More often than not, whenever someone has questioned the limitations of the IAC movement for the passing of the Jan Lokpal Bill, the spontaneous response of the pro-Anna zealots has been the age old counter-attack levelled at the pen - "Have you done anything yourself? If not, why are you criticising others who are doing it"? To a mind conditioned on today's popular culture, this refrain resonates deeply. After all, aren't we the same generation that grew up watching our beloved heroes in films struggling against the villains all throughout and in the end, having to resort to beating them up to set things right? The sword has always held a greater allure than the pen in our collective consciousness. The minuscule number of films that did try to restore a balance were mostly dismissed as "boring art films" by the audience addicted to adrenaline & testosterone. This call of the zealots to act instead of what they feel is intellectualising from ivory towers is a subconscious reaffirmation of the primacy of the sword over the pen.
In the heat of the moment, it maybe understandable, though in no way reasonable, for us to succumb to this conditioning that owes itself to what we consciously know to be mere fiction. Don't we ourselves justify the tripe that's fed to us week after week saying chalta hai...entertainment hi to hai? If we use a manufacturing analogy to illustrate the relationship between the pen and the sword, we have a design engineer who works from the cool confines of an office with at least a fan, if not an A/C and a worker who toils in the midst of the enormous heat generated by the smelter & furnace. Point being that while debate can't undermine the importance of action, the other way round is just as stupid and impractical. If the absence of action makes a process a no-starter, the absence of debate makes it a ticking bomb, threatening to explode anytime. So, its high time we shake ourselves out of this conditioning and start thinking rationally, try to go deeper than what might seem obvious at face value - in short, let's not undermine the importance of the pen anymore. Its pretty clear that we, as a nation, have lost the patience for reading and hence, feel it to be an exercise in redundance, for don't we know everything already? If we think so, we can't be any further from the truth. Our educational setup, with its preoccupation with grades, marks, ranks and such relatively irrelevant motifs doesn't help.
But is it that easy to shed off the conditioning we've been subjected to, all our lives? I agree, its not. Its a painstaking process, borne out of difficult reflection within ourselves. Often, we have to confront our strongly built belief systems. Often, we have to go through social ridicule just for thinking differently. Often, we have to suffer ignominies of the worst kind for attempting to display any irreverence towards what this conditioning, in its larger form of the social value system of a time & place. Its rigorous like nobody's business, but it's necessary and there are no shortcuts to it. Unless we walk through this difficult path ourselves, right to the destination, we can't free ourselves from the shackles of conditioning. And no amount of coercion or pressure can make us walk it if we ourselves are unwilling to do so.
The corruption that we're suddenly so repulsed of over the last few months is an integral part of our conditioning. Whatever strata of society we might belong to, our lives can't remain untouched by corruption. Each of us has to engage with it every single day, be it as a victim, a perpetrator or even a mute spectator. And just like the romanticism of the sword looms large on our consciousness due to our engagement with cinema of a certain kind, the ether of corruption too pervades it just as much due to our everyday engagement with various hues & shades of corruption. We have internalised the mechanisms, the lexicon & the culture of corruption deeply and even though we're consciously aware of the fact that it's not desirable, our subconscious frequently tweaks our conscience in matters of corruption. The economically backward section of the upper castes will justify using a fake caste certificate to get a job in the name of necessity. Little is he aware that he's trampling upon someone else's right like the NREGS agent trampled upon his. The upper middle class father casually shoves a 100 rupee note into the hands of a constable who has caught him jumping a red light, blissfully aware that his 6 year old son is watching and internalising something that'll help him 15 years later when he's caught driving after downing 6 pegs. Life goes on.
Corruption is not merely about money - that would be reducing it to too simplistic an issue. Instead, its a systemic product of the myriad frictions inherent in our socio-economic setup and thus, a metamorphic entity unlike the demon figure attributed to it in popular lore. For a casual labourer, it would be something on the lines of him getting only Rs.50 a day under the NREGS, the rest going to various mouths in the bureaucratic food chain. For a Class IV municipal employee in a city, it could mean having to pay Rs.5 instead of Rs.2 per kg of rice to his PDS agent and getting only 5kg a month instead of the 10 allotted to him. For a student in a municipal school, it might mean having to study under the severe summer sun while the school building is rented out for a wedding function. For the student in an international school in a metro, it could be having to bribe the traffic cop for riding his bike without a license. For an upper middle class student trying for higher education abroad, it could mean bribing the passport official to get his passport fast-tracked. You get the drift. Point being, to some its an evil that threatens their very existence. To some others, its a source of frustration. To some more, its a convenience. And to a few, its a tool to victimise the others.
