Sir,

This is to express my sincere appreciation to the Abracadabra in SOM dated July 11, wherein K.B. Ganapathy recalls a piece written, 54 years ago, on ‘What life will be like in India in the 70s’ for the ‘Imprint’ magazine, a highly respected and reputed journal of our youth.

For a young man, under-30 at that time, Ganapathy was uncannily prescient and comes across as a keen and astute observer of society, predicting almost unerringly that the ‘seventies will see a period of social unrest and economic setback leading to political chaos.’

The 70s did indeed see the first-ever imposition of Emergency (June 1975) and the suspension of democracy, freedom and fundamental rights. It also saw the lifting of the Emergency (March 1977) and the most vibrant elections that resulted in the ousting of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, the hesitant dictator.

Ganapathy also reveals more than a passing awareness of the famous British magazine ‘The Punch’ and its Editor William Davies, the well-known author Walter Raleigh and our own Nirad Babu, whose views are quoted for good measure. 

He is also aware of the fashions of Theatre of those days, such as ‘Che’, ‘Hair’ and ‘Oh Calcutta’, not merely because he was a resident of the most dynamic city in India, Bombay. He certainly had the wherewithal to be a good journalist and the perception to realise what the rising popularity of Jan Sangh and its mouthpiece ‘The Motherland’ meant for ‘every Hindu to be enlightened as to whom India really belongs’ and that ‘there will be more communal riots.’ So accurate he was 54 years ago, but his critical faculties seem to have blunted with age, now.

He writes that society in 70s will be excessively pre-occupied with SEX and his description of women that ‘seventies will be a decade of unmarried women… and so in keeping with seventies she will fling open the back door with hipster saree’ reveals a young man deprived of decent female company, especially when his hormones were raging. Nevertheless, his sentence that a ‘generation of bottom-pinchers will prowl around’ too came true when a famous IPS Officer in Punjab pinched the bottom of a lady IAS Officer and the matter went right up to Supreme Court. 

Further on, he writes that ‘large-scale poverty and starvation will lead to mass protests on the street and communal hatred.’ The ‘Sampoorna Kranti’ movement of Jayaprakash Narayan certainly led to street protests all over the country against corrupt Governments of Congress party in mid-70s, but communal hatred took time in coming. And come it did, as surely as the night follows the day.

Overall, an excellent piece of journalistic writing by Ganapathy, so sharp and critical, so acute and accurate, 54 years ago. I wish the same young man led the Star of Mysore today.

– Ravi Joshi, Formerly in the Cabinet Secretariat, Mysuru, 19.7.2023

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