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Useful Spectacle by Ashok Guha

In the current hullabaloo about the lok pal bill and the Anna agitation, one question has frequently been raised, both by protagonists of the Congress and the government and by constitutionalists and legal experts: however laudable the goals of Anna and his supporters, aren’t the methods adopted by them illegitimate? Doesn’t a fast unto death amount to blackmail of the legislature? Isn’t it an attempt by the unelected to usurp the functions of Parliament and thereby to undermine the foundations of democracy?

In answering this question, a basic principle needs to be kept in mind: laws can only be promulgated by Parliament. The government’s adversaries are under no illusion that they can by themselves produce a new law against corruption without first engineering a violent revolution, an option that they specifically — and, given the age and health of the main actors, very credibly — abjure. All that the advocates of the jan lok pal bill — or the diffuse mass of their supporters — can do, or are trying to do, is to persuade or pressure our representatives in Parliament to their point of view. Our question therefore boils down to a much simpler issue: are the methods being employed by the agitators to persuade or pressure the legislators legitimate tactics? Shouldn’t they have walked the path being so thoughtfully laid out by the government for them — quietly making representations before the select committee or asking legislators who agree with them to introduce private member’s bills or amendments to the government’s bill and then awaiting Parliament’s sovereign decision? Why create so much of a public rumpus?

Once we rephrase the government’s objections to the current agitation in this way, the charge that the agitators have launched an assault on democracy appears singularly hollow. So long as neither violence nor bribery is employed, democracy does not impose any further restrictions on the methods we use to persuade our representatives. It is at least partly a matter of taste whether one goes about it in the genteel fashion that would have pleased Messrs Manmohan Singh and Kapil Sibal or with high-visibility fasting and high-decibel drama.

In large part, however, our techniques of peaceful persuasion must depend on the urgency of the issues involved, the technology available for the dissemination of protest and the kind of people we have to persuade. No one can doubt that the issue we are presently concerned with is absolutely central to the future of our republic. Over the last several years, the members of this government have plundered the country on an unprecedented, indeed, astronomical, scale in the shelter of a supposedly incorruptible prime minister who adopted as his role models the Japanese monkeys of legend who saw no evil, heard no evil and spoke no evil. The credibility of the Indian State is in tatters.

Moreover, the deep penetration of mobile telephones into the countryside, the rapid expansion of rural television viewership, of literacy and computer-literacy, and the proliferation of social networks have changed the parameters of dissent. Victims of endemic corruption in the remoter reaches of rural India had been condemned earlier by sheer isolation to suffer in fatalistic resignation what they believed to be the unalterable order of things. Now they have the option of being part of a nationwide upsurge of outrage and protest. To fully exploit this potential for reaching out, a non-violent protest must be dramatic and telegenic. Invisible representations before a standing committee deep in the chambers of the Lok Sabha cannot compare in media impact with a very public fast unto death in full view of thousands of spectators and participants with flags, speeches, music and all the works. The outreach of the former method will fall far short of the latter, and so will its capacity to influence parliamentarians concerned about their future electoral prospects. Anna and his allies are creating a public spectacle that is keeping the voter’s attention firmly focused on the question of corruption and thus generating enormous electoral pressure on our legislators.

None of this is undemocratic in the least. Perhaps it is ungentlemanly: it hits members of parliament below the belt; it seeks to force them to vote in a particular way regardless of the dictates of their logical faculties or their moral sensibilities (not to speak of their party whip). Is this quite cricket?

A few facts are pertinent at this point. In 2004, the Election Commission, for the first time, made it mandatory for all candidates for the Lok Sabha to disclose their criminal histories. It turned out that 128 of the winners in the elections of 2004 — nearly 25 per cent of the Lok Sabha membership — had criminal records. This led to much heartburn and breast-beating and many campaigns against voting for criminals. However, in the 2009 elections, the number of winners with criminal histories rose by 20 per cent — to 153. This does not include individuals who achieved celebrity status later, such as A. Raja or Suresh Kalmadi. Nor does it include people like Mohammad Azharuddin, the former Indian cricket captain, convicted of match fixing by the Board of Control for Cricket in India and banned for life from the game, but now the Congress MP from Moradabad. There are no doubt many others whose criminal activities have gone unrecorded because of the extreme reluctance of the powers that be to register cases against them. Despite these exclusions, almost 30 per cent of the members of the present Lok Sabha have criminal records.

These distinguished gentlemen are far from being the least influential members of the House. Mohammad Shahabuddin, four-time MP from Siwan, debarred from the 2009 elections by the EC on account of his conviction for murder, was the Union minister of state for home affairs (in effective charge of the police, no less) in the government of H.D. Deve Gowda, now a close ally of the Congress in Karnataka, until vociferous media outrage led to his omission. During the first United Progressive Alliance regime, Shahabuddin was wanted by the police on many non-bailable charges (from murder to kidnapping, to smuggling and to the possession of a vast cache of military weaponry, some of it with Pakistani markings). But the Delhi police simply could not trace this elusive Scarlet Pimpernel who, like Osama of blessed memory, had been ‘hiding in plain sight’, in his MP’s house and regularly attending Parliament as a loyal supporter of the government. It was only after Nitish Kumar’s victory in Bihar in November 2005 that a posse of Bihar police succeeded in arresting him (from his MP’s house, where else?) by the simple expedient of not informing Delhi about the plans. Another four-time MP and convicted murderer, Pappu Yadav, wielded a degree of influence nearly as great. Shibu Soren of the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha was accused and convicted of murder while coal minister in Manmohan Singh’s government, though the conviction was overturned on appeal. One could multiply examples indefinitely.

The author is a former teacher of Economics, Jawaharlal Nehru University. He is currently affiliated to ISI, Delhi