The last few months have been brimming with activism amongst middle class Indians making themselves heard on social media.  Every so often we experience sudden enthusiasm and equally sudden outrage; we publically chronicle both our frustration and celebration. Some would argue this is a good thing — interest in politics and involvement via any channel is a sign of participation and a stepping stone towards developing political awareness. Some would argue this phenomenon leads to a lot of noise, is superficial at best and is no driver for actual social change.  Both viewpoints seem logical – though a lot of the views expressed are perhaps naïve and somewhat emotional, there is a lot that can be made, a lot that can be broken by strong public sentiment. This article is an attempt to look at both sides of the argument and understand why this phenomenon can be seen as symptomatic of a largely positive change albeit with some riders.

Putting the question in context: Some Examples

The most obvious example of an organized movement that has tapped into the opportunity for generating aggressive public opinion using social media is the 2011 anti-corruption movement started by the NGO “India Against Corruption” which centered its campaign around the now-ubiquitous figure of Anna Hazare. Thousands of people gathered at protests grounds throughout India– but perhaps the main impetus came from those participating in the cause via Twitter and Facebook.  Smaller and less organized citizen movements have taken place in the past too where technology has been the used to generate the numbers required for the authorities to take note. Some have met with a degree of success (the Jessica Lall murder case) while some still carry on with no definite end in sight (Irom Sharmila’s fast for the repeal of AFSPA).

While the motives of the Anna Hazare movement were (arguably) noble, there is an ugly side to the herding of opinions on the internet. Consider for instance the aftermath of the recent Assam riots. Although confirmed information about the situation in the state was not freely available, stories of atrocities on both sides which had not been validated were ironically flowing freely and being propagated online. The fact that some of these rumors were highly provocative led to an atmosphere of suspicion, in some cases leading to violent consequences.

A third form of viral propaganda common online revolves around an individual.  Again Anna Hazare’s emergence as the head of a corruption free India comes to mind – this hitherto  little known figure could suddenly do no wrong, and anyone who dared to be circumspect about his intention was considered pro-corruption.  Another obvious example is the Gujarat Chief Minister, Narendra Modi who has hordes of people out for his blood (this group holds him solely responsible for the 2002 riots) as well as a sizable cohort lauding his every endeavor(this group  considers him a beacon of development and even fantasizes about him as the next Prime Minister). The personality traits of the Prime Minister of India, Manmohan Singh have also come under intense scrutiny in recent months. In all three cases these tiny bytes of opinion/information are often not backed by anything beyond the superficial and are the online equivalents of high school bullying or hero worship.

Why now?

It’s useful to think about the peculiarity of this age in the Indian context — why now, of all times is this phenomenon emerging? I can think of three major factors. The obvious one being technological – it’s easier today for the common person to be heard today than ever before. The right to hold and propagate opinions is no longer the sole luxury of the intellectual, the journalist, the business tycoon or the politician. Thanks to the information revolution anyone with an email address, a facebook or twitter account has a readymade audience.

Two other factors come to mind – and these are more to do with the nature of Indian society today. The first is demographic. Just having a mode to communicate is a sufficient condition for the opinion explosion, but whether it’s a necessary condition is not so obvious. A certain level of enthusiasm (and confidence) in a sizable proportion of the population is also a key factor. India prides itself on its “demographic dividend”:  in an era where most western countries are grappling with the problem of aging populations, India has amongst the highest proportions of young people in the world.  This demographic, in the most vocal stage of their lives has found a way to get its voice heard in cyber space.

There is another factor that it would be foolish to ignore — the economics. I’m in my late twenties, and unlike my preceding generation, I find that most of my friends love their life in India. Many who are studying or working abroad harbor serious ambitions of going back to the country of their birth. Part of the reason is because economically it’s an exciting place to be, especially in terms of entrepreneurship.  The other, less idealistic reason is that for the upper middle class Indian, our metropolitan cities are a happy confluence of two worlds:  the consumer culture of the west coexists with the luxuries the elite enjoy in the subcontinent.  The informal insurance provided by a large network of family ties is another attraction.  Yet, there is a lot that is wrong with our country and the young, ambitious and vocal cohort is also impatient. It demands change – perhaps forgetting that any large scale change in a country as diverse as India requires patient deliberation.  This impatience and demand for change can manifest itself as outbursts online.

The Opportunities Social Media Brings

The most obvious opportunity is increased access to information as well as analysis. One can subscribe at no cost to newspapers and magazines online – something that was impossible earlier.  Quality news and opinion pieces were accessible only to those willing to pay – not so anymore, most leading magazines and newspapers promote their content online via Facebook and Twitter. Not just that, we see what others in our network care about and get exposed to a whole variety of themes beyond our limited experiences.

