''Combating
corruption'', like ''promoting peace'', can mean anything
to anyone; and precisely because of this ''fuzziness''
it appeals to everyone. Some join the anti-corruption
movement because they are against ''corporate loot'';
others join because they are against the Nehru-Gandhi
''dynasty''; and still others join because they oppose
the ''corrupt practice of job reservations''. The movement
itself has a cathartic effect on all of them, because
each comes to it to give expression to his or her pet
hate, to overcome his or her sense of private oppression.
Their objects of resentment may not coincide, but each
gets elated by the sheer numbers of those who have gathered
with similar motivations.
The movement itself makes very little demand upon those
who have gathered. There are no great intellectual demands:
the nuances of differences between the Jan Lokpal Bill,
the official Lokpal Bill and other ''Civil Society'' proposals,
are left happily to the so-called ''Team Anna'' to mull
over. There are no demands in terms of activism either,
not even of an organizational kind for running the show,
for the food and other arrangements are managed not
by volunteers but by contractors. The movement in short
brings catharsis at no cost.
But as against this disengaged participation by many
is the intensely engaged activism of the one man who
is undertaking an indefinite fast. The movement revolves
around him. He is the messiah who draws the crowds,
and brings hope to those whom he draws. His intense
activism is the dialectical counterpoint of the non-activism
of the thousands around him. They condition one another.
He is intensely active because the others are happily
inactive; on the other hand, because he is active, the
others can be happily inactive. For them, if we slightly
modify the words of the German historian Fritz Stern,
''the resentment against a disenchanted secular world''
finds ''deliverance'' in the ecstatic expectation that
the paradise will soon appear gratis.
The Anna Hazare movement is the very opposite of what
one means by a ''movement''. It stands the usual concept
of a ''movement'' on its head. By a ''movement'' one normally
means the coming together of people around a set of
concrete demands, on which they are more or less agreed
and for which they struggle, often at great cost to
themselves, under a set of leaders who are respected
for their sagacity and integrity but not revered as
messiahs. Take for instance the Tebhaga movement, an
outstanding peasant movement in southern Bengal, straddling
both sides of the line of partition, at the time of
independence. Its demands were concrete: not more than
one-third of the crop should be given as rent to the
landlord by the tenant; it called forth great sacrifices
and activism from the peasants; and its leaders, though
popular among the peasants, were no messiahs: who remembers
even the name of Kangsari Haldar today (though he was
elected to the parliament from jail in the 1952 elections)?
The Hazare movement by contrast demands no activism
from its followers, not even a clear understanding of
the specific demands with regard to the Jan Lokpal Bill.
The twists and turns in ''Team Anna'''s negotiations with
the government are never explained to the followers,
let alone seeking the imprimatur of their approval.
And the very ''fuzziness'' of the movement which is its
strength also means that almost anything can be passed
off as a ''victory''. If the parliament resolution, which
was hailed as a victory for the movement and used for
calling off Anna Hazare's fast, had been differently
worded, even that could have been construed as a victory.
The ''fuzziness'' of the outcome reflects the ''fuzziness''
of the movement itself.
Many, including paradoxically many in the Left itself,
rue the fact that the Left has not been able to build
any such movement. What they miss is that the Left must
not build such movements. The Left's movement must be
in the nature of Tebhaga, not of Anna Hazare's. Of course
the fact that the Left has not built movements of the
sort it should be building, is a matter of concern.
But that is a separate issue; the conclusion that the
Left should be building movements of the sort that Anna
Hazare is doing is totally unwarranted. Many others
would like the Left to be with Anna Hazare, because
that is where ''the people'' are. But this too is a wrong
argument. The Left's role must be to activate people;
for the Left to be with a movement that attracts people
only to keep them deactivated, on the ground that it
''must be where the people are'', entails ironically a
deactivation of itself.
What the Hazare movement can claim to have achieved
till date is that it has ensured that some sort of a
Lokpal Bill would be passed in the near future, that
a legislation which had been hanging fire for over four
decades would finally see the light of day. Whether
this would have happened without the Hazare movement,
or the specific turns and forms taken by the Hazare
movement, are matters that need not detain us here.
Let us accept this claim. The Lok Pal will certainly
not eradicate corruption; and the fundamental problems
of the country such as poverty and unemployment will
certainly not disappear if corruption is reduced or
even eradicated. (It is a symptom of our intellectual
banality at the moment that both propositions, especially
the latter, are so seriously entertained by so many).