Given this fluid nature of corruption, the legislative route is not an ideal way to combat it. Ever heard of a cholera endemic being cured by dropping chlorine tablets in the municipal water supply? Won't help as long as proper food, sanitation & proper nursing are not part of the picture. Legislation needs to be well-defined in terms of its scope and scale. But how can we define something that means different things to different people in the context of a legislation where black and white is pure compulsion? If we were to have laws to cover everything that could constitute corruption, we'll keep doing just that till the cows come back home. Even if we were to achieve this seemingly impossible goal, there are other bigger roadblocks. The sheer volume of cases could overwhelm our judicial structures. And after all that, these laws would do nothing to change our social value systems that have shaped and gotten entrenched over centuries. So while the statistics on cases, prosecutions and sentences might convey a picture that corruption is well under check, the systemic rot from within will get from bad to worse and then beyond.
One might ask, what's the need for legislation then? The need is one of handling residual corruption, because if left unchecked, residual corruption can blossom into the same monster that we're feeling threatened by in recent times. One might ask further, how do we bring down the gigantic levels of corruption that we're seeing now to a residual level? By bringing about a positive change in our collective social consciousness. For that, we'll have to focus our energies at the very entities that determine the conscience, thus making it largely a two pronged struggle. The first would be at the most basic unit of our social structure - the family, gradually working its way upwards in the social hierarchy. The second will have to begin at the top echelons of the state and then percolate down to the individual citizen through the civic structure. And make no mistake, we cannot take a shortcut around this painstakingly long route to a healthier society.
At the family level, we could begin with inculcating the values of honesty, transparency & tolerance into our children. The only way this is possible is if we lead by example. As they grow up, we'll need to help build their thought process on the lines of reasoned & critical thought. We should provide them with a holistic environment while they grow up in terms of optimum stress on nutrition, physical activity & intellectual stimulation along with the education they get in school. We need to engage with them on subjects hitherto considered taboo and educate them instead of blocking them out as is the norm. This will give us a generation that'll score far higher than us on their emotional & social quotient who are a far better bet to uphold the basic principles of public propriety compared to our generation, that's stuck in the firm clutches of a corrupt social value system.
The state on the other hand, should work with the quality of life of the citizens as its top priority. This quality of life could be defined as access to quality food, quality education, quality healthcare, quality infrastructure, clean & fair governance & varied and ample vocational opportunities. The attitude of the state should be that of an enabler instead of a big brother. There will have to be a concentrated effort on the part of the state to win over a strong sense of faith within its citizens, making the approachability of the state a crucial factor.
Listing out the ideal approach to combat corruption took barely two paragraphs but the job is easier said than done. The state's part of the bargain is something that could take decades as consensus is a rather scarce commodity in this diverse nation. The difficulty level will be elevated further due to the sheer scale of the job at hand. But all this would seem like child's play in comparison with the other prong of this struggle. The bottoms-up change will be contingent to individuals rising above the prejudices inherent in their subconscious and bravely confronting their conscience at regular intervals. And till the efforts from the state converge with its opposite prong, this will be one uphill battle for we'll have to emerge victorious in this battle at an individual level without the support of reasonable quality of life from the state. Once we reach this stage of convergence though, both the prongs of the struggle will feed into each other and we'll have a far more coherent final lap in this marathon.
Can we expect the state to follow its end of the bargain as things stand now? Perhaps not. And that's where the current revolution should move now. To the political arena. We need an infusion of fresh blood into our political circles. Fresh blood with a pragmatic vision and a common agenda of delivering on the "quality of life for everyone" promise. In my next piece, I shall outline my views on what this fresh blood would be walking into. In other words, a vision, ideology & broad agenda for a vibrant & progressive India.
