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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Hazare effect by V Venkatesan and Purnima S Tripathi

Hazare effect by V Venkatesan and Purnima S Tripathi

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published Published on Apr 23, 2011   modified Modified on Apr 23, 2011
Anna Hazare's fast puts Jan Lokpal on the nation's agenda, but doubts remain whether it will help root out corruption.

A FUTURE historian who browses the archives of Indian newspapers and news websites from April 5 to 10 will be confused over how to characterise the groundswell of public support across the country for the “fast unto death” undertaken at Jantar Mantar, in New Delhi, by a social activist not so popular outside Maharashtra. Kisan Bapat Baburao Hazare, well known as Anna Hazare, aged 71, wanted the government to constitute a joint drafting committee comprising equal numbers of government and civil society representatives to draft a new Bill for creating an effective Lokpal, an institution to investigate and prosecute corrupt public servants impartially.

Hazare and his followers ended their fast on the morning of April 9, after the government released a gazette notification forming the joint drafting committee consisting of five each of its own and Hazare's nominees to prepare the draft Lokpal Bill. The government nominees are Union Ministers Pranab Mukherjee (chairman), P. Chidambaram, Kapil Sibal, M. Veerappa Moily (convener) and Salman Khursheed. Apart from Anna Hazare himself, his nominees include former Law Minister Shanti Bhushan (co-chairman), lawyer and civil rights activist Prashant Bhushan, Karnataka Lokayukta Justice Santosh Hegde and right to information campaigner Arvind Kejriwal. The joint committee is expected to complete its work latest by June 30.

The story of how the government conceded all the demands of Hazare within four days of his fast must make anyone wonder whether the idiom of public protest and the character of democracy in India have transformed abruptly. According to the constitutional expert Rajeev Dhavan, Hazare's campaign has a key implication for the theory and practice of democracy. If the liberal Western model posited the idea that political democracy transcended and controlled civil society and that the government by institution triumphed over the government by the people, the campaign, he observed, had raised a huge question mark about its relevance.

On April 5, when Hazare and 150 of his supporters began their fast, both he and the government had no inkling as to whether the fast would succeed, let alone garner public support on a large scale that would surprise even its organisers. The protesters were indeed prepared for a long haul; the number of Hazare's co-fasters in Delhi alone rose to nearly 500 on April 9.

The government, which had not conceded the just demands of another activist, Irom Sharmila, who has been on fast (but forcibly fed by the government) for the past 10 years demanding the repeal of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act in Manipur, initially reacted on predictable lines. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh appealed to Hazare to call off his fast and engage in a discussion with the subcommittee of a Group of Ministers over the framing of the Lokpal Bill. Union Human Resource Development Minister Kapil Sibal even told a television channel that involving “outsiders” in drafting any legislation would mean compromising Parliament's sovereignty. The government was also not inclined to make such an “outsider” a co-chairperson of the drafting committee and issue a gazette notification of its order constituting a committee, as demanded by Hazare.

The government's position only hardened Hazare's resolve to continue the fast. Hazare's justification of his demand struck a chord with his audience at Jantar Mantar. “If the government alone drafts the Bill, it will be autocratic, not democratic,” he said. He also questioned the government's wisdom in describing civil society representatives like him as “outsiders”. Likening ordinary people to “masters” and Ministers to “servants”, he asked whether it was fair for the servants to call their masters “outsiders”. Recalling that it was the people of India who collectively gave themselves the Constitution, he asked whether it was proper, by calling them “outsiders”, to deprive them of their role in the making of law.

Eight previous attempts

Neither he nor his audience might have understood the intricacies of lawmaking or the difficulties of enacting the Lokpal Bill with consensus over its many controversial provisions. But by citing the eight failed attempts at enacting it since 1968, Hazare could sway public opinion in his favour and emphasised that the government, acting alone, could no longer be trusted with the same mission. After 1968, different versions of the Lokpal Bill were introduced in the Lok Sabha, in 1971, 1977, 1985, 1989, 1996, 1998 and 2001. Each time the Lok Sabha was dissolved without the Bill getting enacted, and as a result it lapsed, except in 1985 when the Rajiv Gandhi government withdrew the Bill.

What endeared Hazare to his audience was the way he explained how people had the power to force governments. When he declared that in a democracy “people were the masters and the Ministers and other government representatives only their servants or the trustees of their money”, there was tumultuous applause. He then added: “If the servant did not work right, it is the duty of the master to teach him the right lessons.”

He was categorical that even if his methods were dubbed as “blackmail or pressure tactics”, he would adopt it again and again in the people's interest. He even declared that if required he would not shy away from using even harsh words; simply following Gandhiji would not get us the results, this was the time to follow the teachings of Shivaji, he would say. It was as if he was rewriting the grammar of protest as he understood it in Indian democracy, where civil society has so far played only a secondary role.

