by JINOY JOSE P.
In his incisive 1946 essay “Politics and the English Language”, George Orwell performs a brilliant autopsy on the art and craft of writing and communication. He focusses on how and what language manifests—or rather, fails to manifest—in political discourse. The master satirist, never one to mince words (though he’d be the first to appreciate the irony of that cliché), dissects the tendency of political language to change straightforward ideas into bloated, pretentious prose that obscures rather than enlightens.
Towards the end of this long essay lies a powerful statement: “Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable”. Clearly, Orwell was talking about how politicians and other public figures twist words to hide ugly truths. When leaders want to justify terrible or unpleasant actions, they turn to a vague, fancy vocabulary. Instead of saying “we killed civilians”, they might say, “collateral damage occurred during military operations”. This kind of cloudy language makes it harder for people to understand what really happened or will happen.
Language shapes perception. It defines how we see the world and the forces that power it. In an ideal scenario, words like “development”, “reform”, and “progress” should inspire optimism, suggesting a march towards a better future. But in practice, these terms become euphemisms for destruction. Beneath their hopeful facades, they have hidden environmental devastation, the displacement of indigenous communities, and the widening gap between the rich and the poor. If we strip away their idealistic veneer, we uncover a history of exploitation and loss—one that continues to this day.
Today, “development” conjures images of gleaming skyscrapers, bustling economies, and technological marvels. But its real cost is hidden or deliberately obscured. In the name of development, entire ecosystems have been decimated, indigenous lands have been seized, and the poorest have been driven into deeper destitution. Take the Amazon rainforest, dubbed the “lungs of the Earth”. Under Brazil’s uber-fast development policies, deforestation surged by 60 per cent in 2019 alone. That led to the loss of over 10,000 sq km of rainforest. Indigenous tribes, such as the Yanomami and Kayapó, have been violently displaced. Their unique cultures were destroyed, forever in most cases, in the rush for economic gain.
Take “reform”. It implies improvement. Yet, economic and political reforms worsen the problems they claim to solve. In the 1990s, structural adjustment programmes imposed by the IMF and World Bank promised prosperity for developing nations. We all know what happened next. They gutted social welfare, privatised essential services, and deepened inequality. In sub-Saharan Africa, these “reforms” led to cuts in healthcare spending, resulting in the resurgence of diseases like malaria and tuberculosis.
Now, progress. We all know it’s meant to signify advancement, yet it is used as a justification for social and environmental harm. The first and perhaps most important example is the Industrial Revolution. Many hailed it as a milestone of human progress., but it was built on the backs of child labourers, coal miners suffering from black lung disease, and urban slums teeming with poverty. Today, Silicon Valley promises a “new era of progress” through artificial intelligence and automation, but there is increasing evidence to show that this vision excludes millions whose jobs are being replaced by machines and algorithms.
Climate change, the defining crisis of our time, is another byproduct of unchecked “progress”. The top 1 per cent of the world’s wealthiest individuals are reportedly responsible for more carbon emissions than the poorest 50 per cent combined. Yet, who bears the brunt of climate change? The poor and those least responsible for it—coastal communities, subsistence farmers, and indigenous groups. Greta Thunberg bluntly stated this truth when she said: “Our house is on fire.” Yet we continue to throw fuel on the flames in the name of economic growth.
In India, dear reader, the language of power and policy follows the same pattern Orwell condemned. It hides unpleasant truths behind a smokescreen of grand rhetoric. Successive governments threw up into the air “development”, “reforms”, and “progress” to justify sweeping changes. And history has taught us that these changes ended up benefiting a few at the expense of the many.
“Economic liberalisation” is arguably the funniest of them all. Since the landmark 1991 economic reforms, India has seen “growth”. Our GDP surged from $266 billion in 1991 to $3.73 trillion in 2023. This spike made the country the fifth largest economy in the world. But these figures also tell a story that not many want to be told. Of the staggering inequality that liberalisation has powered. According to Oxfam India’s 2023 report, the top 1 per cent of Indians own more than 40.5 per cent of the country’s total wealth, while the bottom 50 per cent own a mere 3 per cent. When our politicians and business leaders tout the country’s “economic miracle”, they rarely mention that millions remain trapped in precarious informal jobs with no social security, earning less than Rs.100 a day.
Arundhati Roy’s Capitalism: A Ghost Story told us how economic reforms in India have powered and propelled corporate interests while displacing the marginalised. She chronicled how vast swathes of land were seized for “industrialisation”, which forced Adivasi communities—who make up more than 8 per cent of the country’s population—into destitution.
As a student, this writer was a small part of the movement that exposed the dangers behind the famed Narmada Valley project. It was a chilling case in point. Marketed by many, including the then Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi, as a “developmental success”, it submerged entire villages, displacing, by conservative estimates, over 320,000 people, most of them indigenous. [Ironically, this was a project where Modi agreed with the development vision of his bête noire Jawaharlal Nehru—that of dams being the temples of modern India.]
Similarly, the language of “urban renewal” has been deployed to justify the forced eviction of slum dwellers in major cities. Mumbai’s Dharavi, Asia’s largest slum, sits on prime real estate. Successive governments have used terms like “redevelopment” to push for its demolition. They argued it would improve living conditions. Yet, studies by many, including researchers from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, showed that the relocated families end up in distant places, in poorly maintained housing projects with no access to livelihood opportunities. The rhetoric of “better living standards” conceals the brutal reality of dispossession.
If “development” has been, to use a term that’s become popular in the social media age, “weaponised” to mask displacement, “reform” has become the go-to euphemism for policies that disproportionately burden the vulnerable. The 2020 farm laws, which the Modi government termed “historic agricultural reforms”, triggered massive protests by farmers who feared corporate exploitation. The government claimed these laws would “empower” farmers, yet many studies, reports, and analyses by Frontline’s own reporters found that small farmers, who constitute 86 per cent of our agrarian sector, were at risk of losing price protections and bargaining power.
P. Sainath in Everybody Loves a Good Drought reminded me of another linguistic trick—the way bureaucratic jargon renders suffering invisible. He exposed how official reports use phrases like “distress migration” to describe desperate movements of people fleeing drought and poverty. By making it sound like an economic choice rather than a forced survival strategy, the state absolves itself of responsibility.
India’s super-fast industrial expansion has led to devastating impacts. Our mineral-rich tribal belts are prime targets. The destruction of forests in Chhattisgarh, Odisha, and Jharkhand for mining projects is defended as “balancing development with conservation”. But statistics, even from the Forest Survey of India, show that between 2015 and 2023, the country lost over 9,00,000 hectares of forest cover. When activists protest, they are labelled “anti-development”.
Orwell was on point.
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