Designated protest site is an oxymoron

The government has denotified Jantar Mantar as Delhi's protest venue. Denotified is a big word for a small idea. It means that the road where India has been shouting at its rulers for over 30 years is no longer within shouting distance of the rulers. If you are upset now, you must carry your grievances to Burari, or to a lesser-known CBD Park, or Ramlila Maidan, which is currently staging the actual Ramlila.A protest is not a rally or a mela or a wedding reception. Nobody wakes up and says, I feel betrayed today, so please suggest a venue for crying out loud, with ample parking. The whole point was to shout slogans at the gates of power and inconvenience the powers that be. What's the use of sitting on a sit-in in Burari? Why go to the edges of Delhi to demonstrate your anger with Central Delhi?Our authorities have a gift for turning feelings into red-taped files. Even before this week, you needed police permission 10 days in advance to protest at Jantar Mantar, and not more than 1,000 people could join. A call for protest is much like nature's call. You can't wait 10 days holding it in, waiting for an invite. The Delhi Police, which cannot always find a stolen scooter in 10 days, needs 10 days to make arrangements for lifting a bunch of people by their limbs.Ramlila Maidan, for crowds of 1,000 and above. Still larger crowds go to Burari and CBD. Baraat jaana hai? Small function at home, mid-size at a banquet hall, full band-baja-baaraat on the outskirts. Now, a word about the place being dropped. In 1724, Maharaja Sawai Jai Singh II built Jantar Mantar to study the sky. Giant stone instruments for the sun, moon and stars, including a sundial, whose shadow tells the time without a battery or a software update. For decades, the road opposite did the same job for the ground below. Farmers, retired soldiers, anti-dowry activists, feminists, Communists, wrestlers, and this year NEET students, all came. You looked at who was sitting there and knew what time it was for the government of the day. Perhaps that was the problem. Nobody in power likes a shadow falling across their window.There is a pattern here. Before the 1990s, Delhi protested at the Boat Club lawns, practically at Raisina's feet. Then dissent was pushed down the road to Jantar Mantar. Now it is being pushed out of town. Every few decades, popular grievances get moved one step further from the ears they were meant for. A Delhi High Court judge even wondered aloud in August whether protests should be inside Delhi at all. At this rate, by 2047, the designated protest site will be online only. A WhatsApp group where only admins can post. There is another serious aspect of this shift. Of looks. The modern protester is not the old uncle with a Pataka Bidi jhola and a cyclostyled pamphlet. He is 18, she is 22, both carry a ring light and a clip microphone. For him, if it isn't filmed, it didn't happen. For her, if he didn't film it, he's dead. Jantar Mantar had it all, even if not as picturesque as the Boat Club. Lutyens' bungalows across the wall, Kutty's filter kapi down the road, the red stone, old curves, evening light falling at exactly the angle an 18th-century astronomer intended. Hold up a placard there and it looks like a film poster. Besides, Connaught Place is a cold coffee away. And if you are in a mood for love, head to Janpath.Try that in Burari. Dust, garbage, a long wall, one tent pole and the general vibe of a district kabaddi trial ground. When farmers marched on Delhi in 2020, they were offered Burari, took one look and stayed on the highway. CBD Park sounds like a business district but looks like a business district's parking lot. You can't save democracy when you have to save yourself from the mosquitoes. Shout Inquilab Zindabad here and only the mosquitoes reply. Yes, it's flanked by a couple of malls and a couple of decent hotels, but neither makes an Instagram backdrop. Finding it on a map is hard. Crossing the Shahdara drain to get there will be draining.So, with a perfectly straight face, is this a ploy to defeat dissent? The lathis, the tear gas, the water cannon, all those make excellent videos of protesters converging. Now the government saves the cost of controlling a crowd by telling them to disperse themselves. Send dissent somewhere so dull and badly lit that no one with a following will bother, and the movement dies of low engagement. People will prefer detention to the dullness waiting for them.Gandhi walked nearly 400 km to Dandi for a fistful of salt. A beach has visual value at least. But no government would designate Dandi a protest site today. Gandhiji's application would be pending, with a note asking him to shift the salt to Burari. Signed Delhi Police Commissioner.To be fair, the people who live and work near Jantar Mantar have real complaints. Noise, traffic, rubbish. The green tribunal said this in 2017. But democracy is noisy. We don't need a patch for this software installed in 1950. Noise is a feature of democracy, not a bug. A quiet democracy, like a quiet pressure cooker, is an about-to-blow lid.The whole point of a protest is its address. In front of Parliament, near parliament which Jantar Mantar was, in front of the Delhi Police headquarters, in front of PMO, in front of Rahul Gandhi's residence, right across DDU Bhavan or Indira Bhavan, depending on who is making you angry. You take your complaint to the door of the person who caused it, not to a ground at the edge of the map where nobody with a designation will hear it. This is volume control, in the name of crowd control.Jai ho! And Om Shanti, Section 144. Sorry, 163.- Ends(Views expressed in the piece are those of the author)