Jonathan Shapiro Anjaria. “Street Hawkers and Public Space in Mumbai.” Economic and Political Weekly, May 27, 2006.

The Indian economy underwent a radical transformation from the late nineteenth century onwards under the twin impact of global capitalism and financial needs of British imperial networks. Complex interactions among these factors contributed to the emergence of a large industrial sector comprising mining, tea and coffee plantations, railway networks, cotton textile, sugar cane processing and various agro based seasonal industries. These industries generated new employment and brought into existence large wage earning industrial working classes. Though employed in a variety of work settings under different working conditions, the process of emergence of industrial working classes was viewed by many from the perspective of universally applicable homogenizing discourse of class formation. Many contemporary observers and later historians and sociologists were dismayed by the failure of Indian workers to behave in accordance with the theoretical master script prepared for them. Many scholars sought to explain their belied expectations in terms of structural in adequacies of India’s transition towards industrialization. For example, though by 1931 nearly four million workers were employed in the organized industrial sector and the number of urban dwellers came to constitute nearly 17% of Indian population, this industrialization appeared to be limited in scope in comparison to the vastness of agrarian economy. Indeed, many were disappointed by the nature of slow progress of industrialization in India and the industrial growth had been characterized as enclaved in nature. There often existed a sense of dejection in this seemingly spasmodic development of industrial sector and the related transformation of Indian society and economy which was aptly captured in India’s one of the most influential Marxist historian Sumit Sarkar’s words “incomplete transition towards bourgeois society”.

This very use of the term ‘incomplete transition’ points towards various universalizing discourses of transition from pre-capitalist societies towards capitalist industrial societies. Depending on their ideological convictions scholars used different theoretical tools to explain this incompleteness of Indian transition. Developmental sociologists often described such ‘incomplete transitions’ in terms of battle between modernity and tradition, many nationalist Marxist historians pointed their fingers to the retardation of Indian economy under the impact of colonial rule and hence the limited nature of industrialization. Some subaltern scholars analyzed such development in terms of the failure of universalizing logic of capital to subjugate indigenous pre-capitalist forms of community. In the context of labor history, these concerns were also invested with political expectations. Can workers steeped in peasant traditions of India act as revolutionary proletariat? Can class and class consciousness constitute a critical conceptual apparatus in understanding forms of social and political consciousness in India? Does India constitute a cultural exception that cannot be analyzed through existing theories of social transformations towards capitalistic modernity? India in this case became larger than its geographic location and stood almost as a metaphor for African and Asian societies where industrial working classes were perceived to be a hybrid creature ‘peasant workers’ who were incapable of organizing effective resistance to designs of capital.

Raj Chandavarkar challenged these notions in his PhD thesis written in 1981. He then transformed this thesis over a span of thirteen years into a book entitled The Origins of Industrial Capitalism in India: Business Strategies and the Working Classes in Bombay, 1900-1940 (Cambridge University Press, 2003). . He further explored implications of the arguments of the tome in the sphere of Indian politics in his second monograph Imperial Power and Popular Politics: Class, Resistance and the State in India, 1850-1950 (Cambridge University Press, 1998). . Chandavarkar questioned these universalizing narratives by looking into specificities of the business strategies and labor resistance in Bombay. In a highly imaginative account he dissolved different boundaries that often informed labor history writing. He rejected the perceived dichotomy between agriculture and industry, rural and urban, work place and neighborhood, informal and formal industries. Chandavarkar also sought capture workers’ experience of their lives rather than viewing them as actors in contests between larger than life forces ideas namely modernity and tradition. For Chandravarkar labor history could not be divorced from business strategies and also more significantly the way state exercised political power in shaping politics of business and labor. If ideological moorings of early subaltern scholars could be located in Thompsonian and Foucauldian concerns, Chandravarkar’s work was heavily influenced by his intellectual mentor Gareth Stedman Jones whose seminal work Outcaste London (Pantheon, 1984). cast its long shadow over Chandavarkar’s analysis of the making of Bombay working classes. Stedman Jone’s influence is evident in the way Chandavarkar challenged the fixity of the notion of class as a given category produced on the shop floor where working classes and bourgeoisie supposedly confronted each other.

