Opinionated in India

There can be several measurements of maturity of a society. One of them is opinion or ideas or thoughts and subsequent dissemination of them. But presence of “opinion” alone is not correct or sufficient indicator. According to me the maturity of a society vis-à-vis opinion is reflected in the diversity of opinions or alternative ideas, no matter they are popular opinion or not.

I will take two examples from Finland, an egalitarian country, which has been proved to be a mature society by variety of parameters. After the great depression of 1990, the prosperity of Finland is much attributed to its joining the European Union in 1995 which helped transform the country. The person who led Finland to European Union was Esko Aho, then Prime Minister and leader of the conservative government. Considering much of Finland has immensely benefited from his effort to get EU membership, it is expected that everyone would think highly of him. But this is not the case. For each individual praising him you will find a critic. Next take the example of rock band ‘Lordi’ which won the Eurovision for the first time for Finland. Largest ever crowd of people came onto the street to felicitate them. Apparently all of the country would be singing paeans for it. Again it not the case, not all thinks same of the band.

Now I come to India. The thing which baffles me there is the similarity of opinion. Whether it is sports, politics or general state of affairs, whole country it seems to have the same opinion. It is the same person who is the best , same one who is the worst, the same proposal which is best, the same course of action which has greatest benefit potential, so on and so forth. Why it is so? What is the difference in being opinionated in India and elsewhere? Suppose we bring a person from some other planet to Earth for just one day. In that one day he/she is given a tour of India and asked about the country? I am sure the answer will be anything except that “India is an egalitarian society”. Then how come India is so ‘egalitarian’ when it comes to opinions?

The only plausible explanation which comes to my mind is that ‘Indian intelligentsia’ largely consists of only one section of the society. Had it been representative of all sections of society, we would have seen similar diversity in opinions as the society.

There can be several reasons for the distorted representation. May be other sections don’t have means to disseminate the opinion, or the entire bandwidth has been hogged by one particular section or may be others don’t have luxury to opine. What ever the reason may be, the visible opinion there can’t be taken as opinion of all country, but merely a lop-sided one. A particular opinion might have more visibility, more visible representation and more calls for support but that does not make it the voice of the majority of Indians.