Rhetoric of 'Aam Aadmi'

In his interim budget speech, union finance minister Pranab Mukherjee reminded us that the Indian people have seen how the “Aam Aadmi” has become the focus of the development process. He further argued that “the real heroes of India’s success story were our farmers”. However, the real state of affairs with respect to our farmers is apparent from the large number of farmer suicides in the country.

In the conclusion of the budget speech, an appeal was made to the Indian people “to make sound decisions to secure the nation’s future”. In fact, the interim budget speech can be treated as an election manifesto of the Congress Party. It is quite natural that the “Aam Aadmi” returned to the public domain as rhetoric. Otherwise, urban India is not concerned with “How the Other Half Dies”. Shyam Benegal, the eminent Indian filmmaker, lamented some years ago that popular Hindi cinema projects a standardised urban view of Indian society. Another aspect of post-modern Hindi cinema identified by Benegal is the total disappearance of rural India in any of the films being made today.