Rather than perceiving them to be homogenous and naturally solidaristic, Chandavarkar demonstrated the fluidity and tensions embedded in such categories. Almost reversing earlier historical assumptions in this regard, Chanadavarkar brings forth the salience of neighborhood and how the extension of industrial conflicts on the streets of neighborhood create conditions for the production of class solidarity and the intensification of class conflicts. Like Gareth Stedman Jones, Chandavarkar actually brings forth the significance of multiple processes of industrial production organizations ranging from small workshops to large industries and how the emphasis on the distinction between informal and formal industries actually blur our understanding of labor history. Here obviously one has to also take into account seminal contribution of Mark Holmstorm as well. Based on the reading of this genre of labor history Chandavarkar sought to provide agency to Bombay mill workers in shaping business strategies of their employers. Indeed, the most important aspect of Chandavarkar’s writings is the centrality he attributed to the story of resistance mounted by workers and their ability to compel mill owners to refashion the strategies of industrialization. In a way Chadavarkar undertakes a political reading of social history and thus provides new conceptual power to the idea of class not as a given totalizing category but as a social force that is in the process of making and unmaking within a particular historical context through interactions with state, strategies of capital and historical organization of social spaces within urban context. He thus simultaneously denies and affirms what Marx said in the Eighteenth Brumaire “Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past.”

Chandravarkar further elucidated this argument in his second monograph which was a collection of essays. Here Chandavarkar actually explored fundamentally the fluidity and flexibility of social formations of class in relation to political language, power and political practice. Two important essays stand out in this volume where Chandavarkar advances the earlier understanding of labor history writing in India through an analysis of discourse of colonial governance. Echoing Stedman Jones’ arguments about casual workers of London Chandavarkar further asserted that workers were not intrinsically violent rather the colonial state because of its deep seated insecurity of masses actually engaged in violent practices that was reproduced by workers in their moments of resistance. More importantly he shows how workers’ response to the nationalist movement actually evolved through different and unusual medium of the Communist Party due to the Congress’s attempt to being everything for everybody and thus catering to large and disparate constituencies with contradictory interests. Though Chandavarkar strenuously denied that class relations were not inscribed in industrial relations his works actually broadened the framework of the idea of class formation and demonstrates again how class action within neighborhood, in the context of nationalist movements and as a form of resistance to police atrocities inform not only labor history but also politics in general in Bombay in the interwar period.

I would now turn towards a rather uncertain territory of explaining briefly how these insights generated by Chandavarkar had informed and influenced my work. By delving into the politics of Bengal from late 19th century to 1939, I have sought to demonstrate how struggles waged by industrial workers actually transformed not simply labor politics but the very nature of urban popular struggles in Bengal and finally Bengal politics. Workers in Bengal, despite their ever shifting fragmented loyalties towards diverse forms of templates of identities, were not only able to assert their presence in Bengal politics, but because of their location in jute industry at the nodal point of connections between global capitalism and peasant economy, had actually compelled in 1937 the propertied elites to consolidate their support behind a rickety alliance between British capitalists spearheaded by Benthal, Bengal landlords represented by Nazimuddin and B. P Singh Roy and Indian capitalists such as Nalini Ranjan Sarkar backed by G. D Birla. This coalition could continue up to 1939 because of the labor militancy from below. In other words, if we remove from the idea of working class their assigned and expected task of liberating humankind from capitalism and accept it as a diffused social force always engaged in the process of making and unmaking, we may find that even in a predominantly agrarian economy intense class action waged by an alliance among working classes could play a pivotal role in shaping not only popular politics but politics in general. While asserting that I must say at the end that I affirm and possibly also contest my intellectual mentor Chandavarkar’s thesis by stating that class relation is inscribed in the action of workers and we could recognize it if we de- scale our perspectives from the metaphysics of orientalist assumptions about Indian working classes.