Friday, August 26, 2011
Tuesday, August 23, 2011
I'm against corruption but I'm not with Anna Hazare
I've been keenly following the current debate on our current political scenario through television & the internet (including online editions of several newspapers & magazines) ever since a "nation-wide" struggle against "corruption" broke out in late march. I used quotes on two words in the previous sentence because these words are key to the movement in question, but in my opinion (painstakingly contemplated, if I may claim so), are either debatable or vague or both...though the point of this piece is not to debate or define them. That has been done extensively and yet yielded no result (the debate remaining just as polarised and the definitions just as vague). What I'm attempting to do here is to dig a little deeper into the larger debate and put forward a new perspective to it. I suppose it goes without saying that this piece, in its entirety, is my opinion stemming forth from my world-view and does not claim to be the absolute truth. However, what I write here is something I strongly believe in and am willing to debate it constructively within the rules of civil debate.
The most damning characteristic of the debate has been its oversimplification. True to our nature as a people, we have royally ignored the shades of grey in this debate and have looked only at the black and white. To the extent that even grey has been slotted into black or white according to the commenter's perspective. Voices dissenting against the specific stand of the self-appropriated "civil society representation" have been labelled cynical beyond redemption or in some extreme cases, even pro-corruption. This rigid & exclusive nature of our movements has again spawned a cacophony of fragmented voices speaking in unison and as a result, losing all coherence. What's truly shocking is the standard of debate amongst the urban elite, especially the corporate crowd - exposing their naivete & complete lack of political awareness. Everybody has a stand on corruption, in some cases, even extreme (full support for capital punishment in cases of corruption), but hardly anyone has stood up to impeccable values himself. The disgustingly self-righteous (and I have no qualms in accepting that I myself was a part of this group till not so long ago) sneer at the police constable pocketing a petty bribe but casually go about procuring fake bills from the local chemist towards the end of the financial year in order to save a few hundred in taxes. And in the face of an argument to rationalize (not condone) the behaviour of the constable on the basis of his paltry income, they assume a moral high ground questioning the constable's desire to get his children educated in a good school. Sad part is that they aren't even remotely aware of their double standards, leave alone confront them.
Corruption is deeply ingrained into our moral fibre and it would need much more than mere legislation for us to get rid of it. The media-driven mass hysteria over the Lokpal bill has catapulted a majority of our population into a zone of complacence that the bill would be a panacea to our sufferings. Suddenly, issues such as whether the PM & Judiciary should be brought under the ambit of the Lokpal (which IMO are secondary) have become matters of prime importance for us. Let me go back a couple of years and talk about the Lokayukta institution in Karnataka. Justice N.Santosh Hegde (a "civil society representative" member of the Joint committee on the Lokpal bill), as the then Lokayukta had taken a strong stand against illegal mining in the Bellary district. The kingpins of this mining operation were MLA's belonging to the ruling party in the state and they continued with their misdeeds, undeterred by the Lokayukta's stand. After much drama that included Justice Hegde's resignation & subsequent U-turn, ironically at the behest of the president of the same ruling party, the Bellary brothers still continue their mining operations, untouched by law. A case that laid bare the toothlessness of the institution of the Ombudsman when faced with government & bureaucratic apathy. And from a certain extreme perspective, even raised questions about the integrity of the incumbent.
Today's youth shuns politics, understandably so. Civil activist Arvind Kejriwal, on a TV interview with Karan Thapar, quipped, "What if I don't want to contest elections?" to a question as to why he took the route of agitation instead of making his voice heard through parliament. And while I understand his cynicism, I certainly don't approve of it. For IMO, our constitution provides for a certain system of legislation, the current dictating of terms by the "civil society representatives" is setting a dangerous precedent by subverting the constitutional mechanism for legislation. In fact, I would even go back a few steps and disapprove of the government allowing this self-appropriated group to join the process of legislation though inclusion in a joint drafting committee (the constitution allows for the civil society voice to be heard through the Standing Committee). Just as much as I disapprove of the National Advisory Council. My point of discontent is not against individual members of the NAC or the "civil society representation" (I hold quite a few of them in high regard), but its rather against their extra-constitutional say in legislation.
