Cry, beloved country

America is two countries in one, not unlike India and Bharat. There is the visible America of fast cars, expensive hotels and skyscrapers sheathed in glass.
There is the invisible America, 15 per cent of its population of about 300 million, which struggles on welfare and ill-paid, insecure jobs which yield an annual income of $19,000 or less. In perhaps no other developed country is there such a large section that exists outside the economic mainstream.
The state does not represent the interests of the working poor, because they lack political power. For a country that claims to be a leading democracy, the link between money and power is extra-ordinary.
Politicians are attuned to listen to the voice of big business alone, because, as an official on the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations put it, "It is all about jobs."
The state appears to be inclusive in domestic matters, with its affirmative action and anti-discrimination programmes, but it is not. There is more economic inequality in the US than in other developed countries, yet the attack on welfare measures continues.
The state pro-jects the market not only as an institution that allocates resources efficiently, but also as one that delivers to an individual what is due to her. In this scheme of things, economic inequality is not necessarily immoral or unjust.
The ideology of the market has nothing in common with that of caste in India the first is centred around the individual and the second on rigidly defined community but both serve to justify inequality.
While a visible minority in the US lives on the fringes, the comfortable majority believes in the idea of America. What this means is that they take pride in 'free market' forces but are conscious consumers of global brands; as political beings, their interests are local rather than global; they drive their SUVs without a care for distance because gasoline prices never mattered till the other day; and most of them have never been abroad.
However, for a people who are ideologi-cally trained to believe that minimum government is the best government, their faith in the office of the president is quaint, if not alarming.
Here, state propaganda and advertising converge stickers, sayings and pictures of any president and his wife can be bought off street-corner shops. State buildings in Washington DC are named after past presidents.
Co-option is a well-oiled industry. At the Museum of American History in Washington DC, the music and gift shop keeps discs of Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan and such like alongside jokes by and on various US presidents.
It is the kind of humour that legitimises, humanises and distracts from the exercise of absolute power (in India there are efforts to make Bal Thackeray seem genial and funny), whereas Seeger and Dylan are no rib-ticklers.
Dissent in the US is invited to fulfil a formality of democracy; it is contained so that it can be packaged and presented on TV talk shows.
Its range includes Democrats who oppose the Iraq misadventure but believe in the power of America, well-to-do blacks who are 'sometimes Republican, sometimes Democrat', anti-globalisation protesters who meet at World Trade Center over a cup of Starbucks coffee and NGOs claiming to help artisans in Congo and Dominican Republic.
But is that all there is to America? The media does not reflect its political, social and intellectual diversity.
The 15 per cent on the margins of the society and market, as well as its many wonderful, anonymous people who speak and care for them, have no voice. Today's voice of America is an embarrassment to its thinking people a pilot who thanks passengers for flying his airline over the 'greatest country God has created'.
This pilot represents mainstream America a society in a state of denial. He would not understand why the world resents his country. He has been made to believe that gasoline prices are up in the US because of rising consumption in India and China, which is fine, but what of US consumption patterns?
That SUV sales have fallen since October 2005 perhaps reflects more a preference for fuel-efficient automobiles than a society rethinking on its excesses. This is not to say that urban India knows where it is headed.
Yet, if America is a place for the world to look up to, it is because a significant minority questions the values of the American state that the country is a beacon of freedom and democracy to the world, and a land of opportunity and economic justice.
This minority comprises compassionate Christians, environmentalists, peaceniks and many others.
If America can be considered a leader, it is for the intellectual quality and honesty of its real dissenters (those who resist co-option), for showing how tree-hugging activists and lumberjack unions in Seattle can make common cause, for the ability of its unions to adapt to informal work arrangements, and for the fact that its professors might be good at plumbing and carpentry.
The tension between the two Americas is palpable, as in India. They are two countries dealing with turmoil and change.