Surrealism is a permanent invitee in India’s political economy and systemic creativity is on exhibition in every session of Parliament.
The first week of the monsoon session produced a masterpiece. The government informed Parliament that “No deaths due to lack of oxygen has been specifically reported by states/UTs”. In art, surrealism is about unleashing the creative potential of an unconscious mind by means of irrational juxtapositions and combinations. In India’s political economy, surrealism is the outcome of conscious obfuscation of inadequacies.
The technically correct (after all the Union Government only conveys what States report) and politically disastrous articulation reflects the pervasion of apathy and insensitivity. Such is the state of affairs that the bureaucracy has erased the distinction between data and information, between deniability