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INDIA/SOUTH ASIA-Indian Commentary Seeks Strong Democratic Institutions To Fight Corruption

Released on 2013-03-11 00:00 GMT

Email-ID 2575729 Date 2011-08-28 12:37:53 From dialogbot@smtp.stratfor.com To dialog-list@stratfor.com

INDIA/SOUTH ASIA-Indian Commentary Seeks Strong Democratic Institutions To Fight Corruption





Indian Commentary Seeks Strong Democratic Institutions To Fight Corruption

Commentary by Ramachandra Guha: "A Patriarch for the Nation - The Nation's

Problems Cannot Be Solved by a Supercop" - The Telegraph Online

Saturday August 27, 2011 16:42:23 GMT

About 20 years ago, I found myself in the same room as Anna Hazare, at a

meeting organized by the Centre for Science and Environment in New Delhi.

Mr Hazare was becoming known in environmental circles for the work he had

done in his native village, Ralegan Siddhi. His successful programmes of

watershed conservation and afforestation stood in stark contrast to the

efforts of the state forest department, which had handed over vast tracts

of virgin forests to industry. Moreover, whereas the forest department was

hostile to community participation, identifying villagers as 'enemies of t

he forest', Hazare had energized peasants to care for and renew their

natural environment.



When Anna Hazare came into that Delhi meeting room of the early 1990s he

wore the same dress as he does now. He exuded the same simplicity. But, as

I recall, he spoke softly, even with some diffidence. He was not entirely

at home in a hall filled with urban folks whose cultural, albeit not

moral, capital, was far greater than his.



It is said that power and wealth make men younger. So, apparently, does

the attention of television. As we become older, the rest of us grow less

alert, less energetic, less combative. This law of biology Hazare seems

now to have defied. For the man I now see on my screen is not the man I

once saw in a seminar room in New Delhi. He challenges and taunts the

government and its ministers, wagging his finger at the cameras. Once,

Hazare was the voice and conscience of the village of Ralegan Siddhi; now

he demands that he be seen as the saviour of t he nation itself.



Some television channels claim that Anna Hazare represents the

overwhelming bulk of Indians. Print, cyberspace and soundings on the

street suggest a more complicated picture. Liberals worry about the

dangers to policy reform contained in street agitations led by men whose

perfervid rhetoric undermines constitutional democracy. Dalits and

backward castes see this as a reprise of the anti-Mandal agitation, led

and directed by suvarna activists.



To these political reservations may be added the caution of the empirical

sociologist. The population of the Delhi metropolitan area is in excess of

10 million; yet at their height, the crowds in the Ramlila Maidan have

never exceeded 50,000. In May 1998, 400,000 residents of Calcutta marched

in protest against the Pokhran blasts. No one then said that 'India stands

against Nuclear Bombs'. Now, however, as television cameras endlessly show

the same scenes at the same place, we are told that 'India is for Anna'.



This said, it would be unwise to dismiss the resonance or social impact of

the campaign led by Anna Hazare. It comes on the back of a series of

scandals promoted by the present United Progressive Alliance government --

Commonwealth Games, 2G, Adarsh, et al. The media coverage of these

scandals, over the past year and more, has led to a sense of disgust

against this government in particular, and (what is more worrying) against

the idea of government in general. It is this moment, this mood, this

anger and this sense of betrayal, that Anna Hazare has ridden on. Hence

the transformation of a previously obscure man from rural Maharashtra into

a figure of -- even if fleetingly -- national importance.



The success of Anna Hazare is explained in large part by the character of

those he opposes. He appears to be everything the prime minister and his

ministers are not -- courageous, independent-minded, willing to stake his

life for a principle. In an otherwise scep tical piece -- which, among

other things, calls Anna Hazare a "moral tyrant" presiding over a "comical

anti-corruption opera"-- the columnist C.P. Surendran writes that "a party

that can't argue its case against a retired army truck driver whose only

strength really is a kind of stolid integrity and a talent for skipping

meals doesn't deserve to be in power". These two strengths -- honesty and

the willingness to eschew f ood, and by extension, the material life

altogether -- shine in comparison with the dishonest and grasping men on

the other side.



