Dr. H. Srikanth
All is well that ends well – so goes the saying. Anna Hazare’s 13-day fast, which stirred emotions across the country, finally came to an end with the Parliament passing a unanimous motion accepting in principle the revised demands of Anna. Both Anna’s supporters and the government vied with each other to project the moment as the victory of the people of India, a first step towards eradication of corruption in the country. In the euphoria that followed, everyone started congratulating themselves and thanking the others for the ‘final’ outcome. However, a closer look at political developments shows that the timing of the passing of resolution and subsequent ending of the fast by Anna Hazare was determined by the realization that things were not going right for both of them.
The dominant political class as a whole realized that no party was able to take advantage of the movement and they were afraid that their mass base would be at stake if the movement continued. On their part, the Anna team also had to take note of the cracks developing from within the movement, with the media focusing on other alternative drafts on Lokpal and the unruly elements sneaking into the movement otherwise projected as non-violent and Gandhian, and its own members like Justice Santosh Hegde and Swami Agnivesh talking of the need to end fast. The final moves rescued both by sending the message that our politicians are after all not all that bad and insensitive; and the Annas are the sole representatives of the civil society in India!
At a time when the nation seems to be basking in the triumph of the will of the people / parliament, cynical observations may be seen as unwarranted. But in the interest of future peoples’ movements in the country, it is necessary to take a critical look at Anna’s movement. Undoubtedly, the anti-graft movement led by Anna Hazare was a mass movement that has attracted the attention, support and participation of several classes and communities of people. Anna and his team have to be credited for making corruption a national issue that needs immediate attention. For many of us who have forgotten Lok Nayak Jayaprakash Narayan’s movement against corruption in the seventies, Anna showed that it is possible even now to rouse and mobilize the people against corruption. However, Anna’s movement and the Jan Lokpal draft that it was campaigning for are not without limitations. This became evident with several critics from within the civil society raising fingers at the strategies and prescriptions of the Annas.
Aruna Roy, a civil rights activist associated with NCPRI, who worked with Anna Hazare and his team members earlier in giving shape to the RTI Act, disassociated herself from Anna’s Jan Lokpal Bill. She made it clear that although Anna’s fast may be Gandhian in form, his Jan Lokpal has little to do with Gandhism. Unlike Mahatma Gandhi, who stood for decentralization, Jan Lokpal advocates a centralized bureaucratic structure that seeks to handle corruption at all levels, from peon to the Prime Minister. To Aruna Roy and her supporters, such an over centralized structure is bound to be highly autocratic and tend to become corrupt and inefficient. Moreover, the kind of Lokpal that Anna’s team has been advocating requires amendments to the Constitution, which requires considerable national debate. Definitely the parliament cannot be bulldozed to take decisions on matters of such importance in a couple of weeks. Although Aruna Roy also insists on bringing Prime Minister and the parliamentarians under the Lokpal, keeping in view the provisions of the Constitution, she and her team suggest separate bills or institutions to deal with corruption at the levels of judiciary and lower echelons of bureaucracy.
In her recent article entitled, “I’d rather not be Anna”, Arundhati Roy, known for her critical writings, raised serious questions about Anna’s political ideology and his social commitment to the cause of the underprivileged. She pointed out how the political class and the corporate mass media, which opposed many-a-democratic struggle in the country, are actually working hard to project Anna as the lone crusader against corruption. Citing the support that Anna has been receiving from political forces advocating national jingoism, communalism and fascism, some intellectuals supporting Arundhati Roy have also expressed the apprehension that in the absence of a clear-cut ideological position, it is very likely that this movement against corruption falls into the hands of the reactionary forces. Another serious criticism against Anna is coming from dalit activists, who began to view Anna’s movement as an upper-caste, middle class movement, which has little to do with the interests and concerns of the dalits and other marginalized communities. According to them, the movement aims to destroy or weaken the constitutional and democratic institutions and traditions that empowered the weaker sections in the society. They scoff at the very idea of civil society in India, which Anna and his team claim to be representing, by pointing out that in a country where the people are divided along caste and class lines, our society cannot be called a civil society. Their suspicion about the casteist nature of the movement has its basis in Anna Hazare’s experiments in his village of Ralegaan Siddhi, wherein in the name of Gandhism, the dalits were forced to eat only vegetarian food and no panchayat elections were allowed in the village for decades.
Several left critics pointed out that the Annas’ understanding of corruption is very narrow and it fails to look at structural differences in the society that give rise to corruption at different levels. In contrast to neo-liberal intellectuals who argue that the solution to corruption lies in further liberalization of the national economy, the leftist intellectuals point out how the neo-liberal agenda pursued by the state since 1990s have in fact led to collusion of the interests of politicians, bureaucrats and corporate sector, contributing to increase in number and magnitude of corruption in the country. They allege that Anna’s team only points fingers at politicians, bureaucrats and judges, and evade corruption in corporate sector, NGOs and mass-media. Given that corruption has its roots in the very nature of the Indian state and economy, the leftists claim, it would be a myth to assume that mere enactment of a new law or creation of a new institution is enough to end corruption.
The purpose of familiarizing the readers about different critical perspectives on Anna’s movement is not to berate the significance of his crusade. Our appreciation of Anna’s commitment and his uncompromising stand against corruption should not blind us to the limitations of his strategies and prescriptions. No doubt, Anna’s Jan Lokpal offers an alternative to the government’s toothless Lokpal Bill. But it should be clear that Anna and his team do not represent the whole of civil society. There are multiple voices within the civil society, which have different views as to how corruption has to be understood and fought. It is therefore necessary that no individual or group arrogate itself as the sole representative of the civil society. Let all sane and progressive voices come out and debate. While consolidating people’s unity against corruption, those claiming to be representing civil society should keep their eyes and ears open to different alternative perspectives and voices emerging from within the society. Fight one should, but it is necessary to ensure that the fight against corruption go hand in hand with commitment to the values of democracy, tolerance, reason, secularism, economic equality and social justice.
(The writer is Associate Professor, Dept. of Political Science, NEHU)