Illustration by Sandeep Joshi

On Thursday (December 29) newspapers reported that India’s leading industrialist Ratan Tata had travelled to Nagpur to call on the RSS boss, Mohan Bhagwat. It was described as “a courtesy call — a charming euphemism.” The Tata visit should normally be seen as a piece of routine power networking but it does come across as a rather incongruous affair in the context of the post-demonetisation narrative that is being dished out for public consumption.   “Even if it falters at a few steps, it is clear that this move (demonetisation) has shaken the ruling classes and their cohorts to the core,” asserts Organiser, the RSS mouthpiece. The ruling classes? On the run?  This is one of the many formulations being manufactured by the befuddled cheer-leaders, trying to make some sense of why the country and its economy and its people have been subjected to this demonetisation exercise.The phantom of an all-pervasive, all-potent elite has been in the works for some time. Since May 2014 some very, very determined saffronites have been suggesting that the Modi sarkar is being challenged, confronted and obstructed because it is out to demolish the power and status of “the Lutyens’ Zone.” A marked deterioration in manners and style and a roughness of speech was celebrated as a well-deserved snub to the entrenched  Lutyens’ Zone elites. The other day a leading conspiracy-monger suggested that some bureaucrats were still “one hundred percent loyal to the Lutyens’ Zone” who were working overtime to ensure the failure of the half-baked demonetisation business. An invisible “enemy” is sought to be conjured up, who can be paraded before the masses as the obstacle to national glory and prosperity. For some time now, Pakistan has been the designated “enemy.” Then, there is the “terrorist” who continues to cross the line even after being smacked with a “surgical strike.” The other day, for example, the Prime Minister declared that terrorism, drug mafia and underworld stood decimated “in a trice.”  Still, new enemies are needed to be conquered.When it is suggested that the “ruling classes” are on the run, we are invited to believe that those who are in charge of the government and its vast coercive powers are merely hapless apparatchiks, while the real, effective power resides somewhere else. This is nothing but a post-truth feint. There is no one to oppose those who occupy — after an electoral mandate to govern — the authority sites of the Indian State.For the vast masses the politician in power constitutes “the ruling class.” It is this politician in power who can — and, does — cause enormous unhappiness to those who cross his line; the local SP and the Collector are at his beck and call. A little further up the ladder, the ruling politician grafts for himself a badge of “security.” At the national level he/she has an “NSG” cover — a Mohan Bhagwat here and an Amit Shah there or a Baba Ramdev in-between.  And, then, we have the super exclusive club of those under SPG protection.But the saffrontines’ quarrel is not with these “under protection” elites. The saffron brigade has been chafing at the enduring influence and status the so-called Nehruvian elites enjoyed all these years in matters of policy and ideas. In the Modi political rhetoric during the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, the “dynasty” was portrayed as the root cause of all the deficiencies that had bedevilled Mother India. The Indian voter bought the argument. The “dynasty” was ingloriously dislodged; the dynasty’s provincial satraps were also unceremoniously sent packing, one by one. But we are now being invited to believe that despite being unseated, the Gandhis continue to exercise malevolent power over “the establishment”. The Gandhis and the Congress party are confined to exercise the democratic role that the Constitution guarantees the Opposition — the very same role that the BJP performed for ten years of UPA rule. A democratic Opposition cannot be wished away.So, who are the “ruling classes” and the “Lutyens Zone” operatives who are playing obstacle to the Prime Minister? A Marxist analyst would be itching to jump in and draw attention to Corporate India as the core of the “ruling classes”. But that, again, is not all that helpful. It is indeed Corporate India that had lined itself so eagerly behind Project Modi, beginning from the days of “Vibrant Gujarat” melas to the call on the RSS bosses. Some of these corporate leaders were conspicuously invited to the swearing-in ceremony on May 26, 2014. During these last twenty months Corporate India had been there for the Prime Minister whenever he needed them. The corporate honchos have repeatedly shouted salutations since November 8, 2016. The relationship between Corporate India and the ruling clique was never so cosy, so snugly, and so warm, as at the close of the year.If the “corporates” are so pleased at this “notebandi”, then which other sections of the “ruling classes” are running scared and thwarting the revolution? The bureaucrats? The IAS, IFS, IPS fraternity can hardly be suspected of any spine, leave alone gumption to oppose the government of the day. If anything, the serving — as well as the retired — babus are falling over one another, if not conspiring, to land up with this or that assignment. Admittedly, not all may be willing to humiliate themselves before the new political bosses, but that does not make them conspirators. The bureaucracy, at best, makes a professional careerist group, not a “ruling class”, determined to prevent or usher in a revolution.Who others can possibly be the members of the “mysterious” ruling classes who are supposed to be on the run after demonetisation? Could the infamous “Lutyens’ Zone” be harbouring enemies among, say, the members of the India International Centre, the India Habitat Centre, the Golf Club and the Gymkhana?  Somehow it is difficult to see these sites of (still) gentle conversations and scrumptious cakes as dens of conspirators against the Modi revolution.Still, the demagogue’s problem remains: who then is the enemy to be burned at the stake for the masses’ entertainment and distraction?  For now, we have to do with a Tamil Nadu Chief Secretary being raided or a Delhi banker being put to jail; the inspector raj, with its capacious capacity to find “incriminatory documents” is back with a vengeance. A Mayawati may or may not feel intimidated; the rivals in UP may or may not find themselves more inconvenienced than the BJP and its allies. Surely so comprehensively disrupting an exercise as the demonetisation could not have been undertaken with such narrow, shallow political calculations. The designated rulers will need to keep devising categories of winners and losers, loyalists and conspirators, friends and foes.