Dalits at Diggi

At the fifth DSC Jaipur Literature Festival, held 21-25 January, the Kumbh Mela met a five-day Punjabi wedding at the Diggi Palace, a grandiose 1860s structure owned by the Thakurs of Diggi. No one explained, or even seemed to ask, what exactly the 'DSC' stands for in the festival's title, though the organisers invariably used the prefixes of other corporate sponsors – the 'Merrill Lynch' Mughal Tent, for instance. To uncover the mystery, DSC stands for Darshan Singh Corp Limited, which calls itself an 'infrastructure developer', and claims to be creating 'infrawealth' for the nation in the shape of roads, railways, urban infrastructure and hydropower. Evidently, literature too must be added to this list. On the last day of the festival, DSC Chairman H S Narula announced that the 2011 festival would include a whopping prize of USD 50,000 for an original work of fiction about Southasia and its diaspora, written in or translated into English.

If nothing else, DSC is certainly getting the advertising bang for its buck. The latest festival, organised at an estimated cost of INR 40 million, saw some 30,000 people thronging Diggi Palace to listen to over 200 speakers and performers. Untold media ink was also splashed over this coming-together of writers, film stars and performers, all under the patronage of erstwhile royalty (which now includes new corporates creating 'infrawealth'). There is clearly a spectacle to the whole ordeal. As writer Mridula Koshy noted in a recent magazine interview, in India such launches and festivals stand in for a literary culture that does not really exist.