I have discussed Anna Hazare's movement in the past two pieces. Here I want to check what I wrote by the Outlook magazine Special Number of 5 September on "The People versus Parliament".
Historian Ramachandra Guha, we will recall, said that corruption is one of the three more recent challenges to the idea of India(see 18 February column). In the Special also, one writes 'The issue is common people across the country asking why they must bribe, when they pay taxes and follow the law'(p.52), and another says '...corruption is not a half-, but the absolute, truth in our lives now'(p.54).
So it is a universal phenomenon.
Some people are quite critical of the media in connction with the movement. Look at this. 'Television's lack of objectivity has meant that really important questions are also not being discussed: like the dictatorial tendencies of Team Hazare, the flaws in the Jan Lokpal Bill...'(p.24). Another wonders if the media want to project the movement as 'focused on the solitary issue of corruption'(p.34).
The ruling Congress has been trying to 'describe Anna Hazare as part of an RSS conspiracy'(p.26), and 'The crowds, it is said, comprise reactionary Hindu communalists virulently opposed to Muslims, OBCS and Dalits'(p.33).
Quite naturally the JP movement is discussed as a possible historical parallel, and P.N.Dhar is quoted as saying that 'Nobody shed a tear for the demise of the rule of law and constitutional means of changing governments'(p.44). Meant to be a warning on the present?
It is a very significant observation that 'For a movement to succeed, it must be based on truth, public support, and religious harmony'(p.34). This could very well be a standard for judging any movement, including those in the past.
Opinions are bound to differ. Between the two Bollywood men who are friends, one thinks that 'It is a rare moment when India has come together as a nation', while to the other, 'Democracy is about bestowing power to the people, but this(Anna's Jan Lokpal)creates a superstructure that has absolute power'(p.54).
But the Special Number talks of 'the open school of democracy at the Ramlila Maidan'(p.32) where 'the Anna movement has opened wide the shrinking space for protesting against the state'(p.33), and Medha Patkar, the Narmada activist, was 'linking corruption to land, forest and Dalit rights'(p.33). Yogendra Yadav, political scientist, who 'joined the movement after an intense argument with himself about its ideological nature' referred to 'the movement's potential to encompass issues other than corruption'(p.34).
Almost summing up, it says 'the Ramlila Maidan is now a site where thousands of wounds demand succour; it is where a million mutinies dotting the country have found expression; it is the vent through which the free-floating anger of India seeks release; it is the new seminary of politics where the new Indian is being defined and refined'(p.35). This is in spite of the fact that in the rural India the impact of the movement is yet to be felt.
What about the corporate sector? India is being seen as a country where it is 'difficult...to do business here. And to do so honestly, virtually impossible', and therefore 'big business could find to its discomfort that it is seen as part of the problem-and not a victim'(p.52).
In view of the fact that there are three Lokpal Bills at present, including one by the government, what is the practical solution? The Editor-in-Chief suggests that Anna Hazare's and Aruna Roy's groups should 'hammer out a single draft'. If it can be done, it would wipe out the misgivings that the present movement, by shaking the 'structure', would reinforce the neo-liberal thinking in India's economic management. 'Seize the moment', as Vinod Mehtaji says.
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