You are cordially invited to a talk and presentation by Ashish Rajadhyaksha, media historian and archivist from the Centre for the Study of Culture & Society in Bangalore, India on THURSDAY 11 MAY 2006 at 5.00 p.m. Ashish will introduce the Comprehensive Online Resource for Education (CORE), a recent initiative of CSCS, and present a short history of changing practices of database management, digital archiving, and curriculum and courseware development at CSCS for teaching cultural studies and social sciences in India.

CSCS and the New Academic Domain in India

The Centre for the Study of Culture & Society was founded in 1998 in Bangalore, as a ‘new generation’ academic research centre. While CSCS derived its historical legacy from the tradition of institutionalised social science research as supported by the well-known state-run institutes of the ICSSR (Indian Council for Social Science Research), it has also struck out on its own with new
models for inter-disciplinary and inter-institutional pedagogy and research in the field of social science and theory.

The Digital Resource

Since the late 1990s, CSCS has experimented with database formats that could be transformed into teachable instruments. In 1999 CSCS started its Media & Culture Archive, and extended this in 2004 into India’s only M.A. programme in Cultural Studies taught entirely online. In 2005, this was further extended into the Undergraduate Diploma Programme in Cultural Studies. In the future, CSCS seeks to consolidate effective databasing with online pedagogy, by further linking this connection to the larger needs of social science pedagogy in India.

The Social Sciences in India

Indian social science research has been, since the 1970s and the pioneering work of the Subaltern Studies Collective, perhaps the most significant social science research tradition worldwide for close to two decades. Among its significant aspects has been its interlinking with the priorities of India’s NGO movement together with the needs of academic institutions both inside and outside the
University.

Furthering this linkage, social science research has mined the resources provided by numerous practices of independent informal archiving. As such archiving encounters the problems of digitization, it has also opened social science practice into three further areas: (1) The linking of the special skills of navigating the archives with new techniques of online pedagogy, (2) The
options opened up by online publication, and (3) The need for consolidated structures of data collaboration including academically valid search platforms.

The Domain of ‘Informal Archiving’ in India

Since roughly the late 1970s (conventionally from the time of the end of the Emergency), non-governmental organisations have attempted a form of archiving, alongside their work on advocacy, research, training and monitoring in their specialised fields of interest. Since the mid-1990s, this movement has also sought to enter the domain of digitization at various levels, and with varying
results.

The ‘informal archive’ in India could consist of anything between 3-5,000 institutions seeking to work at various levels, from the collection to the catalogue to the archive itself. It is now a sufficiently significant database, with sufficiently significant problems, to merit an independent look, as the phenomenon grows in tandem with the research work of social scientists in India.

About CORE

The Comprehensive Online Resource for Education (CORE) is an attempt to think through a possible strategy for bringing together the diverse resources and research materials available in different locations of new social science research in India, with a possible Asian extension. CORE hopes to bring into focus the the need to convert critical research into teachable, intelligible and easily accessible knowledge bases, the identifying of effective online tools and methods for teaching and learning, and the relocation of education centres, the educators and the students within the digital interfaces of cyberspace - all within the domain of higher education in social sciences in Asia.

ASHISH RAJADHYAKSHA is Senior Fellow of the Centre for the Study of Culture & Society (CSCS) in Bangalore, where he coordinates the CSCS Media Archive and the CSCS CORE (Comprehensive Online Resource for Education). With Paul Willemen, he was co-author and editor of the Encyclopaedia of Indian Cinema (1999). He is an active member of the editorial collective of the Journal of Arts and Ideas, and is a regular contributor to the journals Framework and Sight & Sound, and an advisor to CRIT (Collective Research Initiatives Trust), Mumbai.

He has written Ritwik Ghatak: A Return to the Epic (1983), was Editor, The Sad and Glad of Kishore Kumar (Research Centre for Cinema Studies, 1988); was Editor, with Amrit Gangar, of Ghatak: Arguments/Stories (Screen Unit/Research Centre for Cinema Studies, 1987). He was co-curator, with Geeta Kapur, of the exhibition Bombay/Mumbai 1992-2001, part of the exhibition Century City: Art and Culture in the Modern Metropolis, at the Tate Modern, London, 2001 [6]. Ashish’s forthcoming book is called CINEMA IN THE TIME OF CELLULOID: INDIAN EVIDENCE 2005-1925 (New Delhi: Tulika Books, 2007).