By April 7, it had become obvious that the government was jittery. The nonchalance of the initial two days had given way to hectic parleying. Kapil Sibal held talks with Hazare's colleagues, Arvind Kejriwal, Swami Agnivesh and Kiran Bedi, and by the evening of April 8 it was clear that the government had decided to accept all the demands of Hazare. But Hazare chose to wait until the morning of April 9 to break his fast in order to give time to the government to bring out the gazette notification of the constitution of the drafting committee.

To many it implied a trust deficit between the government and the protesters; to Hazare himself, the gazette notification would mark the first stage of the complete surrender of the government to civil society. Breaking his fast, Hazare announced that it was only the beginning and that he would now face the challenge of ensuring the enactment of the Jan Lokpal Bill by August 15; otherwise, he would resume the agitation. The choice of Independence Day as the new deadline was symbolic as he repeatedly characterised his campaign as the country's second independence struggle, to rid the country of corruption.

At a press conference the following day, Hazare, flanked by Arvind Kejriwal and Kiran Bedi, said he was hopeful that the committee would reach a consensus on the new Lokpal Bill. He suggested televising the committee's proceedings in order to ensure transparency. He threatened to use similar tactics (like the just-concluded fast) to force the government to accede to his demands, in the people's interest. The criticism that it amounted to blackmail did not bother him. He was not prepared to accept that imposing deadlines on the government and Parliament in the making of a complex law like the Lokpal Bill was unreasonable, let alone impractical.

Blackmail?

But observers were clearly worried about the threat of an indefinite fast becoming an instrument of blackmail in the hands of self-styled civil society leaders. Neither Hazare nor the campaign which he was heading, India Against Corruption (IAC), could convince that the fast was the last resort after exhausting all alternatives – one of the essential conditions to be fulfilled for using fasting as a means of public protest, as laid down by Mahatma Gandhi during the freedom struggle. While Hazare and the campaign leaders refer to their failed meeting with the Prime Minister, and the non-serious responses to their letters to the Prime Minister and the Congress president, Sonia Gandhi, facts suggest that the government had initiated a process to consult civil society over the Bill.

The National Advisory Council chaired by Sonia Gandhi had begun a consultation process on the Bill and was about to place its recommendations before the government. Among those who attended the consultations was Santosh Hegde, who had, along with Arvind Kejriwal of IAC and Prashant Bhushan, helped draft the Jan Lokpal Bill. On day one of the fast, Hegde suggested that Hazare should have waited for the NAC's recommendations.

But it was clear that IAC had no patience for such sane advice from one of its own leading lights. The growing support to the fast appeared to have forced it to emphasise rhetoric rather than the substance of its protest. The number of cities that organised such protests went up to about 600, including 27 cities abroad, according to Aswathi Muralidharan of IAC.

Collective anger

Hazare's and IAC's indifference to Hegde's advice is least surprising if one considers the nature of the campaign against corruption organised by IAC. Its website, www.indiaagainstcorruption.org, calls itself a movement and an expression of collective anger of the people of India against corruption. As one would expect, where there is anger, there is limited room for reasoned discussion on the merits of adopting a particular form of public protest.

IAC's entry in the social medium Facebook claims it is a citizen's movement to demand strong anti-corruption law. Another entry in Facebook says it is a movement of several concerned citizens of India who have come together to demand comprehensive reforms of anti-corruption systems in India and to put an end to the dark corridors of power. On Orkut, it claims that they have all come together to force/request/persuade/pressurise the government to enact the Jan Lokpal Bill and that they believe that if this Bill is enacted it will create an effective deterrence against corruption.

Academics are bound to differ with IAC's description of itself as a social movement. As on April 14, its Facebook followers numbered more than two lakhs. Its Orkut account had 2,068 members, and its Twitter followers totalled 8,743. In a country of India's size, these figures suggest a minuscule section of the population and it is unlikely that the new social media could have substantially facilitated a successful public protest, let alone a movement with the required social cohesion and commitment of its members. What forced the government to concede Hazare's demands was perhaps the hysterical manner in which television channels were covering the event non-stop, drawing more people to join the campaign, as the crusade against corruption was an issue that created enormous viewer interest. Finding itself in the midst of Assembly elections in a few States, the government was worried about the deteriorating health of the activists on fast and the possible impact on the United Progressive Alliance's prospects in the elections if it tried to stop the fast forcibly.

Significantly, the most popular campaign in the country seems to have suffered from a complete lack of articulation of its major concerns both internally and on the social media. An entry by Sudheendra S. on Orkut on April 9, when the fast ended, noted: “We hate politicians: Anna Hazare sir, hats off to u.” One could dismiss this as rant, but similar sentiments are expressed when IAC explains the context in which it came into being.