Nonetheless legislation of this sort is essential in
a democracy. The real problem is that in ensuring such
legislation, the Hazare movement has done much damage
to the fledgling Indian democracy. Its assault on the
parliament, on the grounds that the will of the people
is expressed by Hazare rather than the elected representatives
of the people, has mercifully been defeated for the
moment, with parliament not caving in to Hazare's specific
demands; but the assault is bound to be renewed in the
coming days. The speeches full of venom and contempt
against parliamentarians made by a host of speakers
at Ramlila ground have left a residue of anti-parliamentarianism
which is bound to be seized upon by those wishing to
enfeeble parliamentary democracy in the days to come.
The case for privileging the will of Hazare over that
of the parliament is argued empirically, and there are
two distinct but mutually-complementing strands of the
argument: the first points to the ''mass participation
of the people'' in his movement which is taken as proof
that the people are with him. This is an absurd claim:
as Mayavati rightly said, in such a case Hazare and
his group should contest elections, enter parliament
in large numbers and get the Jan Lokpal Bill passed.
The second strand points to his moral stature and his
intuitive connect with the people (''whether they vote
for him or not, he knows what they want''). A contrast
is drawn here between Hazare and the parliament: Hazare
is honest, morally upright, committed to the welfare
of the ''nation'', and so on, while the parliament consists
of billionaires, crooks and ragamuffins; ergo Hazare's
will must be privileged over that of parliament. To
oppose this privileging as anti-democratic, they argue,
is not only harmful to the country since it gives a
free run to ragamuffins, but is itself fundamentally
anti-democratic, since if democracy means the assertion
of the people's will then Hazare is a truer representative
of this will than those who have been chosen as their
representatives by the people themselves.
The issue, it should be noted, relates to privileging,
not to Hazare's freedom of expression, or his right
to protest against the government, or his right to oppose
legislation passed by parliament. Even if, for argument's
sake, the position of the Hazare group about his greater
uprightness compared to the parliamentarians is accepted
as being empirically true, the argument for privileging
his will over that of parliament is still fundamentally
unacceptable. This is because a distinction must be
drawn between democracy as the constitutive principle
of the polity and democracy as a practical instrument
of governance. To privilege Hazare's will over that
of parliament is to violate democracy as the constitutive
principle of the polity; it cannot be justified on empirical
grounds, i.e. on the grounds that democracy as a practical
instrument of governance has proved to be inadequate.
For instance, there may well be situations where a king
is wiser than parliament and can provide better governance;
but to accept monarchy as an institution, even temporarily,
is a massive regression in the quest for human freedom.
The institutionalization of parliamentary democracy
as the constitutive principle of the Indian polity represents
an enormous advance, nothing short of a veritable social
revolution, in a country marked by millennia of horrendous
inequality enshrined in the caste system. Whether or
not parliament is full of ''thieves and corrupt people'',
any undermining of parliamentary democracy represents
a huge social retrogression, a counter-revolution against
this fledgling social revolution, a reversion to our
pre-modernity marked by institutionalized inequality.
Many argue, no doubt very rightly, that such undermining
is the inevitable outcome of the fact that ''thieves
and corrupt people'' have made their way into the parliament
in large numbers, that ''we have brought it upon ourselves'';
but saying this does not absolve us of the responsibility
of opposing firmly any denigration of the parliament.
When Karl Marx (On the Jewish Question) talked of the
''democratic State'' as bringing about ''political emancipation''
(but not ''human emancipation'' for which nonetheless
he saw ''political emancipation'' as a condition), he
was talking of the ''democratic State'' not as an empirical
entity, but as the State founded upon democracy as the
constitutive principle of the polity. A ''democratic
State'' even in its ideality, let alone as an empirical
entity, is not enough, since ''human emancipation'' requires
an overcoming of capitalism, but an undermining of the
''democratic State'' and a reversion to any form of pre-democracy,
constitutes a setback to the quest for emancipation.
What is dangerous about the current Indian situation
is that such a setback has become a possibility. So
far I have accepted for argument's sake the position
of those around Hazare that parliament is full of ''thieves
and corrupt people''; but this is a canard spread by
the elite, expressive of its contempt for the ''plebians''.
In a country where a substantial number of people continue
to remain illiterate and an even larger number without
much formal education, a fact over which the elite,
so exercised over ''corruption'', is not known to have
shed tears, the election to parliament of persons without
much formal education should be a matter of pride, indicative
of the authenticity of its democracy; but running it
down as a ''failure'' of our political system is not just
ironical, it disturbingly portends a possible elite
coup against our democracy. The Hazare movement has
been credited by many with having aroused the latent
activism among the ''youth'', their idealism which had
hitherto remained suppressed. But the fact that the
''youth'' (that particular segment of it that joined Hazare)
remains insensitive to the threat of a possible elite
coup against democracy, and could even become cheerleaders
for such a coup, is one of the most worrying aspects
of contemporary India.
