Racing to Annihilate Corruption

As the race to annihilate corruption heats up, Anna Hazare and team have started off on their next hunger strike to combat the Government’s lackadaisical attitude on the Jan Lokpal Bill. But as the middle class, in desperate search of a messiah, follows the Pied Piper in his mission, a doubt lingers on whether there isn’t an undue haste being followed in trying to pass a Bill that has emerged as a rallying point for citizens frustrated with corruption.

Anna Hazare’s prior Jantar Mantar manoeuvre won him fans across but more importantly put the limelight on corruption in a way that we have not seen in decades. It led to the Government climbing down from its stand on the Lok Pal and instituting a combined committee to re-draft the bill. The Bill has now reached the Parliament and the Parliamentary Standing Committee has invited Anna and team to present his views on the subject.

Governments across the world are normally subject to multiple forms of pressure from all kinds of lobbies like the press, judiciary, corporates and others. The Indian civil society (if such a homogeneous group exists) has been a more passive pressure group; even the most virulent representatives like Arundhati Roy and Medha Patkar have been debated in the media only and left untouched by a vast stretch of the population (middle class urban population to be more precise) but the Anna group has successfully managed to create a support base amongst this crowd.

Facebook, Twitter and 24x7 news have ensured that the public is fed on a constant diet of anti-corruption capsules. So you have slogans like “If you are not with Anna and Team, you are with the corrupt politicians and bureaucrats of our country"(Bush would approve!) and “We can’t afford to fail this time. For if we fail, we may never get another chance. It is now or never”. While I am honestly cynical about this business of eradicating corruption with a  magic wand, it must be said that despite the obvious theatrics behind all this sloganeering and ideas (my personal favourite is the Give a Missed Call and Support the Movement), it is wonderful to see people actually talking and thinking about it and forcing the Government to do something about this.

The Government’s position is an open goal post and indefensible; the UPA is at the nadir of its popularity and the multiple scams which leap out of papers and TV sets have reduced it to a motley group with zero credibility. It does not help that the PM is perceived to be a man with no voice and the voices that matter are not available on any public discourse (anyone’s seen a Sonia or Rahul Gandhi interview?). The opposition is practically non-existent in terms of performance and despite the Government giving away its advantage on a platter, the weak knead Opposition is unable to anything about it. In such a position, you cannot blame the civil society for filling in the vacuum and acting as the moral guardian. You'd think that by now our politics would be mature enough to accept dissent but the hara-kiri done in trying to tackle Anna Hazare makes the Government look totally ridiculous and out of touch with people's sentiments.

So, Team Anna has stepped into the Opposition’s shoes and done great service in pitching across an important voice missing all these years – the voice of the electorate. The ruling party realizes that he has the masses behind him and so needs to be taken seriously and so we had the charade of a Joint Drafting Committee that arrived on a consensus that nobody understood. But somewhere in the din of the Anti-Corruption movement (is it one?), there is a concern that the movement is side-stepping its own principles and attempting to bulldoze its own version of the bill in undue haste, bypassing the norms of democracy.

Team Anna has called the proposed bill a Joke Pal and ridiculed its namby-pamby way of trying to tackling corruption. This may be true but the fact that is that the team has a chance to voice their concern in the Standing Committee of the Parliament and so changes can still be incorporated. The RTI Act which was widely touted as a victory of the civil society movement underwent 153 amendments in the standing committee before emerging into the form it now finds itself in.

The team would also be well-advised not to mix the business of governance with popular support and attempt to play to the gallery. It is ridiculous when top cop Kiran Bedi comes to NDTV and suggests that the NDTV opinion polls and their own polls indicate the mass support behind the movement and so their version must be passed; the team even talked about a referendum to gauge public support on their stand. The notion of a people's court to settle issues in a plural society is fraught with dangers. Is public support (assuming that the support exists beyond urban netizens) and rhetoric the basis on which public policy needs to be drafted in this country? If this was the criterion, you’d probably have death penalty as a popular form of punishment and moral policing as an important police activity…

The Jan Lokpal Bill has undergone 40+ revisions and Arvind Kejriwal says that they are open to suggestions but the Team is critical of the Government for not accepting their bill in toto and does not seem to be receptive to any changes in it. Not supporting the Anna movement does not tantamount to supporting the Government at all; staunch public warriors like Aruna Roy and Harsh Mander have expressed serious misgivings about the form of the proposed bill and have in fact even proposed an alternative in the form of a basket of reforms to tackle corruption (haven’t seen much reporting on this other than in the Tehelka).

Democracy is a messy business but it’s probably the best way to clean the mess that we find ourselves in. It is naive and even arrogant (at times) to assume that this is a black and white debate and that there is only one set of people who knows what is best and so the rest should follow. The Mumbai blasts in the 90s led to the demand of a stringent anti-terrorist law and POTA replaced the TADA but now in hindsight, most parties have taken a position against it and agreed that there needs to be more safeguards to protect its misuse while many others have said that the existing Criminal procedure Law in the country is good enough to handle the issue.

We have seen the Lok Ayukta in Karnataka, the CAG in the 2G and CWG scams and institutions like the Election Commission and the higher judiciary make an overall impact on the state by their interventions; so we may not necessarily require a super cop to manage our affairs here. A Frankenstein monster who bosses over everyone can be a terror but does the bill have relevant safeguards ( look back at the terror unleashed by Edgar Hoover as the first director of the FBI) or will it even actually do what it set out to do - tackle corruption? This is debatable but is there a room for even such a debate or are the emotions running so high that we cannot tolerate anyone questioning the proposals?

Anna Hazare’s role in pushing corruption to the forefront of the Indian political debate is arguably immense but there is a danger of overdoing his actions and pushing the envelope just too far that is making many his supporters/well-wishers wondering whether the wise men have not chewed off more than they can swallow. The hysteria created in the initial fast has sky rocketed the expectations of the public and they want the death knell to be sounded now but can the artists keep performing for an audience that has begun to relish the idea of a magic wand and may not be willing to accept the complexities of the process involved?

Yes, the final objective is noble but that does not absolve us from acting responsibly and taking the right path. No one says that the path needs to be dismantled but there is a line that needs to be drawn between what can be the role of unelected and unaccountable civil society member and a Parliamentarian? I know we are skeptical about the role of the Parliament but let’s not forget that the same set of people implemented the RTI Act and many other important pieces of legislation.


The parliamentary way of doing things is understandably not the fastest or most glamorous way to do so (the Dravid rather than Sehwag way) but in a democracy, the fairest way to proceed is deploying faith in the parliament, while pressure groups continue to exert their influence on Governments. We cannot bypass institutions in favour of individuals; it may work perfectly well in one scenario but it sets a precedent which becomes difficult to follow. So, yes, Anna and team must continue with all their good work but it must draw a line between the rule of the civil society and that of an elected representative and not become a mirror opposite of the Government in its actions.

To quote Aruna Roy –

I think it’s democratically and politically immature to demand that one take a simplistic and black-and-white position on this. This is what governments have always being doing with us. You are seen as either with them or against them. For instance, if you fought for land rights you were described as a Maoist and a votary of violent revolution. We cannot do the same thing ourselves, but we are. We are not allowing ourselves the luxury of the rich debates and nuanced thinking that has been our strength. Pluralism has been the strength of the so-called civil society. We cannot sacrifice that. I don’t care what happens to the Government but it’s wrong for the people of this country, it’s wrong for democracy and that’s why we have decided to speak from the NCPRI. 

Image Courtesy - http://churumuri.wordpress.com/2011/04/08/let-a-thousand-anna-hazares-bloom-across-india/