A counter-argument to my point in the paragraph above, often used in recent times by the "civil society representatives", is that it is a constitutional right of the people to question their elected representatives during their term. Rightly so. But remember, we're just talking a right to question here. Nowhere does our constitution allow for groups to muscle their way into the legislative process. The right begins and ends at questioning the representatives. What good would that do, one may ask, if we can't take any action against the wrongdoings of the elected representatives? The answer to that is simple - we don't vote that person or party during the next election. This is what the constitution allows us. That's a whole lot of power, though we've grossly underused it over the decades. And today, if we have the most corrupt government we've ever seen, its because we never questioned. As they say, in a democracy, we get the government we deserve.
Even if I were to look beyond that as technical mumbo-jumbo, my larger disillusionment from this movement stems from its lack of clarity & coherence. I wonder whether its a movement against corruption because a crushing majority of the people on the streets are there due to their frustration with a hugely dysfunctional system. And that does gladden my heart like never before. It shows that we're not apathetic beasts of circumstance, but human beings who have suddenly risen from dormancy. But then, I'm confronted with the leadership of this movement (Anna Hazare, Arvind Kejriwal, Kiran Bedi & the Bhushans) and trust me, its a killjoy. For they seem to have just a single point agenda - getting "their version" of the Lokpal Bill passed on the floor of the house. Their silence & dismissiveness towards anything other than their draft of the bill smacks of a certain shallowness, shortsightedness & a tendency to play to the galleries. I often wonder- what next? There's no answer coming forth from the leadership of this movement. And with the stage gradually filling up with members of the existing political class that's already bereft of any ideology, it becomes as elementary as the quip directed at Dr.Watson that the momentum arising out of the groundswell of public engagement will eventually be appropriated by the very system that the common man abhors.
I thought of giving the leadership of the movement a further benefit of doubt by assuming a substantial stand against corruption on their part. And that's when I hit a roadblock in the form of their specific agenda itself. Why do we need a Lokpal in the first place? And my thoughts on this have been very succintly articulated (far better than I myself could) by Nitin Pai here.
Let's face it, we are a country of paradoxes. One of the most glaring being our ambitions & allusions of becoming an economic superpower co-existing with the massive scale of poverty. Our democracy has invariably been victim to these imbalances, whether we like it or not. These imbalances have brought about unwanted factors like religion, caste, money and muscle-power into our politics, thus resulting in the demise of positive political will towards governance.
Now, I'm not being completely cynical and saying that corruption can't be weeded out of our system. What I am saying is that I wonder if we 30-somethings will ever get to see the end of this malaise in our lifetimes. For we're currently languishing in a system not different from the Augean Stables. The question facing us 30-somethings (and others too, for that matter) is whether we're ready to soil ourselves in order to clean the system. To begin with, we need to revitalize our political space with something it has been lacking since decades - idealism & ideology. My debut as a voter was during the 1996 general elections and I remember voting with a bubbling enthusiasm. But I haven't let the ballot ink touch my nails ever since then, despite the monumental efforts of the powers that be to present my right to vote as a duty. Not because I was amongst the millions of my generation who were apathetic towards politics but because not once have I seen a political party match the eloquence of its election manifesto with equally eloquent action. Not once have I heard an election campaign being delivered from an ideological plank. Rhetoric & personal insinuations remain the bulwark of every single election campaign, irrespective of the political party it belongs to.
The bottomline? There's no denying the need for urgency in the fight against corruption. But we should understand two core aspects of this fight very clearly before we plunge into the fight. One, the urgency is for action and not for a solution. The problem is a systemic one and we all are a part of the problem. So, there can be no quick fix to this. It'll take years, maybe even decades if we are to reduce our corruption levels to residual and manageable. Two, this fight would involve huge sacrifices on our part. It's easy to say that we won't bribe a traffic cop if caught or the 100 rupees bakshish for birth/death certificates. But a tough stand against corruption goes beyond that. Remember, we would have to refuse donations for our children's admissions to a good school and as a result, our children might be forced to go to schools that we normally wouldn't want them to study in. Or we would have to refuse to work for a corrupt organisation, thereby reducing our incomes considerably or even putting us into unemployment. We would have to refuse to buy products & services from corrupt organisations, thereby hitting our cozy lifestyles. And these are just some examples. This fight will be a tough one indeed.
