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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Cleansing the State by Krishna Kumar

Cleansing the State by Krishna Kumar

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published Published on Nov 21, 2011   modified Modified on Nov 21, 2011

The anti-corruption movement has enabled the Indian middle class to feel smug about itself. Its members have gone through a vast range of emotions during the last two decades, from self-hatred to self-righteousness. Liberalisation of the economy has created for this class an excitement of many kinds. It has meant the freedom to pursue the quest for wealth without guilt and, at the same time, it has meant feeling set adrift from tradition and the culture it signifies. Life under the regime of liberalisation has also meant seceding from the physical spaces that constitute the shared habitation of the rich and the poor, by creating self-enclosed townships.

Krishna Kumar (anhsirk.kumar@gmail.com) teaches education at Delhi University. He is a former director of NCERT.
 
During the days Anna Hazare was fasting in Ramlila Maidan, Rubina was trying to acquire a certificate to prove to Delhi University that she belongs to the Other Backward Class (OBC) category. She comes from a small community of Muslims categorised as OBC in Delhi. A young entrepreneur living in her neighbourhood offered to help for a fee of Rs 500. She paid the amount, but the hope of getting a certificate in time for her to apply in a college was ticking away, so she decided to take help from one of her teachers who got her to fill up the required form and arranged, through a friend, to get a Class I officer to verify her claim. Then she discovered that one more signature was needed, and Rubina tried to get this second verification from the sitting MLA of her area. His office demanded Rs 200 and told her that it would take a month. This would have been too late for her admission, so she went back to her teacher who arranged a second signature from another officer. Armed with both these signatures, she went to the certification office. The clerk was impressed but also a bit suspicious, so he now demanded proof that Rubina’s family was residing in Delhi before 1992 which is when the OBC notification was issued. The idea was that the benefit should not have been availed of by someone who migrated to Delhi after 1992 in order to claim OBC status. By the time she got the certificate, admission was over in the college which she was interested in studying for a specialised course.
 
Rubina is a beneficiary of the State’s drive to distribute entitlements as a political signal of its continued commitment to the Constitution. One can notice a sharp contradiction between the state’s desire and its capacity to deliver. On one hand, it is generously distributing entitlements, and on the other it is assiduously shedding its responsibility and capacity to fulfil the expectations aroused by the entitlements it has distributed. The constitutional agenda, which requires the state to serve as an egalitarian force, is now competing with the responsibility to encourage free enterprise. Not surprisingly, the state itself has become a source of confusion and frustration. Different strata of society now view the state in sharply varying ways. The working classes find themselves defenceless in the face of the new industrial and business order. Post-Fordist industrial ­development is rapidly diminishing the distinction between the organised and the unorganised sectors, as far as the size and ownership of industrial outfit is concerned. Workers serving giant transnational companies are forced to remain unorganised so they can be exploited and treated like a permanently casual workforce. The new technology of production has greatly facilitated this remarkable situation by enforcing a low-skill regime across a fully automated assembly line. The freedom to shed is perceived as an essential part of business wisdom which the state understands and encourages by emulating.
 
Lack of employment haunts vast numbers among youth, both in urban and rural areas. On the other hand, the upwardly mobile urban entrepreneurial classes rejoice in the freedom they have acquired in the various spheres of business. They resent every bit of remaining bureaucratic constraints and political uncertainty, especially in the new areas that have opened up for profit-making, such as education and health.
 
Social Composition
 
Disappointment and anger with the state have made mobilising people an attractive and practical idea. The movement of which Anna Hazare became both a symbol and a vehicle developed an instant appeal and sustained it for a considerable length of time during the month of August. How­ever, it is important to reflect on the social formation of the public anger it vented. The crowd of Delhi’s citizens which first gathered outside Tihar jail, then at Ramlila Maidan, and took part in late evening vigils at India Gate, exuded a sense of confidence and power. Those who were part of the crowd seemed to make others feel morally embarrassed for not participating. In many middle class colonies, they went from door to door, holding a candle and asking the residents to come out and join the procession. If you did not want to join, you knew that it was best not to argue. The mood conveyed a sense of final solution to the problem of corruption; so if you did not feel immediately supportive, you would rather give a personal rather than a political excuse. As the crowd in Ramlila Maidan swelled, its power rose and a feeling of being in control spread through the city, ultimately reaching parliament which saw little choice but to pass a statement that would pacify the crowd and save Anna Hazare’s life.
 