Large swathes of the middle class have thus embraced Anna Hazare out of

disgust with Manmohan Singh's government. That said, one must caution

against an excessive identification with Anna Hazare. Hazare is a good

man, perhaps even a saintly man. But his understanding remains that of a

village patriarch.



The strengths and limitations of Anna Hazare are identified in Green and

Saffron, a b ook by Mukul Sharma that shall appear later this year. Sharma

is an admired environmental journalist, who did extensive fieldwork in

Ralegan Siddhi. He was greatly impressed by much of what he saw. Careful

management of water had improved crop yields, increased incomes, and

reduced indebtedness. On the other hand, he found the approach of Anna

Hazare "deeply brahmanical". Liquor, tobacco, even cable TV were

forbidden. Dalit families were compelled to adopt a vegetarian diet. Those

who violated these rules -- or orders -- were tied to a post and flogged.



Sharma found that on Hazare's instructions, no panchayat elections had

been held in the village for the past two decades. During state and

national elections, no campaigning was allowed in Ralegan Siddhi. The

reporter concluded that "crucial to this genuine reform experiment is the

absolute removal from within its precincts of many of the defining ideals

of modern democracy".



The sound-bites spontaneously offered by Anna Hazare in recent weeks do

not inspire confidence. Emblematic here was his dismissal of the prime

minister, Manmohan Singh, and of the government's pointman in its handling

of the anti-corruption movement, Kapil Sibal. Hazare said that Dr Singh

and Mr Sibal did not understand India because they had taken degrees at

foreign universities.



As it happens, worthier men have had foreign degrees; among them, the two

greatest social reformers of modern India, M.K. Gandhi and B.R. Ambedkar.



Hazare claims that the last 64 years of political freedom have been

utterly wasted ("chausutt saal mein humko sahi azaadi nahin mili hai").

The fact is that had it not been for the groundwork laid by the

Constitution, and by visionaries like Nehru, Patel, Ambedkar, Kamaladevi

Chattopadhyay and others, Dalits and women would not have equal rights

under the law, nor would elections based on universal franchise be

regularly and freely held.



Dalits and women were less-than-equal citizens in the raj of the British,

and in the raj of Anna Hazare's much admired Shivaji Maharaj as well.

Those other regimes did not have, either, constitutional guarantees for

the freedom of movement, combination and expression. To be sure, there

remains a large slippage between precept and practice. I have elsewhere

called India a "fifty-fifty democracy". The jurist, Nani Palkhivala, once

said the same thing somewhat differently: India, he suggested, is a

second-class democracy with a first-class Constitution.



In the years since Palkhivala first made this remark, India may have

become a third-class democracy. But the ideal remains, to match which one

needs patient, hard work on a variety of fronts. Anna Hazare claims that

the creation of a single lok pal will end 60 per cent to 65 per cent of

corruption. That remark confuses a village with a nation. A benign (and

occasionally brutal) patriarch can bring about improvem ents in a small

community. But a nation's problems cannot be solved by a Super-Cop or

Super-Sarpanch, even (or perhaps especially) if he be assisted (as the

legislation envisages) by thousands of busybody and themselves corruptible

inspectors.



Improving the quality and functioning of democratic institutions will

require far more than a lok pal, whether jan or sarkari. We have to work

for, among other things, changes in the law to make funding of elections

more transparent, and to completely debar criminals from contesting

elections; the reform of political parties to make them less dependent on

family and kin; the use of technology to make the delivery of social

services less arbitrary and more efficient; the insulation of the

bureaucracy and the police from political interference; the lateral entry

of professionals into public service, and more. In striving for these

changes one must draw upon the experience, and expertise, of the very many

Indians who share Hazare's idealism without being limited by his

parochialism.



(Description of Source: Kolkata The Telegraph online in English -- Website

of Kolkata's highest circulation English daily, owned by ABP Group, with a

flagship publication Anandabazar Patrika in Bengali. Known for in-depth

coverage of east and northeast India issues, and India-Bangladesh

relations. Maintains an impartial editorial policy. Circulation 457,100;

URL: www.telegraphindia.com)



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