) is more important than tooting “take a look at the other angle at this”

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And therefore Point # 3 – We ARE the “Different pov”!
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No you are not the different POV, you are too predictable and too generic. Armchair radicalism is easy …like I said before …dime a dozen.

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Keep reading if you dare.
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Yeah! Bring it on.

]]> By: Nivedita Menon http://kafila.org/2006/11/19/the-lumpen-bourgeoisie/#comment-848 Thu, 23 Nov 2006 16:38:30 +0000 http://www.kafila.org/2006/11/19/the-lumpen-bourgeoisie/#comment-848 Thank you, Omair, Siddharth, Space Bar, Kuffir: for visiting, and for your comments. Good to know you’re out there!
Vrijendra: hi there! Long time…We must meet up here more often…
Shivam: Of course many people “are nice” to domestic workers, but we are talking about a system here, one in which “servants” are helplessly dependent on the niceness and mercy of individual employers.
Amy: your idea about translating the post into Hindi is a good one, but I think you’re mistaken in thinking that a) those who inhabit the English speaking world in India do not have this feudal attitude towards domestic workers. All my examples were taken from people from this world, and that b) readers of this and other blogs are necessarily enlightened – see comment of Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed above.
Fakhruddin: I’m wondering about the somewhat shrill and personal nature of your comment (“Blah blah… you know this ‘coz you took this domestic help on a date and then you two got intimate, right after she came she revealed this gem to you.”). Did my post really hurt, then? It really got to you deep inside, didn’t it?
Okay – Point # 1 I know this because even the media baying for her blood was forced to concede that there was nothing more to the incident than I have related above.
Point # 2 Your views are not uncommon, in fact they are painfully common. They are precisely the views of the Indian middle class, which thinks it is its god-given right to decide what a “decent” society should do and not do (mostly it should look after “our” interests). They are also the views purveyed in the mainstream media.
And therefore Point # 3 – We ARE the “Different pov”! Keep reading if you dare.

]]> By: kuffir http://kafila.org/2006/11/19/the-lumpen-bourgeoisie/#comment-847 Thu, 23 Nov 2006 06:27:01 +0000 http://www.kafila.org/2006/11/19/the-lumpen-bourgeoisie/#comment-847 so, why do these servants come to delhi? because there are in delhi these huge neighbourhoods with huge homes in which live people who own huge businesses which service huge numbers of salaried people and their families in their huge homes…whose income and tenure is guaranteed by the government.
so the servants come to delhi because their income and tenure is not guaranteed by the government in their villages..nor can they work at huge businesses because there are no salaried people there whose income and tenure is guaranteed by the government.
and there are no middle class people there who can point their fingers at other middle class people and gloat over their own finer sensibilities…because they don’t ill-treat their servants even though the government guarantees, in a way, their right to do so.

]]> By: Space Bar http://kafila.org/2006/11/19/the-lumpen-bourgeoisie/#comment-846 Thu, 23 Nov 2006 03:19:45 +0000 http://www.kafila.org/2006/11/19/the-lumpen-bourgeoisie/#comment-846 Sorry about the double comment, but I just came across this and thought it was relevant to this post:
http://www.houstonjanitors.org/janitors-victory-11202006/

“Janitors’ Victory in Houston Sparks Hope for New Era of Economic Gains for Families in America
City-wide union contract will more than double income for more than 5,300 janitors and families, latest victory in national fight for good jobs with health care.”

LInk via Crooked Timber: http://crookedtimber.org/2006/11/22/calling-houston/

]]> By: Space Bar http://kafila.org/2006/11/19/the-lumpen-bourgeoisie/#comment-845 Thu, 23 Nov 2006 02:35:45 +0000 http://www.kafila.org/2006/11/19/the-lumpen-bourgeoisie/#comment-845 “A halfway decent society will focus on the recovery of the child and how to prevent the episode from reoccurring only a moron will contemplate on the conditions in the household, the household help etc.” the commenter before me said.

A half-way decent society would see the connection between the two and would find a way to treat the malaise and not only the symptom.

That said, I guess this is probably the representative opinion one ought to address.

I hope this is being discussed in the Journalism Course at LSR. It ought to be.

]]> By: Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed http://kafila.org/2006/11/19/the-lumpen-bourgeoisie/#comment-844 Wed, 22 Nov 2006 19:21:11 +0000 http://www.kafila.org/2006/11/19/the-lumpen-bourgeoisie/#comment-844 “What about Afzal ?”
Right .. who is this Afzal, which Afzal you are talking about ..is it Afzal Guru ?

“Last year, during the episode of the young maid who ran away with her employer’s child, there was a lot of discussion in the media on how to protect employers from such criminally inclined “domestic help”.