The social composition of the crowd at Ramlila Maidan has been a matter of debate. Commentators who feel sympathetic to the movement insist that it was not merely a middle class crowd, that there were people from the lower rungs of the urban ladder too, and even some villagers and tribal people, from states like Madhya Pradesh. Some have chosen to call it a public movement. This is, of course, an accurate description, but it stops short of clarifying the nature of the articulate public in India, The label “civil society” does not help either, for it suggests a concerned segment of the population rather than a voice or an urge. No matter which term we use, it does not capture and explain what Delhi witnessed in the latter half of August. The city contains a vast ocean of the poor surrounding the colonies of comfortable classes. Had this ocean flooded Ramlila Maidan, Parliament would have adroitly gone beyond the modest resolution it passed after such prolonged and anguished deliberation. On the other hand, it is true that India now has a sizeable class of people who want to live in comfort and reap the fruits of their investments in education and business and consume these fruits without the embarrassment of looking conspicuous. This class consists of people who do not mind letting their car driver keep the AC on while the master is participating in an event. This behaviour is illustrative of the new business perspective which sees nothing morally wrong in wastage or exhibition so long as proper payments are being made. This kind of justification covers a wide range of practices now common among the upwardly and globally mobile and more such practices are getting added every month.
 
Support for Formula 1
 
Two months after the anti-corruption demonstration in Ramlila Maidan, a vast crowd gathered to watch Formula 1 car racing a few kilometres away at NOIDA, and the media provided unanimous support of the same kind it had furnished for the anti-corruption movement. Not even the question of consumption of petrol for entertainment was raised as a question that might bother children who sometimes notice the huge signboards outside petrol stations saying that every drop of this fuel is precious and, therefore, it should not be wasted. Formula 1 acquired the same kind of obvious correctness in its claim – that it marked India’s progress and confidence – that the movement surrounding Hazare had acquired. Both had full backing of the articulate classes who perceive morality as efficiency. This perception is the primary factor shaping the distribution of odium and praise in the current ethos. State failures are targeted relentlessly, but market failures are seen as unfortunate. Post-dinner conversations rejoice in competitive raillery against the government. Everyone is convinced that nothing, absolutely nothing, gets done without graft, that no selection or appointment takes place without pulls and pressures being exercised, and so on. As the evening closes, the gathering feels ­satiated with a sense of truth and correctness about its knowledge of the state of affairs and its sense of the all-round lack of hope. The generalised contempt for the state is precisely what makes the participants of the anti-corruption movement so sure of their view that they cannot imagine why anyone in his right mind would not join them.
 
Arrival of the Middle Class
 
The anti-corruption movement has enabled this class to feel smug about itself. Its members have gone through a vast range of emotions during the last two decades, from self-hatred to self-righteousness. Liberalisation of the economy created for this class an excitement which could be interpreted in divergent ways. It meant freedom to pursue the quest for wealth without guilt; at the same time, it meant feeling set adrift from tradition and the culture it signifies. Caring for the poor by letting them survive as recipients of occasional charity was a part of this tradition. Life under the regime of liberalisation meant seceding from the physical spaces that constitute the shared habitation of the rich and the poor, by creating a self-enclosed township, a heightened, fortified private civil line, except for the fact that the residents of the British era civil line thought that they were serving the poor. The new civil world is socially more distanced from the masses than the colonial civil line was, and yet it is a reincarnation of the older model. Its morale has greatly improved from the experience and the considerable success of Anna Hazare’s fast. For one thing, the leadership of Anna Hazare has enabled this class to relieve itself of the anger it feels against the state, in a public and quite dramatically democratic way. The experience meant that the state could be shown to be illegitimate, having lost the moral right to represent India. The flag in thousands of hands raised in protest at Ramlila Maidan was no other than the tricolours, and the songs includedVande Mataram. This was no political gathering; it was a carnival of angry nationalism of people who are convinced that their success in life owes nothing to the state.
 
