Field Notes on Democracy

264 Pages·2013·6.12 MB·English

by  Arundhati Roy

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I F I E LD N O T ES
ON D E M O C R A CY
LISTENING TO GRASSHOPPERS
COMBINING FIERCE CONVICTION. DEFT POLITICAL ANALYSIS.
AND BEAUTIFUL WRITING. THIS IS THE ESSENTIAL
NEW BOOK FROM ARUNDHATI ROY
Field Notes on Democracy tracks the fault lines that threaten to destroy India's
precarious democracy and send Shockwaves through the region and beyond.
'In her searing account of the actual practice of the world's largest democracy,
Arundhati Roy calls for 'factual precision' alongside of the 'real precision of poetry.'
Remarkably, she combines those achievements to a degree that few can hope to
approach ... Roy asks whether our shriveled forms of democracy will be 'the
endgame for the human race'—and shows vividly why this is a prospect not to be
lightly dismissed."
6 J —NOAM CHOMSKY
'After so much celebratory salesmanship about India the 'emerging market,' Roy
draws us into India the actual country, peeling away the gloss until we are
confronted with perhaps the most challenging question of our time: who and what
are we willing to sacrifice in the name of development? Roy is one of the most
confident and original thinkers of our time."
5 —NAOMI KLEIN
'The notion of Democracy and the pleading for human compassion first came
together in Sophocles and the Greek tragedies. More than two thousand years later
we live under an economic world tyranny of unprecedented brutality, which
depends upon the systematic abuse of words like democracy or progress. Arundhati
Roy, the direct descendant of Antigone, resists and denounces all tyrannies, pleads
for their victims, and unflinchingly questions the tragic. Reflect with her on the
answers she receives from the political world today."
r J —JOHN BERGER
/T"i Haymarket ISBN 978-1608460-24-3
f f ' Books
www.haymarketbooks.org
(continued from front flap)
something dangerous? What happens now that democracy
and the free market have fused into a single predatoiy or
ganism with a thin, constricted imagination that revolves
almost entirely around the idea of maximizing profit? Is it
possible to reverse this process? Can something that has
mutated go back to being what it used to be?"
—FROM THE INTRODUCTION
ARUNDHATI ROY was born in 1959 in Shillong, India.
She studied architecture in New Delhi, where she now
lives. She has worked as a film designer and screenplay
writer in India. Roy is the author of the novel The God of
Small Things, for which she received the 1997 Booker
Prize. The novel has been translated into dozens of lan
guages worldwide. She has written several nonfiction
books, including The Cost of Living, Power Politics, War
Talk, An Ordinal j Person's Guide to Empire, and Public
Power in the Age of Empire.
Roy was featured in the BBC television documentary
Dam/age, which is about the struggle against big dams in
India. A collection of interviews with Arundhati Roy by
David Barsamian was published as The Checkbook and
the Cruise Missile. Roy is the recipient of the 2,002, Lannan
Foundation Cultural Freedom Prize.
Cover illustration: Jaime Orozco
Author photograph: Sanjay Kak
Cover design: AbbyWeintraub
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ISBN9:7 8-16084.6 0-24-3
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2 4 160 9 8 7 5 3 1
Contents
Map ofI ndia ix
IntroducDteimoonc racyF'asi liLnigg ht 1
One Democracy:
Who'sS heW henS he'ast H ome? 30
Two How DeepS halWle Dig? 50
Three "AndH isL ifSeh oulBde comeE xtinct"
TheV erSyt ranSgteo royft heA ttacoknt heI ndiPaanr liament6 8
Four Breakitnhge N ews 100
Five CustodiCaoln fessiotnhse,M ediaa,n dt heL aw 113
Six BabyB ushG,o Home 118
Seven AnimaFla rmI I:
InW hichG eorgBeu shS aysW hatH eR ealMlye ans 120
Eight Scandailnt heP alace 128
Nine ListentionG gr asshoppers:
GenocidDee,n iaaln,d C elebration 141
Ten Azadi 169
Eleven NineI sN otE leven
· (AndN ovembeIrs nS'etp tember) 184
Twelve TheB riefing 202
Glossya r 211
Sources 216
Notes 219
Index 245
Tot howshheoa vlaeer ntedodi vhoporfreco emr eoans
Whesrhedo w uegl oa fttehrle afr sottn iers?
Whesrhueol tdhb eid flsry a fttehrle as skty ?
Whesrhedo t uhpleal nstlpseaft eerth lea bsrte ofaa tihr ?
-"TheE arItCshl osoinUn sg"
MahmoDuadr wish
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Map not to scale
Introduction
DemocracyF'asi liLnigg ht
Whiwlee' srteai rlglu aibnowguh te tthheerlr ieaf'festd eerac tahn,
wea dadn otqhueers ttoti hocena rItst? h elriaefft eed re mocracy?
_Whsaotor flt i wfieil btle B?y" dmeocrIad coynm"'e tad nme ocracy
asa ni deoaral na spirIam teiatonhnw e.o rklmnogd Weels:t elrinb ­
erdamelo craancidytv ,sa ri�auncathsts h,ae rye .
Soi,ts h elriaefft eed re mocracy?
Attemtpoat nss wtehqriu se sotftieotnnu irnnat c oo mparison
ofd irffeenstys toefgm osv ernaannedc newd,i tahs m oewhat
pricckolmyb,ad teifveoenf sdee maocIcytr.fl' asw ewdes, a Iyt. isn't
perfbeuictttb ',es t ttheaernv y etrheilnsge otnoh ffaeItrn'.es vl iyt,a b
someiontn hee wilrlo soam"y A:f ghaPnaiksitSsaatnua,Adn ri,a bia,
Soma.l.ii.tsa h wahta ytow uo uplrde fer?"
Whethdeerm ocsrhaocbuyelt dhu et otphialaalt" delvoeping"
soiceiteass p�iori esas epaqruasetteia olnte otgh.(e Itr hiintk
shouTlhdee.a rildayel,i pshtaicscaeb n eq uihteea dTyh.eq )u estion
aboluitaf fetd eerm ocirasad cdyr etsots heoodsfu e sw hoa lready
liivnde e mcoracoirie ncs o,u ntrpireest tetobnh edda e tmc oracies.
Iits mne'attn ost u ggtehswatetl apisneot lo,d d eirscrmeoddietlesd
oft otaloirat uatrhioarngi otvaerriInatamn'ne sca etn.ost u ggtehsatt