You bet. A sane person will (should) be more concerned about a 2-3-4-5 year old child who is missing. A halfway decent society will focus on the recovery of the child and how to prevent the episode from reoccurring only a moron will contemplate on the conditions in the household, the household help etc.
How can you say that every time a domestic help ( or a cook, or a watch man) kidnaps a child a child away it is due to abusive employer ? Is this line of argument was half true and if any one would have bought it then Jethmalani would be selling peanuts at the Gateway of India.

“…it turned out that the maid was simply desperate to go back home to Orissa. She took the child with her because she couldn’t bear to leave the child alone.”

Blah blah… you know this ‘coz you took this domestic help on a date and then you two got intimate, right after she came she revealed this gem to you.
Once upon a time a dude robbed a bank because he wanted to help his poor neighbor so that he can afford the cancer therapy for his sick mom. Screw the bank man bankers are mo-fos any way… lets us all focus on the compassion of the robber.

One humble request for bloggers and owners of this blog:
It would be great to have some balance in the posts. Since it’s a group blog please invite bloggers who have a “different” pov.

]]> By: amy http://kafila.org/2006/11/19/the-lumpen-bourgeoisie/#comment-843 Wed, 22 Nov 2006 16:08:54 +0000 http://www.kafila.org/2006/11/19/the-lumpen-bourgeoisie/#comment-843 There are lot of people angry about all this. But the thing is all this angst directed in columns/blogs do not reach the people whom it needs to reach. People who read their regional newspapers in hindi or any other language. There are not many fierce columnists in regional language newspapers who write articles that makes you think straight. Maybe you should translate this and publish it in a hindi newspaper and see the reaction.

]]> By: siddhartha http://kafila.org/2006/11/19/the-lumpen-bourgeoisie/#comment-842 Wed, 22 Nov 2006 15:10:33 +0000 http://www.kafila.org/2006/11/19/the-lumpen-bourgeoisie/#comment-842 (off-topic: welcome and congratulations Kafila. great stuff. much respect.)

]]> By: Shivam http://kafila.org/2006/11/19/the-lumpen-bourgeoisie/#comment-841 Wed, 22 Nov 2006 11:48:43 +0000 http://www.kafila.org/2006/11/19/the-lumpen-bourgeoisie/#comment-841 Yet another aspect of racism in India. Reminds me of various articles by Sonia Faleiro in Tehelka, all available on her blog: http://soniafaleiro.blogspot.com/2006/09/riddle-of-domestic-work-in-india.html

I’m not sure if I can agree with, “Can the public and shameless parading of this kind of behaviour have to do with growing legitimacy of contempt for the poor?” This contempt has always been there and the use of the term “domestic help” may indicate that it’s on the decline, but only marginally. But there are countless stories of people being immensely nice to their domestic workers.

]]> By: DesiPundit » Archives » Middle Class Callousness? http://kafila.org/2006/11/19/the-lumpen-bourgeoisie/#comment-840 Wed, 22 Nov 2006 11:09:35 +0000 http://www.kafila.org/2006/11/19/the-lumpen-bourgeoisie/#comment-840 [...] Nivedita Menon at Kafila, attempts to suggest that the police advising people in general to have their servants verified in the aftermath of the kidnapping of Adobe India CEO Naresh Gupta’s three-year-old, is just an extension of the middle class callousness towards the servant class. [...]

]]> By: vrijendra http://kafila.org/2006/11/19/the-lumpen-bourgeoisie/#comment-839 Mon, 20 Nov 2006 14:36:24 +0000 http://www.kafila.org/2006/11/19/the-lumpen-bourgeoisie/#comment-839 I just finished reading the piece. I was not surprised by the NDTV reporter’s shock at Nivedita’s ‘radical’ suggestion because after all reporters for channels like NDTV these days increasingly come from the same bourgeoisie whose anxities they report all the time. And NDTV is the spokesperson for that class. I mean they have the weekly show ‘we the people’ for this class and by this class. Obviously, others, the servants, are the ‘non-people’, who do not matter much. They did a show only yesterday about how to check ‘alcholoism’ among young (affluent) people in the light of a horrible accident in M

]]> By: Omair Anas http://kafila.org/2006/11/19/the-lumpen-bourgeoisie/#comment-838 Sun, 19 Nov 2006 15:11:00 +0000 http://www.kafila.org/2006/11/19/the-lumpen-bourgeoisie/#comment-838 Excellent!
and also

Tu idhar udhar ki na baat kar yeh bata ki kafila kion lut
mujhe razanon se gila nahi teri rahbari ka sawal hai

Omair Anas
Just Media
9810751156

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