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PRAFUL BIDWAI COLUMN

Hazare and the Lokpal Bill

Praful Bidwai
Civil society organisations are essential as democracy's watchdogs. But they lack a mandate based on representationunlike elected lawmakers. The Hazare group speaks for civil society, but its own accountability is suspect.***
PERHAPS no single individual act has recently galvanised so many Indians as social activist Anna Hazare's fast on the Lokpal (om- budsman) Bill. Mr. Hazare electrified India's largely apolitical uppermiddle class into rare solidarity actions, including candle-light vigils. Pervasive public revulsion against corruption, highlighted by recent scandals, inspired this mobilisation.
Mr. Hazare undertook his fast at Delhi's Jantar Mantar protest site for "India Against Corruption," a nongovernmental organisation created by former policewoman Kiran Bedi, yoga guru Baba Ramdev and others, which mobilised 4.4 million Twitter messages and thousands of well-heeled citizens.
This mobilisation is the closest thing India has witnessed, albeit in a compressed form, to the Jaya Prakash Narayan movement of the mid-1970s. Common to both is a charismatic personality known for austerity and renunciation.
Equally common is middle-class disdain for politics and all politicians. Many placards at Jantar Mantar read "All 543 (MPs) are thieves."
JP's ideal was utopian party-less democracy. Mr. Hazare seeks new standards of probity by hanging the corrupt. Both movements lay claim to a moral authority superior to that of elected lawmakers. They bypass the normal processes of democracy in favour of "direct action."
This should raise grave concern. The features of the two mobilisations which most attract the middle class are problematic. The JP movement inspired a generation of Bihari youth with idealism. These leaders, now in their prime, include Nitish Kumar and Laloo Prasad.
Nationally, however, JP ended up facilitating the entry of the sangh parivar into the Janata Party, and legitimising the RSS.
Mr. Hazare's mobilisation is similarly dominated by Right-wing elements. It's no accident that Ramdev, whose network has logistically sustained "India Against Corruption," turned up at Jantar Mantar to claim part-ownership, with RSS spokesperson Ram Madhav in tow.
Ramdev works closely with lifelong RSS pracharak — ideologue K.N. Govindacharya on the rabidly communal Bharat Swabhiman project. The communal Right invokes such reference to national pride to whip up a crude, majoritarian chauvinism, which conflates nationalism with Hindutva.
The campaign's symbols also suggested a Hindu-Right bent, including the larger-than-life portrait of Bharat Mata superimposed on India's map, performance of havans, and purveying of gomutra (cow's urine).
Equally significant is Mr. Hazare's endorsement of draconian punishment: the corrupt must be hanged; "Today, the need is not of Mahatma Gandhi but of Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj."
This explains why Mr. Hazare lavished praise on Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Milosevic Modi for his devotion to "development." When criticised, Mr. Hazare "clarified" that he's against “communal disharmony.”
But then, even Mr. Modi didn't explicitly endorse disharmony; he merely subjugated Gujarat's Muslims and imposed the graveyard's peace upon them.
There's a deeper conservative side to Mr. Hazare's worldview, in which democratic politics is corrupt, and ordinary people "cast their vote under the influence of Rs. 100 or a bottle of liquor or a sari...."
This extremely cynical view shows utter contempt for the Indian people who have repeatedly punished corrupt or underperforming politicians. Lack of voter awareness isn't one of Indian democracy's numerous flaws.
Suspicion of democratic politics is central to Mr. Hazare's work in his own "model" village, Ralegaon Siddhi in Maharashtra's Ahmednagar district. The village is run on authoritarian lines dictated by him: no alcohol, no tobacco, no film music: "it spoils children." No one can contest elections there on a party platform.
The Jan Lokpal Bill drafted by Mr. Hazare's colleagues reflects this authoritarianism. It vests enormous powers in the Lokpal, including both investigation and prosecution functions, without checks and balances. This violates the principle of the separation of powers in democracy.
The Bill demands the Lokpal have the power to "approve interception and monitoring of messages of data or voice transmitted through telephones, internet or any other medium." It also demands that the Lokpal fund would be given 10% of the money to be confiscated under his/her orders. This is self-serving.
In the mid-1970s, Mr. Hazare made his drought-prone village agriculturally prosperous through water conservation and equitable watersharing. But since then, he has imposed a socially intolerant order insensitive to caste discrimination and promotive of economic inequalities.
Mr. Hazare was indicted by the Justice P.B. Sawant Commission for transferring Rs.2.2 lakhs from the Hind Swaraj Trust to finance his birthday party. The Trust also earmarked land for the zilla parishad without the charity commissioner's permission. It diverted Rs.46,374, meant for promoting secular education, to renovating a temple.
Civil society organisations are essential as democracy's watchdogs. But they lack a mandate based on representation — unlike elected lawmakers. The Hazare group speaks for civil society, but its own accountability is suspect.
The five civil society members on the joint drafting committee are all men, with no representation for Dalits, religious minorities or different regions. Mr. Shanti Bhushan, co-chair of the drafting committee, has received a court notice for undervaluing property. Unlike his son Prashant, he appears for ill-reputed corporations. All this raises questions.
However, the Congress party has launched a nasty smear campaign against the Bhushans through a compact disk alleging sleaze and other "evidence." But the Congress will only get discredited if it scuttles the drafting committee by maligning Mr. Bhushan.
The Hazare group should of course be subjected to scrutiny. Its principal premise — that the Lokpal Bill is a silver bullet against corruption — is dubious. Corruption has many causes. The Lokpal can only address a few, after the event.
There are other, more effective, ways of preventing and reducing corruption — eliminating rentseeking and privileged access to decision-makers, reducing discretionary powers, strict tendering of contracts, multi-stage transparency, etc. Mr. Hazare is missing the trees for the woods.
So long as India's political system seriously malfunctions, and political parties ignore issues of gut-level importance to the public, "India Against Corruption"-style mobilisations will erupt, possibly with excessive demands. They will have a dangerous potential for creating power centres without accountability.
India's political class must imbibe this lesson. Or its own relevance and legitimacy will erode rapidly.
The writer Is an eminent Indian columnist.
E-mail: bidwai@bol.net.in