Shall We Leave It to the Experts?

By Arundhati Roy

This article appeared in the February 18, 2002 edition of The Nation.

January 31, 2002

India lives in several centuries at the same time. Somehow we manage to progress and regress simultaneously.

As a nation we age by pushing outward from the middle--adding a few centuries on either end of the extraordinary CV. We greaten like the maturing head of a hammerhead shark with eyes looking in diametrically opposite directions.

I don't mean to put a simplistic value judgment on this peculiar form of "progress" by suggesting that Modern is Good and Traditional is Bad--or vice versa. What's hard to reconcile oneself to, both personally and politically, is the schizophrenic nature of it. That applies not just to the ancient/modern conundrum but to the utter illogic of what appears to be the current national enterprise. In the lane behind my house, every night I walk past road gangs of emaciated laborers digging a trench to lay fiber-optic cables to speed up our digital revolution. In the bitter winter cold, they work by the light of a few candles.

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About Arundhati Roy

Arundhati Roy, the Booker Prize-winning author of The God of Small Things and War Talk, lives in New Delhi, India. Other publications include a collection of interviews with David Barsamian, The Checkbook and the Cruise Missile, and a new essay collection, An Ordinary Person's Guide to Empire. more...
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