Viksit Bharat’s Catch ’26: The Logic Of The Absurd

Mumbai, October 13, 2026: In Joseph Heller’s seminal novel Catch-22, there is an unforgettable character, Major Major Major Major, who commands the 256th squadron stationed on the Mediterranean island of Pianosa. He never sees anyone in his office while he's in his office. He instructs First Sergeant Towser that no one is to be let inside his office room to meet him while he is in the room, with the excuse that the squadron commander is busy. As a result, as airmen wait to meet him outside his office room, Major Major remains trapped in his office and has to use the window in the back to escape his visitors without being seen. Captain Yossarain, a bombardier in the squadron, figures out he can never meet Major Major through the normal channels and has to ambush him while Major Major is scurrying to his trailer through a railway ditch in order to formally request the squadron commander that he wishes to be grounded from flying missions that will endanger his life. In Catch-22, the only way to get grounded is to prove that you are insane. But wanting to be grounded demonstrates a rational mind for one’s safety, leading to a logical disqualification of the request to be excused from flying missions.

The Bureaucratic Absurdity Of Protest

The conundrum the Cockroach Janta Party, and indeed everybody it represents, faced when permission was sought for a protest in the designated space in the national capital is not much different from the bureaucratic absurdities presented in Catch-22. The protest was deemed illegal because the notice period of ten days was not given. Yet, in less than a week, some 40,000 uniformed central armed police forces and Delhi Police were swooped in to turn Delhi into one giant detention centre, just 10,000 or 15,000 or so short of the deployment during the Republic Day. Even for the G20 Summit of 2023, the deployment was about 130,000. It is tempting to compare the lore of deployment in Jammu and Kashmir just before Article 370 was revoked. There were the troops along the border, there was the BSF, and the paramilitary grid was spread thick all over the state.

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Yet, in terms of density of deployment, Jammu and Kashmir pales into insignificance when compared to the deployment that we see in Delhi. Let us say that the deployment was in a part of Lutyens’s Delhi where the seat of the government is and where the Prime Minister, the Home Minister, and the who’s who of Delhi live. For a ball-park assumption, let us take a circle with a radius of five kilometres. That makes the area of deployment roughly 78 square kilometres. My maths is not great, but still I proffer the figure of about 500 uniformed personnel per square kilometre. This is in the areas where there are no sprawling buildings and trimmed lawns and gardens behind sentinelled walls. Which leaves only the roads and the alleys. Tell me, what additional measure could have been taken if the CJP protest notice had come a couple of days prior to when it was given?

Catch-22 In The Capital

Clearly, we have another Joseph Heller making the rules as he goes along, not in the Mediterranean but in Delhi. Also, this time the Catch-22s are not at all funny. They are meant to shock and awe. Which is why the script had thullas going into the plane to grab Abhishek Dipke, Saurav Das, and Ashutosh Ranka. To put the heebie-jeebies, Mogambo style, not only into them but also into the entire country just to send a message of deterrence. This is the same reason they sent thullas into the bedroom of Dhruv Rathee in Gurgaon to scoop him up to show the Indian democracy at work in all its glory; the UNHCR be damned. Dimagi naxals, beware, beware, beware.

The Logic Of ‘Catch ’26’

When Catch-22 was published on October 11, 1961 (yes, you are right, our Delhi-based desi Heller must have noted the month, literate fellow that he is), an advertisement was taken out in the New York Times with a cover of the book with a tagline: ‘What’s the catch?’ For the sake of convenience and a genuflection to the original, let’s call it Catch ’26 this time around; the year anger spilt over onto our potholed streets. My guess is our Heller does not know how deep this anger runs; he doesn’t have a clue. But he is writing the script so it gets into the front pages of the New York Times and the rest of the world in the shining alphabets of Viksit Bharat by cutting off the internet, shutting down Metro services, stopping trains from reaching the capital of the nation, and pulling youngsters from trains for thoughtcrime, a word that was introduced into our lexicon a full decade before Catch-22. For the uninitiated, it covers any mental state that runs contrary to the sanctioned narrative.

Anger Beneath The Barricades

Empirically, we know there is anger from the question paper leaks, the hopelessness students feel from lack of assurances in the system and the lack of avenues when they finish studies, and the joblessness. It is all bleak. Add to it the missing voters in the electoral rolls and the perfect elections that have taken place. The Supreme Court is also mixed up in this somehow. Going by available reports, when the West Bengal revisions were being rushed through, the Supreme Court blithely observed on those who didn’t make the cut to vote, “This election, we understand. More valuable right to remain on the rolls, we will examine.” Translated: Don’t worry, if you missed this bus, you will get another chance to vote. This putative promise is now softly seared into our consciousness in velvet letters as we watch a government crouching, cowering behind layers and layers of barricades and uniformed people, bracing for another vague beast to slouch its way into Lutyens Delhi. The real catch lies in the next chapter waiting to be written by our desi Heller. He will find it when he gets there.

V Sudarshan is the editor of The Free Press Journal

V Sudarshan is Editor, Free Press Journal.

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