Civic Sensibility: Bombay in the Twenties and Thirties

Clifford Manshardt, Pioneering on Social Frontiers in India, Bombay: Lalvani Publishing House, 1967.
Clifford Manshardt, ed., Bombay Today and Tomorrow: Eight Lectures at the Nagpada Neighbourhood House. Bombay: D.B. Taraporevala and Sons and Co., 1930
——, ed., How the Bombay Municipality Works: A Symposium at the Nagpada Neighbourhood House. Bombay: D.B. Taraporevala and Sons and Co., 1935
——, ed., Bombay Looks Ahead: Eight Lectures at the Nagpada Neighbourhood House. Bombay: D.B. Taraporevala and Sons and Co., 1934
——, ed., Some Social Services of the Government of Bombay. Bombay, D.B. Taraporevala and Sons and Co., 1945
A.R. Burnett-Hurst, Labour and Housing in Bombay: A Study in the Economic Conditions of the Wage-Earning Classes in Bombay, London: P.S. King & Son, Ltd., 1925.
Pestonji D. Mahaluxmivala, History of the Bombay Electric Supply and Tramways Company (BEST), Limited, 1905-1935. Bombay: BEST, 1936.
S.M. Edwardes, The Rise of Bombay: A Retrospect. Bombay, 1902.
S.M. Surveyor, ed. Harvey-Nariman Libel Case: With a Brief History of the Development Department, Important Extracts from the Mears Committee Report Leading upto Prosecution, Court Proceedings including the Statement of Defence, Judgement in Full, with Press Comments, Illustrations, Etc. Bombay, 1927-1928
Jal F. Bulsara, ed., Bombay Citizenship Series. Bombay: National Information and Publications, 1949-1953

• Claude Batley, “Bombay’s Houses and Homes”
• A.L. Guilford, “Our Transport System”
• F.M. Surveyor, “Our Harbour and Docks”
• D.S. Savkar, “Banking and Finance in Bombay”
• Salim Ali, “Birds of Bombay”

Samuel Townshend Sheppard, Bombay. The Times of India Press, 1932.

Housing the Middle and Working Classes

Silver Jubilee Souvenir to Founder Members of the Saraswat Co-Operative Housing Society, Limited. Bombay, 1940.
R.S. Deshpande, Modern Ideal Homes for India. Poona: United Book Corporation, 1948 [1939]
R.S. Deshpande, Cheap and Healthy Homes for the Middle Classes of India. Poona: United Book Corporation, 1969 [1935]
R.S. Deshpande, An RCC Primer. Poona: United Book Corporation, 1969 [1932]
A.E. Mirams, Bhamburda: A Garden Suburb, Poona, 1922.
A.E. Mirams, Report on the Development of Karachi, Bombay Government Town Planning and Valuation Department, 1922.
A.E. Mirams, “Town Planning in Bombay under the Bombay Town Planning Act, 1915, British Town Planning Institute, Papers and Discussions, 1919-20, v.6, pp.43-57
A.E. Mirams, Report on the Proposed Development by the Bombay Port Trust of Antop Village, Poona: Scottish Mission Industries Company, 1919.
A.E. Mirams, “Memorandum on Industrial Employees” submitted to the Indian Industrial Commission, 1916-17, Bombay: Government Press, 1917.
J.P. Orr, Density of Population in Bombay: A Lecture Delivered before the Bombay Co-operative Housing Association. Bombay, British India Press. 1914.
J.P. Orr, The Bombay City Improvement Trust from 1898 to 1909, Bombay: Times of India Press, 1911.
Kamu Iyer, ed. Buildings that Shaped Bombay: Works of G.B. Mhatre. Mumbai: Kamala Raheja Vidyanidhi Institute of Architecture (KRVIA) and Urban Design Research Institute (UDRI), 2000.