For instance, on Facebook it says: “Series of scams involving politicians and bureaucrats. Generals are accused of appropriating apartment spaces intended for war widows, or when Judges are accused of stealing from the Provident Fund of Class IV employees or when academic regulators are arrested for graft, decorated industrialists steal thousands of crores from investors or when Cabinet Ministers and civil servants in cahoots are accused of stealing tens or even hundreds of thousands of crores from the exchequer in the name of sports or telecom.”

IAC not only believes that the Jan Lokpal Bill is an answer to all these scams which surfaced recently, it also assumes that its followers treat elected representatives, civil servants and the judiciary with profound cynicism and contempt. It may not be fair to attribute this cynicism and contempt for the political class entirely to IAC's or television's campaign during the past few days. But it is undeniable that the campaign could well have provided the means to channel such feelings.

High-level corruption

Corruption as such is not a new phenomenon. But the scale of high-level corruption in recent times certainly is. Therefore, the recent cases of corruption, namely the 2G spectrum scam and the irregularities in the conduct of the Commonwealth Games in New Delhi, the various instances of abuse of power and bribery exposed by WikiLeaks' India Cables, carried in The Hindu, and so on, have made every citizen angry at the impotence of the system to punish the guilty promptly.

IAC has succeeded in giving space to express this anger when it asks why the corrupt in our country do not go to jail. It attributes the problem to ineffective anti-corruption laws and anti-corruption agencies in the country. The Jan Lokpal Bill which it helped draft, IAC claims, requires that the investigation into any case be completed within a year and the trial in the next one year so that a corrupt person goes to jail and his ill-gotten wealth is confiscated within two years of a complaint being lodged.

There can be no doubt that the creation of a Jan Lokpal will be a huge step forward. However, as Prashant Bhushan explains in his interview, such an institution is unlikely to be effective in the crusade against corruption if the policies favouring corporate corruption remain unchanged. But the leaders of the campaign do not appear to be concerned about the need for a simultaneous change in policies in order to make the Jan Lokpal effective. They do not even pay lip service to the need to address corporate corruption by changing existing policies favouring big business. Articulation of such issues is conspicuous by its absence either in the internal discussions of IAC or on its website, let alone among its followers at the protest sites or on Facebook, Twitter and Orkut.

Hazare demanded Kapil Sibal's resignation from the drafting committee when Sibal was quoted as questioning whether the Lokpal could be viewed as a solution to the serious problems facing the country. Hazare insists that those who do not believe that the Lokpal could be an effective institution have no place in the drafting committee. Sensing the mood of the activists, Sibal said he had been misquoted and that he looked forward to drafting an effective Lokpal Bill along with Hazare. Observers wonder how Hazare will respond to Prashant Bhushan's reservations about the Jan Lokpal.

The Jan Lokpal can well come into being because of pressure from activists, but a change in the policies favouring corruption could be the result of a long and arduous struggle. Meanwhile, the Jan Lokpal may well fail to satisfy people's aspirations.

India Against Corruption

The formation of IAC itself appears to be a hurried step forward: there was hardly any formal meeting of its constituents. They came together at a rally held in support of the Jan Lokpal Bill in New Delhi in November last year and subsequently came out with a first draft of the Jan Lokpal Bill.

Faced with intense criticism of some of its provisions, its authors are now ready with its second version, which will be presented to the joint drafting committee for discussion. Prashant Bhushan attributes this lacuna to the incomplete understanding of the issues involved by the campaign leaders. Others, however, see this as a natural by-product of various groups pursuing religious and spiritual objectives coming under IAC's banner. It has leaders such as yoga guru Baba Ramdev, Art of Living guru Sri Sri Ravishankar, Mahamood Madani and Archbishop Vincent M. Concessao, among others. Although Hazare has taken pains to declare his secular credentials, the essentially spiritual nature of his anti-corruption crusade (with Hindutva symbols on the dais where he sat on fast) seeks simplistic solutions to corruption; this is inconsistent with any serious discussion of the complex factors that encourage corruption.

Many of Hazare's admirers are still not convinced by his explanation as to why he considered Gujarat a model of rural development or why he chose to praise its Chief Minister, Narendra Modi, for his so-called record in rural development. Some are even rethinking whether they should continue their support to his campaign if he does not withdraw his compliment to Modi. For them, corruption goes beyond mere embezzlement and ought to include what Modi is accused of by civil rights activists: serious governance-deficits and alienation of minorities and weaker sections from the distribution of the benefits of government schemes.

Hazare's simplistic approach has led him to suggest that his critics are referring to his Modi remarks to distract the campaign's focus from the Lokpal. The success of his campaign will depend on how he manages such contradictions.

Anyone was free to join IAC. This open invitation seems to have alienated those with genuine concerns over corruption as they fear vested interests may hijack the campaign. If that happens, the support and goodwill that Hazare mobilised could well dissipate, making the future historian wonder whether it will be correct to call the events of April 2011 a turning point.

Frontline, Volume 28, Issue 09, 23 April-6 May, 2011, http://frontline.in/stories/20110506280900400.htm


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