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.