Civics and Science: The Bombay School of Economics and Sociology, 1922-1956

Patrick Geddes, “Bombay University and Bombay City: Scheme of Possible Collaboration Between University and City”, Bombay, 1922.
Patrick Geddes, “Essentials of Sociology in Relation to Economics”, Indian Journal of Economics vol.III, parts 1-3, Bombay, 1922.
Jacqueline Tyrwhitt, Patrick Geddes in India, London: Lund Humphries, 1947.
Jal F. Bulsara, Patterns of Social Life in Metropolitan Areas (with particular reference to Greater Bombay), New Delhi: Research Programmes Committee, Planning Commission and Bombay: Gujarat Research Society, 1970.
J.V. Ferreira and S.S. Jha, The Outlook Tower: Essays on Urbanization in Memory of Patrick Geddes, University Department of Sociology, Bombay: Popular Prakashan, 1976.
G.S. Ghurye, “Social Work and Sociology” and “Salary and Other Conditions of Work of Clerks in Bombay City” in Anthropo-Sociological Papers, Bombay: Popular Prakashan, 1963.
G.S. Ghurye, Cities and Civilization, Bombay: Popular Prakashan, 1962.
C. Rajagopalan, The Greater Bombay: A Study in Suburban Ecology, Bombay: Popular Book Depot, 1962.

Wartime Economics

C.N. Vakil, J.J. Anjaria and D.T. Lakdawala, Price Control and Food Supply (with special reference to Bombay City), Bombay: N.M. Tripathi and Company, 1943.
C.N. Vakil, Socio-Economic Survey of Bombay City, 1954-57.
D.T. Lakdawala, V.N. Kothari, J.C. Sandesara, P.A. Nair, Work, Wages and Well-Being in an Indian Metropolis: Economic Survey of Bombay City, New Delhi: Research Programmes Committee, Planning Commission, 1954, published by University of Bombay, Series in Economics no.11, Bombay, 1963.
Benjamin Zachariah, Developing India: An Intellectual and Social History, 1930-1950. Delhi: Oxford University Press India, 2005.
S.L. Rao, ed. The Partial Memoirs of V.K.R.V. Rao. Delhi: Oxford University Press India, 2002.
H.T. Parekh, The Bombay Money Market. Bombay: Geoffrey Cumberledge/Oxford University Press, 1953.
K.N. Naik, The Co-Operative Movement in the Bombay State, C.N. Vakil, ed., Studies in Indian Economics, Bombay: Popular Book Depot, 1953.

Social Work in the City: The Dorabji Tata Graduate School of Social Work/Tata Institute of Social Sciences, 1935-1952

Clifford Manshardt, Pioneering on Social Frontiers in India, Bombay: Lalvani Publishing House, 1967.
P. Ramachandran and A. Padmanabha, Social and Economic Rents and Subsidies for Low-Income Groups in Greater Bombay, Bombay: Lalvani Publishing House, 1967.

Tata Institute of Social Sciences Series

• Social Disorganisation in India, 1938
• Mobilising Social Service in Wartime, 1943
• Dharavi: An Economic and Social Survey of a Village in the Suburbs of Bombay, 1944
• Our Beggar Problem, 1945
• Students and Social Work, 1949
• Social Service Department in a Hospital, 1950
• Public Shopping Habits and Conveniences, 1952

Planning Space and Society in Greater Bombay

Mulk Raj Anand, et. al. Bombay. Bombay: Modern Architects Research Group (MARG) Publications and Tata Press, 1966
Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA), Draft Regional Plan for Bombay Metropolitan Region, 1996–2011. Mumbai: MMRDA and Government of Maharashtra, 1995.
Modak and Mayer
S.G. Barve
Joint Town Planning Committee
Tata History Project, Tata Electric Companies. Bombay: Tata Economic Consultancy Services, 1981.
Nigel Harris, Economic Development, Cities and Planning: The Case of Bombay. Bombay: Oxford University Press India, 1978
Meera Kosambi, Bombay in Transition: The Growth and Social Ecology of a Colonial City, 1880-1980. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell International, 1986.