Social media also provides an avenue for participation.  The usual grouse of the middle class in India is that it is not involved in governance. The relative size of the group is so small in a country still largely poor that it really cannot control who gets elected into government (this political impotence some suspect is the basis of much of its bias against politicians). There is also a feeling that given an opportunity this group (by virtue of its higher level of education) could do a lot of good for society – but its hands are tied and its voice stifled because of red tape and corruption.  With the advent of social media, more than any other section of Indian society, the middle class now has an opportunity to organize itself via campaigns and petitions online. How effective these are is questionable and this form of participation might be superficial too. That being said, those who are serious can get connected to previously established groups. For example, “Teach for India” is a successful movement that has managed to attract a number of young professionals to teach full-time in low income schools.  Gathering electronic signatures for petitions has also become much easier than before thanks to websites like “change.org” and “awaaz.org”.

The final, and in my opinion the greatest positive impact that social media can have is to encourage debate and discussion.  Given respect for others’ opinions and logical thinking, dissecting arguments and hearing out people who oppose one’s views can help soften stances. This calibration of world views and moving away from personal axioms has a scientific flavor and should be especially attractive to a country with an obsession for its engineers and doctors. 

The Concerns

While greater discussion is a good thing, if most participants in these discussions choose rhetoric over logic, it can lead to over simplification of issues and polarization of views. The demonization as well as hero-worship of certain public figures is one example of such herd behavior.  It is the multiplicity and diversity of opinions, the historically argumentative nature of the Indian populace that has sustained and nourished our democracy. It will be truly heartbreaking if on every public matter there are just two polarized groups engaged in a shouting match to put each other down – and no individuals in the middle of the spectrum to help facilitate a compromise.  The result can be serious instability. The aftermath of the Assam riots is an extreme example of this form of polarization which should not be taken lightly.

I’ve often been disappointed by the wanton and widespread use of the phrase “something is better than nothing” by my friends and colleagues. This is in fact not true – doing something can be worse than doing nothing in certain situations. Supporting a cause because one can’t think of any other way to contribute is symptomatic of both impatience and laziness -laziness in thought and impatience in action. The romantic notion that large movements always lead to optimal solutions is just that—a romantic notion. In fact, giving in to the demands of large public pressure groups can be regressive. Consider the case of South Korea, where a large number of school textbooks removed references to the theory of evolution in favor of creationist theories because of a successful public petition.  Another case in point is the ”Twitter Revolution” in Egypt whose outcome is not exactly what the idealist had in mind. This is not to say that public petitions and movements are always misguided, but that there are many possible solutions to a problem and it is not necessary that the solution with the most vocal public backing is the best.

Another concern is the inequity in access to social media in India – something that leads to illusionary beliefs about ground realities. Consider some of the basic requirements for posting views online on a regular basis. Literacy is one, continuous access to the internet another – rich and middle class Indians (a group that accounts for a very small proportion of the total population of India) are thus the primary suppliers and consumers of opinions over social media.  The problem occurs when we try to infer population beliefs from this limited sample and claim that what we see online is an accurate reflection of the “mood of the nation”. This is a classic case of “selection bias” – an issue economists have been grappling with for some time now. Put simply:  unlike data in science experiments, social science data is inherently biased (towards those who choose to participate) and therefore making inferences from it blindly, dangerous.

Survey design also matters – a lot.  Some surveys suffer from “leading questions”— the way a question is framed can lead to biased responses.  These two important factors “selection bias” and “survey design bias” are extremely important considerations for any student of politics or economics. Yet, public pressure groups often completely disregard these — for instance, the members of India Against Corruption regularly make statements like “This is what India wants –”, “India has spoken –” on the basis of internet polls which cannot possibly represent the entire population even if their survey designs were miraculously flawless.

Where we stand and where we are heading

Social Media is here to stay. And we are lucky to enjoy freedom of speech and expression (at least in theory). We can also hope that over the next few decades there will be substantial growth in literacy rates and internet access in India.  Given this scenario social media represents a great opportunity to get voices heard and for people to get involved.  It would be foolish to ignore the potential of social media as a political tool in India.  However we must remember the caveats – first, that opinions on social media represent only a small proportion of the population that is self-selecting, therefore making inferences about the whole is dangerous. Second, there is a danger of oversimplification and a tendency to generate public pressure for quick-fix solutions that may be suboptimal and lead to instability.

In the long run there is a real danger of some groups being formed which will neglect these caveats and develop hard line stances based on illusionary beliefs and imperfect sampling. These groups will also actively try to polarize public opinion, possibly using social media to further their propaganda. However I believe the nature of political discourse in India is rich and diverse enough to allow these groups to exist without being engulfed by them. In his book “The Argumentative Indian” Amartya Sen argues that one of the reasons that democracy has flourished in India is the long tradition of argumentation that we enjoy.  Expressing and defending opinions online is the natural evolution of this tradition. Thus in my opinion, even with the formation of pockets of people who hold extreme and hardline stances, on a balance of probabilities the information revolution is going to lead to a more equal and more aware society.