Updates : For those who might've felt this piece incomplete, there are more to follow. And did anyone notice howcorporate India has been piggy-backing on this movement already? You haven't? Oh well...I've seen tonnes of ads promoting Anna Hazare merchandise on various blogs & social media. And they say this is a pristine movement untouched by corruption of any kinds.
The most damning characteristic of the debate has been its oversimplification. True to our nature as a people, we have royally ignored the shades of grey in this debate and have looked only at the black and white. To the extent that even grey has been slotted into black or white according to the commenter's perspective. Voices dissenting against the specific stand of the self-appropriated "civil society representation" have been labelled cynical beyond redemption or in some extreme cases, even pro-corruption. This rigid & exclusive nature of our movements has again spawned a cacophony of fragmented voices speaking in unison and as a result, losing all coherence. What's truly shocking is the standard of debate amongst the urban elite, especially the corporate crowd - exposing their naivete & complete lack of political awareness. Everybody has a stand on corruption, in some cases, even extreme (full support for capital punishment in cases of corruption), but hardly anyone has stood up to impeccable values himself. The disgustingly self-righteous (and I have no qualms in accepting that I myself was a part of this group till not so long ago) sneer at the police constable pocketing a petty bribe but casually go about procuring fake bills from the local chemist towards the end of the financial year in order to save a few hundred in taxes. And in the face of an argument to rationalize (not condone) the behaviour of the constable on the basis of his paltry income, they assume a moral high ground questioning the constable's desire to get his children educated in a good school. Sad part is that they aren't even remotely aware of their double standards, leave alone confront them.
Corruption is deeply ingrained into our moral fibre and it would need much more than mere legislation for us to get rid of it. The media-driven mass hysteria over the Lokpal bill has catapulted a majority of our population into a zone of complacence that the bill would be a panacea to our sufferings. Suddenly, issues such as whether the PM & Judiciary should be brought under the ambit of the Lokpal (which IMO are secondary) have become matters of prime importance for us. Let me go back a couple of years and talk about the Lokayukta institution in Karnataka. Justice N.Santosh Hegde (a "civil society representative" member of the Joint committee on the Lokpal bill), as the then Lokayukta had taken a strong stand against illegal mining in the Bellary district. The kingpins of this mining operation were MLA's belonging to the ruling party in the state and they continued with their misdeeds, undeterred by the Lokayukta's stand. After much drama that included Justice Hegde's resignation & subsequent U-turn, ironically at the behest of the president of the same ruling party, the Bellary brothers still continue their mining operations, untouched by law. A case that laid bare the toothlessness of the institution of the Ombudsman when faced with government & bureaucratic apathy. And from a certain extreme perspective, even raised questions about the integrity of the incumbent.
Today's youth shuns politics, understandably so. Civil activist Arvind Kejriwal, on a TV interview with Karan Thapar, quipped, "What if I don't want to contest elections?" to a question as to why he took the route of agitation instead of making his voice heard through parliament. And while I understand his cynicism, I certainly don't approve of it. For IMO, our constitution provides for a certain system of legislation, the current dictating of terms by the "civil society representatives" is setting a dangerous precedent by subverting the constitutional mechanism for legislation. In fact, I would even go back a few steps and disapprove of the government allowing this self-appropriated group to join the process of legislation though inclusion in a joint drafting committee (the constitution allows for the civil society voice to be heard through the Standing Committee). Just as much as I disapprove of the National Advisory Council. My point of discontent is not against individual members of the NAC or the "civil society representation" (I hold quite a few of them in high regard), but its rather against their extra-constitutional say in legislation.
A counter-argument to my point in the paragraph above, often used in recent times by the "civil society representatives", is that it is a constitutional right of the people to question their elected representatives during their term. Rightly so. But remember, we're just talking a right to question here. Nowhere does our constitution allow for groups to muscle their way into the legislative process. The right begins and ends at questioning the representatives. What good would that do, one may ask, if we can't take any action against the wrongdoings of the elected representatives? The answer to that is simple - we don't vote that person or party during the next election. This is what the constitution allows us. That's a whole lot of power, though we've grossly underused it over the decades. And today, if we have the most corrupt government we've ever seen, its because we never questioned. As they say, in a democracy, we get the government we deserve.