They find the state’s institutions and procedures much too cumbersome and the people who run these institutions dull and corrupt. Anna Hazare’s self-perception as an honest and practical man, who is interested in results, not politics, is shared by the consuming classes. To them, honesty is prudence, a form of smartness because it frees you to enjoy life in the middle of poverty, horror and injustice. The new technology of communication is a great resource for this kind of efficiency and it is no coincidence that mobilisation for Anna’s fast at Ramlila Maidan was done primarily through the new technology. In an interview with Vidya Subramaniam in The Hindu ( 31 August), Arvind Kejriwal spoke about some 2 crore SMS messages which were sent to people, asking for a missed call in return to signal their support. It is highly appropriate that the new technology of communication, both its machinery and its business, should have provided such a strong backing to the movement, for indeed, it is this technology which has made a significant contribution to India’s emergence from its conventional, sluggish rate of economic growth. It is no coincidence that this technology also forms the content of some of the biggest stories of state corruption. The role of communication technology in shaping the Anna movement goes well beyond facilitating it. The confluence of technological services enabled the movement to convert a struggle into a mega-event which was managed with technical finesse locally as well globally.
 
Local management required motivating supporters to physically join the event and to maintain their morale despite adverse weather conditions. Global management was provided by several television channels which uninhibitedly supported the movement, serving both as a forum for discussing it and as a resource for enhancing its appeal. Corporate advertising interspersing the debates helped to maintain a sense of normalcy, bordering on romance as the movement traversed several zones of uncertainty and suspense about its outcome.
 
Liberalisation and Corruption
 
In an article published in Seminar (Sept­ember 2011), Prashant Bhushan points out that the “exponential growth of corruption in India after the end of the licence-permit raj and the introduction of LPG (liberalisation, privatisation, globalisation) policies in the hope of reducing corruption is no mere coincidence”. He is right, but the movement surrounding Anna Hazare has succeeded in separating the issues of corruption from liberalisation. Its fight is not directed against the neo-liberal state, but rather against the archetype of the state as a governing principle rooted in, and drawing legitimacy from, its own history. Transparency and accountability are the bywords of the anti-corruption movement. In the interview mentioned earlier, when Vidya Subramaniam asked Arvind Kejriwal why the website of his NGO did not display the amounts it had received as donations for the Anna movement, he was quick to call it an “oversight” and promised to correct it “immediately”. That has now happened, and though the details provided are rather sketchy, we must appreciate that the NGO has provided these details as a matter of courtesy since the Right to Information (RTI) does not apply to private companies and NGOs. It only compels the state to provide full details of all its dealings and to do so quickly. This distinction is, indeed, a major part of the rebirth of the Indian state in the neo-liberal era. The state now lays bare the basis of its decisions. Only market forces, such as ­industries and business establishments, can now take a decision based on internal deliberation which they need not share. No RTI or WikiLeaks lies in wait for them.
 
In the name of accountability, the state’s functionary alone must relinquish the exclusivity of the space available for formal deliberation with colleagues. The fact of corruption has provided an excellent ground for denying to the state any inner space to think. This denial also helps to paralyse the state, and that is what the historical forces representing the market needed. Earlier, they wanted the state to shrink, by withdrawing from several of its traditional functions, especially in welfare, and by outsourcing others. That wish has also been coming true quite rapidly over the recent years.
 