Urbs Prima in Indis: Nineteenth Century Bombay

Mariam Dossal, Imperial Designs and Indian Realities: The Planning of Bombay City, 1845-1875. Delhi: Oxford University Press India, 1991
Teresa Albuquerque,
Gillian Tindall, City of Gold
Lakshmi Subramanian, Indigenous Capital and Imperial Expansion: Bombay, Surat and the West Coast, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1996.

Labour and Industrial Histories

Rajnarayan Chandavarkar, The Origins of Industrial Capitalism in India: Business Strategies and the Working Class in Bombay, 1900–1940. Delhi: Cambridge University Press, 1994.
——, Imperial Power and Popular Politics: Class, Resistance and the State in India, 1850-1950. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.
Neera Adarkar and Meena Menon, One Hundred Years, One Hundred Voices: The Millworkers of Mumbai: A Vanishing History. Calcutta: Seagull Books, 2004
Darryl D’Monte, Ripping the Fabric: The Decline of Mumbai and its Mills. New Delhi: Oxford University Press India, 2002
Rajni Bakshi, The Long Haul: An Account of the Textile Strike. Bombay: BUILD Documentation Centre, 1984.
Hubert van Wersch, The Bombay Textile Strike, 1982-1983. Bombay: Oxford University Press, 1992.
Sudha Deshpande and Lalit Deshpande, Problems of Urbanisation and Growth of Large Cities in a Developing Country: A Case Study of Bombay. Geneva: International Labour Organisation (ILO), World Employment Programme Research Working Paper no.177, 1991.
Vasant Gupte, Labour Movement in Bombay: Origin and Growth upto Independence. Bombay: Institute for Workers Education, 1981.
Jairus Banaji and Rohini Hensman (Union Research Group, Bombay), Beyond Multinationalism: Management Policy and Bargaining Relationships in International Companies. Delhi: Sage Publications, 1990.
A.D.D. Gordon, Businessmen and Politics: Rising Nationalism and a Modernising Economy in Bombay, 1918-1933. New Delhi : Manohar, 1978
K. Sita, V.S. Phadke, Swapna Banerjee-Guha, The Declining City-Core of an Indian Metropolis: A Case Study of Bombay. New Delhi : Concept, 1988.
K. Sita and R.N. Sharma, eds., Issues in Urban Development: A Case of Navi Mumbai. Jaipur: Rawat Publications, 2001.

The Urban Turn: Mumbai in the Nineties

Namas Bhojani and Arun Katiyar, Bombay: A Contemporary Account of Mumbai, New Delhi : Harper Collins Publishers India, 1996.
Thomas Blom Hansen, Wages of Violence: Naming and Identity in Postcolonial Bombay. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001
Rahul Mehrotra and Sharda Dwivedi, Bombay: The Cities Within. Bombay: India Book House Limited, 1995.
Sujata Patel and Alice Thorner, eds., Bombay: Metaphor for Modern India. Delhi: Oxford University Press India, 1995
Sujata Patel and Alice Thorner, eds., Bombay: Mosaic of Modern Culture. Delhi: Oxford University Press India, 1995
Sujata Patel and Jim Masselos, eds., Bombay and Mumbai: The City in Transition. Delhi: Oxford University Press India, 2003
Gyan Prakash, “The Urban Turn” in SARAI Reader 2: Cities of Everyday Life, Delhi: Centre for the Study of Developing Societies/Waag Society for Old and New Media, 2002
Pauline Rohtagi, Pheroza Godrej and Rahul Mehrotra, eds., Bombay to Mumbai: Changing Perspectives. Mumbai: MARG Publications, 1997.
Teresa Albuquerque, Bombay, A History. New Delhi: Rashna in association with Promilla, 1992.

