There is a Hindi phrase: Seeng kata ke bachhada banana (A bull removing his horns to look like a calf). This seems to be happening in the political arena ever since the Cockroach Janta Party made being young, ah so ‘cool’.“It’s the new normal,” said a friend, as we stood surveying the fallen trees and branches littering the neighbourhood after a sudden downpour that vanished just as suddenly after causing havoc all round. Soon with the onset of winter plumes of smoke from burning crop residue will come swirling in from the west, forcing the elderly and the asthmatics indoors. That too will be termed a ‘new normal’.It’s a phrase that by now fits all things that are beyond our control like death. We use euphemisms for all such scary occurrences: death notices inserted in newspapers or WhatsApp groups, about so-and-so having gone to his ‘heavenly abode’ or to the Great Beyond, making man’s fear of extinction less visible by quoting lines of poetry.True, in the last couple of years, much has swept off the old normal. The smoke or the red sandy storms moving menacingly from Rajasthan, Haryana and Punjab into the NCR have almost destroyed our balmy winters. Our monsoons are no longer the stuff of Benarasi kajri or old Bolly songs celebrating romance and the renewal of greenery all around. Train lines, roads and tunnels, some inaugurated weeks prior, are washed away. The hills, being bored for tunnels, and ill-planned new roads simply give way.And all that governments and their supporters come out with in its defence is that it’s the ‘new normal’. They dare not utter the word ‘abnormal’ for fear of the opposition taking to the media and reminding citizens what it was like earlier under their regime.At most the government and its agencies point out how unpredictable changes in seasonal cycles are a global phenomenon. How even Europe and the US are seeing their forests ablaze, their rivers drying and the tourists fleeing the heat – that is the ‘new normal’.The weather has undoubtedly changed for the worse, and with that actual lives and the livelihoods of millions of poor are being lost. Diagnostically that’s correct, but prescriptively it is totally incorrect to ask the citizens to choose between more gleaming vehicles and more airports for hawai chappal wallas, and foregoing the miracles new science offers us.You are not expected to point to the mass migrations from rural areas, or the job losses that lakhs of women face in the farming sector post-MNREGA. Mentioning the lost forest cover and ghost villages lying empty due to the increasing twin threats of landslides and/or acute water scarcity in the hills will quickly have you branded as a Dimagi Naxal.What is missing from all those high-level global meets on environmental change – with delegations led by political luminaries and their pet scientists, corporate honchos and bureaucrats – is an acceptance of the fact that most people, when protecting their families, will turn ruthless pragmatists. They do not think of 2049 but the here and now. Emotional speeches about India’s traditional veneration for its rivers, its flora and fauna, its concept of Vasudhaiv Kutumbakam sound trite and meaningless under the present-day circumstances families face.Schemes like ‘Ek Ped Maa ke Naam’, with a minister planting a tree in a little hole surrounded by the red carpet to protect the VIPs’ shoes, is hogwash for the young. It was proved when the Uttarakhand CM started the tree-planting campaign and the young named the traditional monsoon festival of Harela as Black Harela and carried out protests pointing out how the same government had okayed the cutting down of thousands of old trees and denuded the once-green area.Climate change has long been in the offing but the deniers holding power had downplayed its severity. And now that it is inescapably here, it is leading to irrational reactions, from political arenas to the global markets.During a recent sojourn in Europe, one saw the Europeans furiously buying air conditioners for immediate relief from obscenely high temperatures raging around them for weeks with no relief in sight. All of a sudden they have begun to overlook the carbon emissions the new normal’s aftermath will cause, nor the pollution outside their homes. Faced with extinction, people chose air conditioning. Faced with oil cutbacks, they chose coal as fuel.This reminds one of the story about sage Vishwamitra selling dog meat as a butcher during a terrible drought. When a Brahmin asked the gods what his dharma was, he was directed to Vishwamitra’s meat shop.“Your only dharma now is to save your life first. If you die, neither you nor your dharma will remain!” Atma raksha – protection of self – is the biggest dharma, the sage told him. A truly scriptural answer to one of the deepest philosophical questions that have emerged among humans during great wars, great climatic changes and hunger. Never mind the shame, denial and self-flagellation that may follow a conservative mind later.At the end, with millions of homeowners looking at landslides or floods or forest fires swallowing what was till a few hours ago, theirs, saying “Well, I never!”, the only thing that can create some traction politically is for the politicians to truly care for the lives of the electorates they have known: their children, their cattle, their home, their lands and after that the educational and healthcare systems.The time is not to ask the politicians ‘Oh what have we done?’, but to act mature like the cockroaches who are asking, ‘What can you do?’ They have removed the cover from the ugly truths about our long-messed up exam system, our derelict and unsafe schools and hospitals, with classes and wards lying in shambles. In this they caught the system with its pants down.With minimal consultation and a bullyboy majority in parliament and the assemblies, outright deceit of the system had been dragging on and on. The ruling party’s knee-jerk reaction to all that and the chronic mismanagement of funds was that it had begun before 2014 during the Congress regime. The Congress lobbed the baton right into their camp, saying the development work coming apart was all sanctioned by their successors, as is the tinkering with the syllabi.For the older generation roaming around like ancient mariners, it’s no use telling whoever will listen about how things were different in their time. The new normal is a state complicit in the global deregulations that encourage private gains and then re-regulate it to nationalise loss. ‘Once upon a time’ talk bores Gen Z.So do not try to saw off your horns but just listen closely to the cockroaches’ demand for basic democratic needs: public spaces for protest and national dialogue, access to Indian culture through learning systems undefined by some Hindu-centric, politically chosen folk. And last but not the least, think seriously about the new normal.Saakhi is a Sunday column from Mrinal Pande, in which she writes of what she sees and also participates in. That has been her burden to bear ever since she embarked on a life as a journalist, writer, editor, author and as chairperson of Prasar Bharti. Her journey of being a witness-participant continues.