I’ve been struggling to write on the Hazare moment but in her piece here, Nivedita Menon has begun going where I wanted to so I shall just add to her conversation with a second set of experiences and questions. Forgive the fragments.
In a post earlier that was written after the first stirrings in Egypt, I had asked a set of questions about politics, protests and publics:
“Could reclaiming public space for conversations, debates and voices – regardless of what these voices want to say and whether “we” agree with “them” or not – become a single point agenda for a movement of our own? Could the idea of the public bring urban residents together – regardless of what we want to do once we’re in that space? Could public space be an answer that rallies people together – the more voices, the more noise, the more debates, the more antagonism that come, from any point of view, would that noise not represent a resistance to the single story being told about India today?
Could such spaces be created? Would anyone come? How can they be sustained? How can we use new forms of information flows and technologies in this process? What are the new sites and spaces of struggle open to us?”
I believe, in one sense, this moment has been brought to us. I had been speaking about “inequality” in that post as an ideal broad concept that brings people together. It isn’t what has happened here and that is not something to forget. It is “corruption” – narrowly defined, poorly understood but deeply felt. So be it. The Noise is here. Now what?
I was walking through hordes of people last week in Jantar Mantar, on India Gate. It was the first time I’ve been among publics in this city with city streets so alive and full of people and yet felt totally emotionally, politically and intellectually disconnected from them. It was an uncomfortable, strange feeling. After years of thinking about what it would take to get people onto the streets in anger, seeking change, how could the moment feel so empty? Is Nivedita right – are “we” missing something? Am I? How is one meant to engage?
On the news, a split screen showed two of the many halves of this coin we’re all trying to spin. On the left side, India went one step closer to impeaching the first judge in her history. It was accountability, of some kind – a process so difficult, so drawn out that it has been impossible to do despite Judges we know were and are corrupt. Justice Sen just got caught convincingly enough. On the right side of the screen, thousands of people gathered to create an institution that will be just as hard to impeach and reform as Justice Sen and the Judiciary. The cries on both side of the screen were about accountability, about whether our democratic institutions have failed us too much and for too long for faith in them to still exist.
Yet that is not the conversation we are having today. In the metro on the way home, a whole bunch of people were shouting slogans. Anna Zindabad! Anna Zindabad! I couldn’t resist – I take this train everyday. I went up and listened. They were talking about how the Government has let them down. Sarkar humne banayi thi.. tod bhi hum denge! I asked them if they’d read the Jan Lokpal Bill. None had. Not one. How can you support something you haven’t read? Vishwaas hai, one man said. On whom, I asked? Anna par. I prodded: par sarkar pe bhi toh vishwaas tha… Anna pe vishwaas toota toh? No one had an answer. Tab dekhenge, said one. Tab dekhenge. Nahi chala toh usko bhi gira denge! Another says: Bali ka bakra hai – aage kissi ko to badna hai. The flock is perhaps more strategic than they’re being given credit for.
This isn’t to be judgmental: movements many of us are more comfortable with have many who come for vishwaas as opposed to anything else. Yet I couldn’t agree more with Apoorvanand when he says that the bankruptcy is in the leadership of this movement. The failures are powerful ones – in the framing of the issue and the narrowness of its idea of corruption; in the lack of clarity on what the movement is about, what it stands for and what it wants; in the Jan Lokpal Bill itself; in the resistance to dissent both internal and external and, to me most importantly, in the refusal of the leadership to push its own ranks to engage, understand and challenge themselves. At one point in the “Gandhian protest,” a man turned and said to the News: Main yahan hoon taki bhrastacharion ko ek ek karke goli mar doon!
These failures place us in a curious set of contradictions. On the one hand, there is the anger that you can feel on the streets. Our institutions have failed though not just because of “corruption” which is a reality that the Hazare camp doesn’t quite want to face or acknowledge. Yet what is just as important to remember is that they have failed not just the poor but the whatever we are calling this class of the non-poor. This moment is not about the Lokpal Bill anymore, say many commentators, but something bigger. On the other hand, without any direction to that something “bigger” what we have, in the end, is just the Lokpal. No matter the many things those on the streets think they’re fighting for — India, freedom, the end of corruption, change — what they and we will get is the Jan Lokpal. We cannot simply forget this. It is all very well for Medha Patkar to weigh in to support the means but these means are careening towards an end that may and most likely will undo them entirely.