To be sure, parliament must rid itself of ''thieves and
corrupt people'', but this has to be done by parliament
itself. Accepting the necessity of a messiah standing
above parliament for the purpose of cleansing parliament
itself, undermines ipso facto the institution of parliament,
even of the ''cleansed parliament''. Any compromise with
messianism is ipso facto an abridgement of the ''democratic
State''. A positive fall-out from the Hazare movement
hopefully is greater awareness among politicians for
effecting steps for cleansing parliamentary institutions.
It is said to be dangerous for any revolution to drive
its counter-revolution underground, for it then loses
its capacity for self-rectification; the counter-revolution
thus plays a role in the advance of the revolution,
despite its being counter-revolution. Likewise the ''democratic
State'' stands to gain from Hazare-type movements, not
because of the virtues of the latter, but precisely
because the challenge they pose is of a kind that threatens
to undermine the ''democratic State''; it cannot afford
complacency and its self-rectification then becomes
a necessity in the face of such challenge.
The real obstacle to self-rectification by the democratic
State however lies in the political economy of our country.
''Fuzzy'' middle class movements of a moralistic kind
that touch a chord among large sections of the people
and draw participants from other classes, are not uncommon
in the era of monopoly capital, when skullduggery, or
what was called in Lenin's time ''American ethics'', is
pervasive. What these movements aim to achieve, and
may even tangibly achieve, is usually quite different,
however, from the historical role they play. (Even fascism
which began as a petty-bourgeois movement against finance
capital ended up as the terrorist dictatorship of finance
capital). Can one speculate about what the Hazare movement
may spawn, despite itself, in view of the current state
of India's political economy?
Furore over ''corruption'' has the effect of de-legitimizing
State expenditure. It becomes easy in such a setting
to argue that much of this expenditure ''goes down the
drain'' because of ''corruption'', and hence should be
cut back. And the typical items of State expenditure
that get cut as a consequence are the welfare expenditures
and transfer payments to the poor. The deflationary
process under neo-liberalism already takes its toll
on such expenditures anyway; but whatever residual expenditure
is incurred under these heads gets further delegitimized
in a setting where the State machinery is widely perceived
to be corrupt. Just as the public sector was sought
to be delegitimized on the spurious argument that it
did not make enough profits (though the rationale of
the public sector was not necessarily to make profits,
but rather to curb private profiteering and to enhance
''entitlements'' of the poor), likewise public expenditure
too is sought to be delegitimized through the creation
of a furore over corruption. Not that corruption is
absent, or was ever absent, and not that it does not
increase many-fold under neo-liberalism; but the beneficiaries
of this very increase in corruption under neo-liberalism
then use this increase itself to delegitimize the State
and its expenditure on the poor.
The counterpart of this delegitimization of State expenditure
is the delegitimization of State taxation. ''Why should
I pay so much tax to the State since most of it goes
into private pockets?'' becomes a common refrain for
the affluent middle class. Tax cuts therefore become
the order of the day along with expenditure cuts by
the State, which is exactly what the successive Republican
administrations have been doing in the United States.
Since the tax cuts are for the rich, and the affluent
middle class, while the expenditure cuts are for the
poor, this has a directly regressive effect on income
distribution.
In addition however there is an indirect effect. Since
State provisioning shrinks and private provisioning
correspondingly expands, the service providers in the
private sector have to be appeased through various inducements
to ensure that they continue to provide services and
expand their operations to the requisite degree. The
role of the State then shifts from being a defender
of the interests of the poor (which even a traditional
bourgeois State does to some extent) to being an exclusive
promoter of the interests of corporate and financial
capital on the plea that this is socially necessary.
For example if the government stops building hospitals,
then it has to provide incentives to the private sector
to do so; if a corporate house wants to build a hospital
and demands prime land for the purpose, the government
hands over this land in ''public interest'' on a long
lease, and that too for a pittance, no matter whether
a shopping mall or a swanky guest house comes up next
to the hospital. (Incidentally all such ''inducements''
will be outside the purview of any Lok Pal as long as
no direct palm-greasing is involved, no matter how much
indirect palm-greasing goes with it).
The transition from democracy to what some have called
''corporatocracy'' that characterizes post-Reagan-Bush
America, is an integral part of the rise to hegemony
of globalized finance capital. This transition requires
an assault on democratic institutions to discredit and
delegitimize them. The Hazare group's assault on parliamentary
institutions and exclusive emphasis on corruption within
the state machinery, to the exclusion of the corporate
sector and civil society groups, could well turn out,
albeit unwittingly, to be a part of this agenda of converting
our democracy into a ''corporatocracy''.
*
This article was originally published in the Frontline,
Vol. 28: No. 19 Sep 10 - 23, 2011.
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