The NGO Phenomenon
 
No wonder the beneficiaries of the state’s egalitarian entitlements feel disillusioned and angry when they finally get what they had aspired for. Already, many arms of the state have been captured by non-state players. The NGO phenomenon, established to provide a safety net to the poor, is linked to the planned erosion of the state. As the state got leaner, it started outsourcing its duties and responsibilities to NGOs. Though called “non-government”, NGOs are now serving as the state’s partners in governance in many areas of welfare and service delivery. As institutions, they represent both the market and the state, featuring the flexibility of the former and the moral legitimacy of the latter. They acquire the former quality by remaining softly institutionalised, and the latter quality by serving the poor, especially in areas and contexts where the state has ­putatively failed. In education alone there are thousands of NGOs on whom the state’s flagship programmes like the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan depend. The situation is quite similar in health. Some of the NGOs serving the poor in these sectors are so big and handle such vast amounts of money that they should be rightly, and respectfully, called a state within the state. At any rate, the pervasive character of NGO presence in the country supports the claim that they are the new arm of the state which serves the poor. They are believed to be in a better position to serve the poor because they are not hampered by the impediments the state machinery places in its own working. Some of these impediments are old and familiar, but the state is no more in any hurry to remove these impediments by reforming itself. It has outsourced the poor to outfits which are not covered by laws, such as the right to information, which might make them as accountable as the state is supposed to be. In many cases, the state’s own money is used to run an NGO, and in other cases, foreign funds are used to provide the services that the state is supposed to.
 
The Rich Declare Independence
 
While the NGO phenomenon has made it unnecessary for the state to reform itself in relation to the poor, it has radically reformed itself in the spheres where the rich had to deal with it. Indeed, liberalisation is all about making the state wealthy-friendly. The much celebrated end of the licence-permit raj is nothing but the declaration of independence by the rich. They can now live, invest, and profit more freely. No wonder the gulf between the richer and the poorer classes has widened and their respective relationship with the state has become more differentiated. The rich believe that India can grow faster still if all remaining impediments are removed expeditiously. For now, they have identified corruption as one such impediment. They have essentialised it so that it forces us to stay blind to its origins in the sharp inequalities which characterise Indian society and are growing sharper. For now, Anna wants us to focus our attention on state corruption alone, and forget about the agents who corrupt the state machinery while they stay and prosper outside it.
 
From their perspective, the machinery is too big and mostly redundant, so it is best to dismantle it. The leaner and weaker it gets, the better get the prospects for market forces. The state’s response to this dynamic is noticeably symbolic, in that it does not mind being used for the purely political purpose of distributing entitlements when its capacity to fulfil them is going through planned decline. Provision for more new social categories to be included in the reservation system in state employment and public institutions of higher education is an example of this purely symbolic politics.
 
Rubina’s OBC certificate came too late to help her to seek admission in the specialised course she wanted to study. She hopes to apply for it again next year. In the meanwhile, she is getting used to the reality of her university life studying in a general course. She represents the first generation of her family to enter the university, but the university is no more what it stands for in public imagination. In many crucial aspects of its functioning, it has already become an empty shell. It has adopted the semester system in the name of efficiency and quality, but its capacity to conduct examinations has been going through continuous erosion over more than a decade on account of staff depletion.
 
A vast number of vacancies have persisted and grown over the years in both academic and administrative apparatuses of the university, injuring its capacity to serve students. Contractual appointments are the order of the day and support services have sharply dwindled. Subsistence on a daily wage has become a norm in a wide range of functions, from cleaning to teaching. In any case, the implementation of the Sixth Pay Commission meant the end of permanence of lower level functionaries and contractualisation of several essential services. In the meanwhile, class-size has swollen on account of increased reservation, and libraries and laboratories are languishing.
 
Loss of staff strength has also damaged institutional memory and maintenance of norms. Neither the faculty nor the students know how to make sense of a situation which is claimed to be driven by a fiscal crunch brought about by the University Grants Commission (UGC). No one knows why the UGC or the Delhi University is starved of funds when India has maintained an enviably high rate of economic growth. Nor can anyone know why the university is in no hurry to fill up vacancies so that it ceases to depend on a casual workforce. Analysis and informed explanation have been replaced by conjectures and rumours about the impending cut in sanctioned staff size, to be executed in the name of rationalisation. In the meanwhile, buildings of various sizes and shapes are rising in the horizons of Delhi, signalling the arrival of private universities and other institutions run quite transparently for profit.

Economic and Political Weekly, Vol XLVI, No. 48, 26 November, 2011, http://beta.epw.in/newsItem/comment/190655/


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