Make no mistake about it – the Bill is a disaster. It will create a monster that is unaccountable, undemocratic, and quite simply, ineffective. It is based on an understanding of corruption that looks nothing like the way corruption plays out in our lives, or what causes it. It is a scratch for that deepest of itches: the benevolent dictator that will solve things by the sheer force of his will. It is a shortcut with terrible consequences for democracy, if nothing else. It is a yearning for something that will make the unglamorous, boring, everyday work of actually making our failing institutions and systems work unnecessary, but no revolution can substitute for this work. It may well make this work more difficult (if that’s possible) than it already is.
I spent an hour in the post office three days ago, trying to send a courier using a new service the Post Office has set up. For an hour and a half, four staff — young and old — tried their damnest to help me despite the flimsiest of even basic infrastructure. Four public servants – dedicated, honest — trying everything they had in them to make a simple public service work. Where is this in our conversation about corruption? Where is the argument, fight, debate, and thinking about how to help our public systems to work? In that sense, this current movement against corruption is “counter-revolutionary” in the sense that David Harvey once used the term: it not only hides the real debate, it makes it more difficult even to have.
My answer to Nivedita’s call to engage then is an engagement based on disagreement and dissent – an argument with the same means but that leads to different ends, of other ways of thinking about corruption. It is not to go out and support this new democratic wave but to be part of it through an active dissent based on challenging the failures and exclusions in this movement that anger us. We must disagree. We must add to the noise. And we must do so also on the streets – where, Nivedita is right, we are not. There are still thousands on the street. It is not a mass movement. It is a mass movement. The new intermediate, middle, upper middle – whatever you want to call it – classes in India are now a mass, especially in our cities. There is no point going hoarse about how the poor are not part of this movement – they’re not and their absence doesn’t make it less of a mass movement. This is part of the politics of our cities and we can’t hide away from it anymore. What brings them to the streets is a politics we must engage with, that we must harness. We cannot cede public space and then bemoan that those who took it use it in a way we don’t agree with. It is ours to claim just as much as theirs.
Why this is critical is that this moment will have both intended and unintended consequences – it has set in motion a different kind of public presence and mobilisation, a different tactics of politics and a new kind of political battleground. It is deeply urban, contradictory, and a site that older forms of understanding power and social structure will not be able to easily understand. What happens when the worker becomes the urban resident, the factory gives way to the neighborhood? When the poor and the bourgeoisie both look at what Barbara Harris-White called the “intermediate classes” with bewilderment?
It is also then worth taking a moment to understand even as we engage and agree to disagree. Who is on the streets today? What is behind the anger that so many have? Is it personal experience of betrayal? Is it faith, coated gently or more deeply with a flavour of Hindutva? Is it the sudden possibility of class mobility that is not coming fast enough? Is it that particular kinds of corruption stops a particular kind of economic growth, wealth accumulation and consumption? These are not people that seem angry about the kind of corruption that takes the form of systemic biases in the provision of basic services. So where does it hurt them? Are they a “them”? Do they see themselves as a “them”?
Is it idealism that draws them? If it is, what is its vision? What is the conversation that can be had with this energy? To what end? Who can have it?
Can we?
KAFILA - COLLECTIVE EXPLORATIONS SINCE 2006 
Am glad you wrote this Gautam. My head has been swirling with thoughts since I read Nivi’s article because I did not quite agree but could not clearly articulate why. I agree with your stand of engagement with disagreement and dissent and the questions that you raise.
And yet like Rahul Roy says and you do too, my heart just does not move to join, be part, converse and my head as yet unable to understand the heart. A large mass of people standing up voluntarily and protesting — have seen it on 26/11 and since. They have been protests that seem so directionless and with such a simplified identification of the problem and the solution that I cannot even feel enthused to join with them and start a conversation and dialogue.
And in fact I think my biggest problem with this mobilisation and this campaign is also that it is not about dialogue (at least that is what it appears to me). It has identified the problem and the solution in such a stark manner. On the one hand it is against corruption per se and should allow for multiple interpretations of corruption and can be the space that we are looking for. Yet the fact that there is also a very rigid solution being sought which is that of the Jan Lokpal makes the definition very narrow and restrictive. At the same time the resistance on conversation around the nature of the Bill itself makes the movement so closed that no conversation is possible.