Even if I were to look beyond that as technical mumbo-jumbo, my larger disillusionment from this movement stems from its lack of clarity & coherence. I wonder whether its a movement against corruption because a crushing majority of the people on the streets are there due to their frustration with a hugely dysfunctional system. And that does gladden my heart like never before. It shows that we're not apathetic beasts of circumstance, but human beings who have suddenly risen from dormancy. But then, I'm confronted with the leadership of this movement (Anna Hazare, Arvind Kejriwal, Kiran Bedi & the Bhushans) and trust me, its a killjoy. For they seem to have just a single point agenda - getting "their version" of the Lokpal Bill passed on the floor of the house. Their silence & dismissiveness towards anything other than their draft of the bill smacks of a certain shallowness, shortsightedness & a tendency to play to the galleries. I often wonder- what next? There's no answer coming forth from the leadership of this movement. And with the stage gradually filling up with members of the existing political class that's already bereft of any ideology, it becomes as elementary as the quip directed at Dr.Watson that the momentum arising out of the groundswell of public engagement will eventually be appropriated by the very system that the common man abhors.
I thought of giving the leadership of the movement a further benefit of doubt by assuming a substantial stand against corruption on their part. And that's when I hit a roadblock in the form of their specific agenda itself. Why do we need a Lokpal in the first place? And my thoughts on this have been very succintly articulated (far better than I myself could) by Nitin Pai here.
Let's face it, we are a country of paradoxes. One of the most glaring being our ambitions & allusions of becoming an economic superpower co-existing with the massive scale of poverty. Our democracy has invariably been victim to these imbalances, whether we like it or not. These imbalances have brought about unwanted factors like religion, caste, money and muscle-power into our politics, thus resulting in the demise of positive political will towards governance.
Now, I'm not being completely cynical and saying that corruption can't be weeded out of our system. What I am saying is that I wonder if we 30-somethings will ever get to see the end of this malaise in our lifetimes. For we're currently languishing in a system not different from the Augean Stables. The question facing us 30-somethings (and others too, for that matter) is whether we're ready to soil ourselves in order to clean the system. To begin with, we need to revitalize our political space with something it has been lacking since decades - idealism & ideology. My debut as a voter was during the 1996 general elections and I remember voting with a bubbling enthusiasm. But I haven't let the ballot ink touch my nails ever since then, despite the monumental efforts of the powers that be to present my right to vote as a duty. Not because I was amongst the millions of my generation who were apathetic towards politics but because not once have I seen a political party match the eloquence of its election manifesto with equally eloquent action. Not once have I heard an election campaign being delivered from an ideological plank. Rhetoric & personal insinuations remain the bulwark of every single election campaign, irrespective of the political party it belongs to.
The bottomline? There's no denying the need for urgency in the fight against corruption. But we should understand two core aspects of this fight very clearly before we plunge into the fight. One, the urgency is for action and not for a solution. The problem is a systemic one and we all are a part of the problem. So, there can be no quick fix to this. It'll take years, maybe even decades if we are to reduce our corruption levels to residual and manageable. Two, this fight would involve huge sacrifices on our part. It's easy to say that we won't bribe a traffic cop if caught or the 100 rupees bakshish for birth/death certificates. But a tough stand against corruption goes beyond that. Remember, we would have to refuse donations for our children's admissions to a good school and as a result, our children might be forced to go to schools that we normally wouldn't want them to study in. Or we would have to refuse to work for a corrupt organisation, thereby reducing our incomes considerably or even putting us into unemployment. We would have to refuse to buy products & services from corrupt organisations, thereby hitting our cozy lifestyles. And these are just some examples. This fight will be a tough one indeed.
Updates : For those who might've felt this piece incomplete, there are more to follow. And did anyone notice howcorporate India has been piggy-backing on this movement already? You haven't? Oh well...I've seen tonnes of ads promoting Anna Hazare merchandise on various blogs & social media. And they say this is a pristine movement untouched by corruption of any kinds.
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