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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Anna Hazare's campaign has some positives too by Saubhik Chakrabartia

Anna Hazare's campaign has some positives too by Saubhik Chakrabartia

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published Published on Aug 26, 2011   modified Modified on Aug 26, 2011

As per hallowed newsroom traditions, the bad news first.
1. We have a government and a ruling party that have displayed tactical, strategic, policy and moral incapacities.

2. We have a main Opposition party that, despite witnessing such government and ruling party incapacity, has displayed its own incapacity to do anything intelligent or meaningful.

3. We have a core group of agitationists led by Anna Hazare which has displayed, at best, its alarming naivety in the matter of institutional reform process; a naivety that allowed the political class to finally get the upper hand in the last 36 hours. 4. We have a corporate sector that has displayed its unwillingness and/or inability to contribute an implementable big idea in the corruption debate.

Now, the good news.

1. India's public life is enriched. However sceptical one is of Anna & Co's methods and some of the proposals - this correspondent is one of the sceptics - it was impossible not to recognise the plus side of tens of thousands of citizens peacefully gathering in many cities and asking the government and the political class to get their act together.

Yes, there were protestors who probably didn't know their Lokpal from their Fiat Palio. But the demand that those who were protesting with Anna must display acute knowledge of the complexities of the issue at hand was unfair. By that criterion every political party rally or gathering should be dismissed. And what should our verdict be on the parliamentary process, in which the finance Bill involving tens of thousands of crores is passed sometime with little or no discussion?

This variety of critics of Anna protestors seem appalled and amused that there were so many oddballs, not to mention some "hooligan types", with varying degree of ignorance. That demonstrates a witting or unwitting ignorance on the part of those critics about the processes of popular participation. The same critics are also rather cattily asking whether this popular participation will have any lasting effect.

Nothing is guaranteed to last; Manmohan Singh was once popular with the middle classes. There are, however, real reasons to seriously inquire into the possibility of a few changes in popular responses to institutional politics. That's good news, too.

2. India's politicians are a little bit concerned. This becomes clear once you recognise the possibility that something may have shifted in the people-politician equation. Politicians, mostly very clever (they have to be; politics is a brutally tough business), will not probably admit it but they most likely have sniffed out that some behaviourial changes are in order.

Is it is a coincidence that as the Anna protest peaked, Parliament saw reasoned debates and very little of raucous behaviour? BJP's M M Joshi targeted the PM, and the treasury benches didn't erupt. The PM took on Joshi the next day and BJP MPs behaved. Even the so called caste-based parties, those who are supposed to have no fear from an angry urban middle class, behaved. Why?

Probably because no politician wanted TV images of a raucous Parliament, not when the entire political class's argument to Team Anna was that parliamentary sanctity must be honoured. How long this will last, whether the opportunity for making Parliament a more effective institution will be taken, depends upon how long politicians think the popular mood change will last. But so far, so good.

3. India's "radical" intellectuals have shown up to be even less relevant. The interventions by Arundhati Roy in the Anna debate were pointless. If Team Anna is a creature of a corporate conspiracy, prove it. And even if it is, address and analyse its popular appeal. That's what serious intellectuals do.

Or, actually, that's what they don't do. They say we must love violent Naxalites and we must dismiss peaceful protests. The so-called radical left has always laid claim to insights that are important precisely because they are supposed to be deeply troubling for the mainstream. The message from Ramlila: the radical left is in deep trouble, which can't but be good news for a country that requires many reasoned debates over how to maximise both private entrepreneurial opportunities and public gains.

4. India's upper administrative classes are quite afraid. This has a short-term negative outcome in that government decision-making gets slower for fear of getting embroiled in a graft investigation. But the upper administrative classes needed this dose of fear. They started getting afraid from before Anna, when the Supreme Court took charge of the 2G investigation and the CBI actually did some good investigating.

The Anna agitation, the possibility of a halfway effective Lokpal and the popular mood against graft have all contributed to that fear. The class that takes calls on or advises its political masters on decisions involving millions of rupees of public money but had little fear of consequences needed to be a bit afraid.

What will all this good news add up to? If all of it holds, we may have a more engaged middle class, a less cavalier political class, a more careful administrative class and we may soon ask, radical left, who? That's a good deal.

There's a final argument that those dismissive of Ramlila use: look at Anna, isn't he himself odd in all kinds of ways? Sure he is. But he, despite himself, connected. Call Anna nothing but a symbol, if you want. But spot the good news from Ramlila.

The Economic Times, 26 August, 2011, http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/opinion/comments-analysis/anna-hazares-campaign-has-some-positives-too/articleshow/9740716.cms


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