LikeLike
Dont you think it is the narrowness of the idea [Lokpal to end Corruption] that helps in making this movement so popular and powerful? Is that a failure or success of the leadership? They are mobilising ordinary people not intellectuals and narrower the aim better for people to understand and support. 4 posts on the same issue in Kafila also indicates that narrow aims creates more discussion.
Did malor revolutions took place in the World because there was a wide understanding of issues involved by the masses or because the aim was narrow and was a burning issue for the people at large?
LikeLike
Dear Charakan and Chayanika,
Thanks for your comments – both are very compelling and I have no easy responses but just some thoughts.
To know if a narrower framing (which, I think, is different from a simple, accessible or clear one, by the way – narrow implies reductive and simplistic, not simple) if effective or not depends on what you think the “success” of this movement is. I think this is where the problem starts: if the passage of their Bill is the aim, then yes its effective. But then there are real costs to that narrowness – you’ll get what you want and that may be worst thing to happen to you. I don’t know what this movement values – it seems to be no more than getting their way with the Bill using corruption as a framing device.
The trade-off in movements has always been to say that the ethics of how we get there and what we ask for will determine what we make – so will it be in this case. Egypt is in the middle of this moment right now and we don’t know yet what will come of it.
I don’t think a movement that is genuinely about corruption (and the underlying reasons of justice and rights that make corruption a problem in the first place) has the option or the right to be narrow and simplistic and pretend that a technical solution can answer what is a deeply political problem.t It will fail when it comes to tackling corruption in any way as will this movement. Of this I have no doubt. But failures will have unintended consequences – and other impacts. There is no simple dichotomy of effective-ineffective; successful-failure that we can apply here – hence the argument that we have to part of the failure as well because it is shaping the cities we live in and the politics we are part of.
For eg, why should any leadership be able to define this movement’s agenda so singularly? I think chayanika has hit the nail on the head: where are the disagreements and plularities within this movement? The absence of them to me represents a lack of internal dialog that is deeply undemocratic and represents failed leadership – one that isnt listening and doesnt value openness. I think Apoorvaanand is right – you can’t build democratic politics alone and by fiat, no less than you can give it to someone via war.
– gb
LikeLike
Success of a movement is when the movement achieves most of the aims. Here primary aim is passing of a strong anti-corruption law. I am sure success will be achieved before the end of the year.
Will that law help in curbing corruption? No reason to think that it wont.
You asked “where are the disagreements and plularities within this movement?”
The movement as such is formed for a narrow aim. People involved come from diverse backgrounds holding different political views. We know that Kiran Bedi and Swami Agnivesh hold very different view points in almost all issues other than Lokpal. Still you cant see plurality in this movement? Strange!
LikeLike
I was an enthusiast of the movement when it started out, but am a bit hesitant about their “my way or the highway” attitude, and I do prefer the NCPRI version of the bill. Nevertheless, Nivedita’s post resonated with me, as I have been using similar arguments with my friends.
1. Would you prefer the disease or an imperfect (but possibly effective) cure? After all, despite corrupt judges, and the extremely slow judicial process, by an large the judiciary has been an effective body, don’t you think? Is there really something that is perfect and will satisfy everyone? And what is wrong with evolution? After all, the Election Commission was a toothless organization until T.N.Seshan started baring its fangs and cleaned up the elections. Then he became a megalomaniac, but the govt and the SC put in pretty good checks to ensure that it remains effective but not dictatorial.
2. Do you expect each and every participant in other movements organized by regular social activists (whom you support) to be familiar with the minutae of each issue, like you expect the supporters of this movement to be familiar with clauses of the draft?
3. Someone in one of the comments in Nivedita’s post complained that the movement does not have focus, your post laments the exact opposite, that it is too narrow. What is wrong if people come out to protest what moves them, what resonates with them, however narrow it is? After all Irom Sharmila is not fasting for Niyamgiri, nor is Dr Binayak Sen involved in getting justice for the Gujarat pogrom. Why is there a different standard for the man on the street?