LEXICON OF THE CLICHES, BANALITIES AND TRUISMS OF INDIAN JOURNALISM

Conceived by Nikhil Rao and Shekhar Krishnan

Contributions by David Clingingsmith, Aaron York, Eric Beverley, Arvind Rajagopal, Vaishnavi Chandrashekhar, Namita Devidayal, Shailaja Neelakanthan, Anagha Neelakanthan, Rajeev Rao, Avtar Singh, Rohan Sippy, Rohena Gera, Rochona Mazumdar, Paul Beban, Sanjay Bulchandani

Introduction (Mumbai, 18 August 2000)

If further proof is needed that we scholarly types have time on our hands and idle intellectual itches that need to be scratched, then here it is.

For a while now, Shekhar and I have been engaged in a great philological project, our very own 21st century Hobson Jobson, as it were: that of compiling a lexicon of the marvellous cliches, truisms, banalities, and other little idiosyncrasies that litter the pages of our Great Indian Newspapers. While these necessarily assault one’s finer sensibilities on a sustained basis during the act of reading, leading to a sensation not unlike receiving minor but unpleasant electric shocks while trying to enjoy one’s paper with one’s morning coffee, I think we would like to advance the argument that it is these very cliches that impart to Indian newspapers their own inimical character. And in the spirit of our great democracy, which we celebrated and revivified only three days ago, we thought that we should make this project of compiling the lexicon a public one.

What more fitting public project could there be? Who among us has not winced upon hearing, for the two thousandth time, that the Mumbai police force is “second only to Scotland Yard”? Here is a way for all of us to vent our frustrations while at the same time productively harnessing that energy to compile a document which, I believe, will endure for posterity. I want all of you to “pitch in”, to “leap into the fray”, to “throw in your two pence worth”. Let us celebrate the magnificent and underappreciated art of cliche. All text for all news in the English print media in India is essentially generated out of these words. Feel free to add, append, and modify the lexicon and the master paragraph below.

The Lexicon

1. confabulate: to confer. “The party leaders confabulated about the new agreement.”
2. work out the modalities: sort out the details. “The party leaders confabulated about working out the modalities of the new agreement.”
3. supremo: head dude. “The party supremos confabulated about working out the modalities of the new agreement.”
4. brigand: bad dude. “The Karnataka and Tamil Nadu supremos confabulated about working out the modalities of the new agreement with the forest brigand.”
5. crack sleuths: smart dudes. “The Karnataka and Tamil Nadu supremos confabulated with the Special Task Force’s crack sleuths about working out the modalities of the new agreement with the forest brigand.”
6. strongman: big dude. “The Karnataka and Tamil Nadu supremos, in consultation with the Maratha strongman, confabulated with the Special Task Force’s crack sleuths about working out the modalities of the new agreement with the forest brigand.”
7. hardened criminals: tough dudes
8. airdash: to move at other than usual glacial pace. “The Karnataka and Tamil Nadu supremos, in consultation with the Maratha strongman, confabulated with the Special Task Force’s crack sleuths about working out the modalities of the new agreement with the forest brigand. The PM himself has been airdashed in.”
9. beefed up security: more bodies, but not necessarily more security. “The Karnataka and Tamil Nadu supremos, in consultation with the Maratha strongman, confabulated with the Special Task Force’s crack sleuths about working out the modalities of the new agreement with the forest brigand. The PM himself has been airdashed in under conditions of beefed up security.”
10. second only to Scotland Yard: usually cited while hailing the work of the Mumbai Police; the subtext is that they’re not anymore
11. swing into action: to finally stop drinking chai and reluctantly get off your ass.
12. swoop down upon: “The Karnataka and Tamil Nadu supremos, in consultation with the Maratha strongman, confabulated with the Special Task Force’s crack sleuths about working out the modalities of the new agreement with the forest brigand. The PM himself has been airdashed in under conditions of beefed up security. Meanwhile the Mumbai police force, second only to Scotland Yard and having been called in to assist with the situation, have now swung into action and are ready to swoop down upon the brigand and his associates.”
13. nab: seize
14. flying squads of nuisance detectors: These are the Mumbai Police’s intrepid stalwarts who have been relentlessly patrolling the city enforcing the B.M.C’s recent ban on plastic bags of less than 20 microns thickness.
15. abscond: to evade police.
16. scam: normal conditions of doing business in South Asia.
17. to the tune of Rs 10 crores: estimated dimensions of scam.
18. point the finger of suspicion
19. stung by criticism: react to weary but yet admirably persistent public outrage.
20. take stock of the situation: to pretend to give a shit.
21. take umbrage: to give a shit.
22. take up cudgels on behalf of: to stand up for.
23. cuddling and fondling: [this, we must admit, we have never seen, but Aaron assures us that he has seen newsprint to the effect of “Madan Lal Khurana and Sahib Singh Verma were seen cuddling and fondling in post-election bliss.”]
24. fracas, also known as dustup: most often seen in close conjunction with unseemly. often applied to parliament and other herdings of political animals.
25. inveterate, sometimes confused on sub-editor’s desk with invertebrate so one can find references to ‘invertebrate followers of the political scene.’
26. the India Today ending, also sometimes the TOI edit page ending, which always takes the form of a rhetorical question, e.g.,
    1. is anyone listening?
    2. have the ends of justice been served, that is the question
    3. only time will tell (that old tattletale)… ad infinitum
27. the ends of justice scattered all over, especially in the Calcutta journals. where are the beginnings of justice? doesn’t anyone care? is anyone accountable for the beginnings of justice? Is that the question?
28. Eves and Romeos: young women and men, most often seen together in the context of roadside Romeos being accused of Eve-teasing.
29. hardcores, ultras and clean shaven culprits associated with the Punjab action and other trouble spots.
30. hot pursuit: recently-much-in-the-news
31. the classic epitaph/retirement speech phrase: so and so must receive kudos for having rendered yeoman service to such and such.
32. prepone
33. the enigmatically enhanced pressurise
34. cooling their heels in the lockup

