Swachh Bharat Abhiyan: Variable Sum Power, A new Reference Group, Collective Action, Civic Nationalism and Gendered Benefit

        Swachh Bharat Abhiyan as a mass movement is now ever so familiar to every one of us, its visible impacts right before our eyes in public places and village homes. Although driven by the welfare state, Swachh Bharat Abhiyan is essentially a movement of the society, by the society and for the society

        

        It is thus a crystal clear elucidation of the Parsonian thesis of Variable Sum Power where power exists as a collective faculty that is beneficial for the society. Here, it is the idea of Swachhta where a value consensus was forged through the instruments of media and state- particularly the gram panchayats. A greater collective conscience thus creating more power to achieve the goal of ODF across panchayats and states.

         

        At the centre of this movement is thus a collective action driven by civil societal spirit. SBA thus slots in as a reformative movement in David Aberle’s classification of social movement where a large social base is driven by a limited reformative idea of Swachhta. 

        

        Swachh Bharat Abhiyan is also a Social Movement driven by Revitalization as propounded by Wallace where a movement urges a new value system for solving the structural strain in the social system thereby restoring its desirability for constituent individuals. The structural strain here being open defecation and issue of women’s dignity urging a new value system driven by toilet construction and use.

          

        Swachh Bharat Abhiyan can also be analysed through the prism of Merton’s Reference Group Theory. Here, the reference group refers to those who have toilets, use them and are thus non contributors to open defecation. The new value system provided them a higher social status that enabled them to be reference groups for non-membership groups who are yet to adopt sanitation in household.

Through campaigns like the ‘Darwaza Bandh Karo’ and ‘No Toilet No Bride’, the state and society sought to reinforce this reference group and develop a positive orientation among the non-membership group. This drove the rest of society to socialize accordingly and adopt sanitation techniques further strengthening the value system defined by Swachhta.

          

        The very same value of cleanliness is fast becoming attached to a civic duty linked to the idea of nation itself as a shared belief and virtue among all responsible citizens fulfilling their part of the citizen-state social contract. In this way, Swachh Bharat becomes a pillar of Civic Nationalism rooted in the very idea of New India.

          

           

        Swachh Bharat in its outcome is notable for its gendered benefit, given the vast improvement in girl students in schools besides ensuring women’s dignity and security. It thus highlights how welfare state’s programmes despite being not gendered inevitably has gendered benefits given the overlapping inequalities women and the third gender face in male dominated society.

       

        Swachh Bharat Abhiyan is thus clearly an astonishing mass social movement kick started by the state, driven by the society centred around the idea or value of Swachhta that forged collective conscience and inadvertently created a new value system that brought immense social progress.             

Navaratri and Vidyarambham: Gerontocracy, Rites de Passage and the Collective Conscience of Learning

                It is that time of the year again when books and instruments as symbols of learning are placed before the sacred in search of blessings before the devotee starts on her journey of enlightenment. The days of Navaratri, the rituals, the symbolism and marriage of divinity and music can be understood through the prism of famous sociological teachings.

                The very act of revering the books through days of worship resonates with Emile Durkheim’s famous idea of how religion becomes a tool to forge collective conscience and acts as a moral force on the individuals. Here, it is the value of learning that is created, resonated and reinforced through the practice of Vidyarambham. The days of Puja that are spent worshipping the Goddess Saraswati is thus an indirect worshipping of learning itself as Vidyalakshmi becomes personification and embodiment of the enlightened.

            The fact that it is a Goddess and not a God is a far cry from the dominant narrative that all religions of the world are patriarchal. Whether it be the enlightened, elegant Saraswati or the fierce and assertive Ma Durga, Navaratri also symbolizes the reverence of women as the powerful, enlightened and divine.

            The reverence of women as Goddesses in this day and age of brutal violence, sexual harassment of women and increasing feminization of labor signifies the two faced nature of Indian society that on one hand worships women as Devis and on the other hand treats them as Dasis aptly described by Veena Das as the Devi- Dasi dichotomy in Indian society.

            The practice of Ezhuthinirathu in the South where the elders literally and metaphorically hold hands of the young ones as they script their first letters in the rice grain reflects a Gerontocratic practice straight out of Weberian typology of Traditional Authority and Traditional Action. An action that relates to custom of the yesterday that places the elderly in society on a pedestal of enlightenment as torch bearers of learning and amassing wisdom.

            Vidyarambham is also a reminder of what Malinowski famously termed as Rites de Passage, that are rituals performed to smoothen the transition in crucial stages of life of an individual- birth, puberty, marriage, death. The beginning of the journey of learning whether it be a new instrument, art or knowledge is one such crucial juncture in the life of an individual. Vidyarambham, its associated rituals, sermons in worship of the Devi and the collective familial and kinship presence throughout the days of Navaratri and on the day of Vijayadeshami thus readies the mind of the young one with confidence, peace, inspiration and the feeling of a divine helping hand as he or she kick starts the journey of learning.

           

            Navaratri is also renowned for the multiple art forms on display in devotion to the almighty. Music and dance may be ordinarily perceived as secular activities yet here they are subsumed under the sacred, created by, of and for religion. In this way, Navaratri also signifies the blurring of lines of Durkhemian Sacred and Profane and once again brings to the fore the question of viability of secularism as an ideology in a society as religious as India where there is no crude separation between secular and sacred with most secular subsumed under latter.

            Navaratri and Vidhyarambham thus provide a paradise of interpreting Indian society, its religiosity and associated functions, emotional familial jointness, the cultural lag of Gerontocracy and paradox of patriarchy and worshipping of women.