4. Although you disagree in the piece, a lot of the problems that resonate with people of this forum actually boil down to corruption– whether it is displacing the homeless, whether it is displacing the tribals, clearing slums, mining in forests, etc etc etc. Irrespective of whether there are helpful people in public offices, there also are corrupt people, sometimes the two are not mutually exclusive either.
5. Often strong laws help to say no, when an offer is made to hasten the process in return for a bribe. The RTI is brilliant in this aspect, I have personally hinted at invoking it when suggestion was made to me recently, and got my way.
I think the spirit of the movement has been best summed up by Lata Mangeshkar, “I don’t understand politics, neither am I interested in it. But it is absolutely necessary to free our country from corruption and, hence, I am supporting Anna Hazare’s anti-corruption movement.”
LikeLike
I believe that the “narrowness” of the opinion that you are concerned about is just a political strategy. The people of “Team Anna” didn’t join the joint-parliamentary committee to push Jan lokpal through. They genuinely wanted a bill which brings in the best of both the government draft and their draft. When they were outsmarted by the government, it was only then that they hardened their position, to prevent being outsmarted again.
Whether it is Santhosh Hegde or Kejriwal or others, individually they have all mentioned issues on which they are willing to concede provided the issue is dealt with effectively in some other way. e.g. Hegde talked about removing the point about inclusion of judges if a proper judicial accountability bill was simultaneously tabled.
I believe the public posturing of a hardened “janlokpal only” stance is just a political game. Where you need to come to a negotiating table (once the govt relents) with an unyielding message. If you show flexibility in your stance before the negotiations start, then you are exposing your weaknesses. And this government/political class would make mincemeat of you if they see any chinks in your argument.
LikeLike
@Gautam: Very well articulated, and in complete agreement with you. Allow me to add yet another screen to your display. I find much of the rhetoric (for and against) about the Team Anna movement keeps referencing the Ramlila grounds and talking of how to engage with this phenomenon…
Now, I can understand the sheer emotional impact it can have when you see and hear the masses for yourselves. But let us also not forget that the bill proposes to change and challenge India as a whole — not just Parliament, not just Delhi, but every (wo)man on the street across the nation, yes? So what is the mood on all these other streets… and crucially, does this even matter?
Yes, I take your point about reclaiming the streets and public spaces to make ourselves heard as citizens, and to engage with those that do. But let me also add that, sitting in the remote outskirts of Calcutta/Kolkata, I am surrounded by silence. The streets are silent. The television is silent. The radio is non-existent. Does that mean I have lost or surrendered the opportunity to be part of ‘the masses’ that is India? Does it mean that my position is forever apart, that I can never be part of a mass movement? Is there, at a physical remove, no movement to engage with? No. I am under the impression that ‘mass movement’ predicates popular support rather than physical movement of mass (as understood in physics classrooms). So when friends in Delhi get all misty-eyed over the mystique of the Ramlila grounds, and eagerly invite me to the capital, it leaves me cold — and a little disturbed. Sure, I could go seek out more populated streets for myself, to see what it feels like; but WHY would I? How is it relevant to the ‘movement’ or the debate over it, really? Feels more like window dressing to me.
Is my critique of the movement any less valid because I haven’t been submerged in the Ramlila masses and felt their euphoria? Surely, in the way that our democracy is defined, there is nothing to suggest that people need to be on the streets to be heard or for their vote to be counted. A mass movement that takes to the streets is one thing; a mass movement that makes no sense UNLESS you look to the streets is another. I contend that perhaps this has become a case of street theatre where the props have upstaged the players (the bill itself, the methods to get it passed, the identification of corruption etc).
Perhaps it is time some of the writers in Delhi (where, let’s face it, most media resources are aggregated) stopped reducing the politics of this ‘phenomenon’ to the palpable. Just because it makes great spectacle, the cameras focus on the Ramlila grounds; but this is a huge national political debate. Where is the media’s — and even the lay Delhiite’s — engagement with other stakeholders in this discourse? Has it been hijacked by the power of the image, the visual imagination trapped by vignette after vignette of Hazare’s hazaar-and-one supporters on the grounds?
This too is a question worth asking. It is worth reminding ourselves and bystanders that the merit of a movement should not be measured by its street cred. The streets are a tool, a locus of the expression of a movement; they are not the validators of its politics.
LikeLike