The Ur Paragraph of Indian Journalism

The Karnataka and Tamil Nadu supremos, in consultation with the Maratha strongman, confabulated with the Special Task Force’s (S.T.F.) crack sleuths about working out the modalities of the new agreement with the forest brigand. The PM himself has been airdashed in under conditions of beefed up security. Meanwhile the Mumbai police force (M.P.F.), second only to Scotland Yard (S.Y.) and having been called in to assist with the situation, have now swung into action and are ready to swoop down upon the brigand and his associates.

In other news today, a flying squad of nuisance detectors (F.S.N.D.) managed to nab red-handed three hardened criminals who have been remorselessly violating the ban on plastic bags (B.O.P.B.). Two other associates in the plastic bag scam (P.B.S.) are believed to be absconding in Delhi. Meanwhile, the Bombay Municipal Corporation (B.M.C.), stung by criticisms alleging that it is involved in the scam, has promised to take stock of the situation. The municipal workers union (M.W.U.) has taken umbrage at the allegations and has vowed to take up cudgels on behalf of their comrades in the flying squads. The scam is rumoured to involve sums to the tune of Rs. 10 crores.

Border Security Force (B.S.F.) cadres have been placed on red alert at the latest trouble spot (L.T.S.) on the Indo-Pak border following anti-national activities being engaged in by a band of hardcores. Highly placed sources at South Block (H.P.S.S.B.) point the finger of suspicion (F.O.S.) at a sinister foreign hand (S.F.H.) for sowing discord. Since the leaders of this band of ultras have been cooling their heels in the lockup of late, the most recent anti-social activities are probably intended to pressurize the government into preponing the date of their release. Kudos to our B.S.F. boys for having rendered yeoman service in putting a lid on this situation. In related news, an unseemly fracas broke out in Parliament today while Members were “debating” the latest border situation. The issue at stake was a recent master plan that has been mooted by doyens of the Indian security establishment and that is intended to quash all manner of anti-social elements operating in backward areas. Inveterate watchers of the political scene shook their collective head in dismay. Will our leaders ever learn to lead? Will the ends of justice be served? Only time will tell.