I have in mind Youngstown, a song by Bruce Springsteen. Two distinct versions of this song exist in two performances rendered many years apart. The first on The Ghost of Tom Joad; the second on Live in New York City. The later one, which I prefer, is loud, angry and militant. His voice shatters the stadium and reaches for the sky. The older rendition is slower, more meandering and nostalgic- one might say defeatist. Two hundred years of American working class history in the iconic mines that shaped the nation, the brutal power of industry, the destruction it wrecks in its wake are laid bare in this short song. The transition from Tom Joad to New York City becomes a metaphor for transitions in American life: the acceleration of the everyday, the violence at the heart of increasing mechanisation and technologisation of the world, the relentless pounding to nothingness of aspirations and hopes of those who work these mines but ultimately disappear as nameless fools, unwillingly offering their stories for others to represent: those who mythologise them as a heroic working class, those who string them along in election campaigns, those who decide to do good by taking it upon themselves to speak in the names of people they don’t understand.

The obvious dangers of generalising experiences on a global level notwithstanding, I cannot help but think of Youngstown when I think of Singur as portrayed in an exhibition currently running in the School of Arts and Aesthetics in JNU… well, currently only for one more day. The problems of representation I hinted at above are not facetious. In fact, in a project like the one I am discussing in this post, they might become more important than the subject of the exhibition itself. These stories of rural suffering are mediated by distinctly urban lenses. There seems to be some crude display of microscopic power in young fashionable people from West Bengal’s political capital venturing into Singur to bring the ‘civil society’ angle to a heated ongoing debate. One is acutely aware, walking past these photographs, that the voices too, are not authentic. Only glimpses of what must have been longer interviews, interspersed with the knowledgeable opinions of academics and representatives of the state. Important as these problems are, they are inescapable in the world we live in. Representations are contestations and contextations, they are purveyors of points-of-view, of ideologies, of ways of thinking- regardless of how much we distance ourselves from dirty things like these and summon the veritable powers of neutrality. No useful fact-finding or documentation of political resistance can occur in a vacuum from all this. But while we recognise the slippery terrain on which we tread, perhaps the one way to understand such projects is to abandon the search for authenticity. The slogan of authenticity is only a prelude to appropriation. When we distance ourselves from this notion of ‘the authentic’, perhaps we can get to a place where exhibitions like the one in JNU speak to us, even as we know that the tongues they speak in are varied, carrying different meanings for different audiences. One final point (and this emerges from some less-than-pleasant interactions with ‘mass’ meetings organised in Delhi University by left groups): the rejection of authenticity, if it goes hand in hand with a desire to learn from those we live among, can take us further towards avoiding some of the more crass pitfalls of the politics of representation. It is a particular brand of activist that thinks s/he has only things to teach (class consciousness, worker’s struggle, revolution,) to those s/he is active among. I am reminded here of Subcomandante Marcos’ invaluable slogan: “I shit on all the revolutionary vanguards of this planet.”

The elaborate photoessay in question, conceived of by The Citizens’ Initiative, manages to simultaneously contribute to the larger debate on development that has recently emanated from Bengal, and to go into the heart of some aspects of everyday life in Singur after 2006. The photographs which stand out are those which capture the elusive industry in making. Some of the stories the exhibition tells- destruction of homes, obliteration of fertile lands, construction of walls around the proposed plants- are familiar to us by now. Where this project draws its strength however, is in its depiction of the skeletal structure of the industry that is to replace these agricultural lands and deliver people from misery. Three photographs in particular:

1. A truck speeding down the Kolkata-Delhi National Highway, part of the Golden Triangle Project, with a big orange sun blinding us through the lens. The quote below tells us that industry prefers land where infrastructure is already available. So invariably, arid land is left as it is, and farm land eyed with predatory desire. The truck, the lone vehicle on a seemingly endless stretch of road, conjures images of radical loneliness, of alienation and despair. Springsteen sits inside, smoking a bidi and humming show-tunes; the age of acceleration has arrived; all difference will be annihilated when primitivism is rescued by the muscular arm of progress. The endless wait of history is over. It’s your turn for emancipation, take it or leave it (but remember: leaving it is not an option.)

2. Fortifications around the plant; capital apparently in retreat, but actually awaiting reinforcements. It’s a black-and-white photograph, giving the scene a sense of identity crisis. These people, these hapless toilers in the sun, building their own oppression. This is the banal power of architecture, something we have grown used to: high rises, towers, looming structures of brick and mortar, gigantic reflecting rectangular edifices penetrating the earth and heading skywards. We only notice towers when they come crashing down. But here, in this old-time black with white photograph, architecture announces its arrival to Singur. Landscapes will be reconfigured, power will re-become, aggressors will be fortified and rural slums (already in existence) will be poor seconds to urban slums. And in this dreamworld there will be no migration. Who, when she is ready to build what will crush her, is going to turn that brick against her master?

3. A boy in the foreground. A skeleton of the factory to be, swallowing up the frame, reducing the boy to insignificance. But he seems unaware of it, (children were generally more optimistic, we are told somewhere else.) This structure, hollow, massive, imposing, pregnant with a million possibilities, consumes the entire hall once you see it. It individualises the fate of populations, atomises experience. The collective fades from memory, the child- the future? Or a sad prediction of the end of futures? (Is this what Buddhababu meant by ‘the end of history’)?- becomes the resistance, most likely without knowing the significance of his distant interface with this masterful assemblage of steel and passion. Another complication of the politics of representation. The Durgapur Steel Plant, which I saw from inside a train after dark a few months ago is this dream when realised: a flat highway like structure, spread over infinite ground, arms flailing, beckoning God, breathing fire, the engine of progress and the carrier of history, a teleology for the middle class. Workers climbing into the bowels of death to earn their livelihood, displacement is unsexy, technology is another face of the body, another site to reinvent pleasure in new forms. This is J.G Ballard inviting us home.