A Green Cross To Revitalise Civil Society

We should revisit Nicholas Roerich's idea of a Green Cross to protect culture. And add efforts to nurture diverse languages through translations and save dying crafts through schools

- SHIV VISVANATHAN

THE election of 2024 has been reported with great fanfare. There is a conclusiveness and finality about it. In terms of numbers, if not conviction, the current regime is here to stay for the next five years. Yet, once the obviousness of the result is internalised, there is little left to say. The obviousness is fixed by the predictability of the conversation. Once the election is over, the idea of normalcy and the sense of everydayness seems empty. There is little left from the contestation of civil society and everyday politics. What is bleakest is the missingness of civil society.

The idea of civil society must go beyond formal definitions. Civil society refers not just to the organisations established by citizens; it is also a label of the ecology of interactions and fecundity of politics, as an agnostic style. It needs a polysemy of words to describe it. One is looking forward to an ecology of anecdotes, dialogues, interrogations and contestations. One is expecting a certain power of performativity, adding drama to politics. One senses a plurality, a diversity of engagements, predicting a sense of surprise. All this is missing today.

Civil society is read as noise. As communications expert Colin Cherry claims, noise is unwelcome music. It is a composite of all the ideas you do not want to hear. Noise adds to the music of everyday civics. What one misses most is the inventiveness of civil society, a talkativeness, creating spaces for politics. Memory becomes critical here, because civil society is an archive of duets, decisions and discussions. Civil society creates a diversity of plots, instructions and expectations. Some of these suggestions need further explanation.