[Cover image attribution: By designbolts.com (Freeiconsweb.com) [CC-BY-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons] 

]]> http://www.criticaltwenties.in/economicsocialpolicy/opinion-explosion-in-indian-social-media-a-driver-for-real-change-or-just-a-lot-of-noise/feed 26 http://www.criticaltwenties.in/nationalpolitics/the-age-of-instant-gratification http://www.criticaltwenties.in/nationalpolitics/the-age-of-instant-gratification#comments Sat, 11 Aug 2012 07:26:32 +0000 Arghya http://www.criticaltwenties.in/?p=5067 To stop wasting time is an enviable pursuit. Kal kare so aaj kar, aaj kare so ab- is a mantra that has been spewed timelessly by parents, teachers, office bosses, self-help specialists and spiritual gurus. Its impact though has been inversely proportional to its use, procrastination proving a naturally more appealing option than diligence. For modern day middle-class India however, Kabir’s couplet has found an unintended ally: the desire for instant gratification. Want to buy a car? Waste no time and drop by at your nearest dealership and drive away with the car of your choice with no down payment and an attractive EMI scheme. Have no time to wait for news? Choose from a cacophony of 24*7 news channels with second-by-second updates, jostling to break the same news mili-seconds before each other. Or better still, avoid the drama and use your IPhone, IPad or BlackBerry for instant updates through fully customisable apps. In fast-paced, ultra-competitive, post-liberalisation India in a hurry to become the world’s next superpower, why wait when you can instantly satiate?

The most remarkable product of this age of instant gratification has been Team Anna and its movement to rid India of corruption. Despite being panned widely for its flawed institutional vision, its political naiveté and the questionable company it sometimes kept, Team Anna struck a chord with a people fed up with governmental corruption and apathy because it promised a readymade solution to corruption in the form of the Jan Lokpal, an all-powerful ombudsman who would potentially instil fear into the hearts and minds of corrupt public servants and cow them into honesty. Not only was this simplistic solution made an article of faith for the movement, but it was also sought to be made actionable through an ultimatum to the government: fail to instantly gratify the movement and risk Anna fasting to death, a rallying call that resonated amongst large sections of India sick of corruption and looking for an instant, no-jhanjhat solution for it.

Several other factors too worked in its favour: a shocking series of scams that the government was directly or indirectly involved in, a string of governmental blunders and miscalculations in dealing with its protests in the initial stages, a Gandhian icon whose personal probity and integrity was an ideal rallying point, and a diverse backroom team comprising a widely respected former judge, two senior lawyers passionately committed to the cause, an astute mass mobiliser and a populist, flag-waving former police officer. But above all it worked because it was a movement which demanded instant gratification from the government: a sentiment that middle-class India could identify with from their daily lives, even if it meant equating ridding the country of corruption with ordering a home-delivered Domino’s pizza when the craving for a change from the roti-sabji routine struck.

Unfortunately, the perils of founding a political movement on instant gratification is that one is subject to the same standards that one expects. Having promised a Jan Lokpal Bill, but after a year of coaxing, debating, arm-twisting and protesting, failing to deliver it meant that Team Anna was unsurprisingly hoist on its own petard. Seeking instant gratification but failing to gratify its supporters instantly (over a year literally) meant that time for Team Anna was always running out. So it was not entirely unexpected that the steady stream of supporters would one day dwindle, the continual tactic of fasts would have to come to an end, internal dissensions within the team would surface and Anna Hazare would return to Ralegan Siddhi as its keeper of virtue. But does this mean that the movement has been a failure as many have suggested? Could it have strategised differently in order to sustain longer?

Those who suggest that the movement has failed and have penned obituaries for it, are unconsciously subject to the same desire for instant gratification that they accuse the movement and its middle class support base of. The protests to have India against Corruption’s Jan Lokpal Bill enacted in Parliament have undoubtedly failed because the fact of the matter is that the Bill has not been enacted. But to infer  from this that the movement itself has failed is entirely fallacious. First, the protests ensured that for the first time a public debate on reforming the CBI has taken place, the need for an anti-corruption ombudsman unanimously accepted and corruption firmly established as a key electoral issue henceforth. More crucially, middle class India has come out of its happy closeted existences to the streets concerning an issue of national interest, a development whose significance cannot be understated. As I wrote at the time,

 “Vast numbers of people coming together in Delhi, even more pledging their solidarity and support by organising their own protests in cities across the world, the chaos, the frenzy, the disagreements about next steps, the patent flaws in the drafted statute, everything about the protest conveys the simple human emotion of standing up for what one thinks is right, without sophistry, nuance, or caveats.”

This promise of an easy solution to corruption, without sophistry, nuance or caveats, in the form of a Jan Lokpal may have been a key spur for such spontaneous protests. I doubt deeply the feasibility of a sophisticated, rationalised protest movement at the time, in terms of both its composition and functioning, being able to galvanise the masses the way in which Team Anna did. Paradoxically however, the recipe for its success—the promise of easy-to-grasp instant results—proved to be its undoing; the solution wasn’t as simple as suggested, and even the suggested solution wasn’t very simply achievable. But, on a balance of factors, that was a risk most definitely worth taking, if not taking it meant that the movement couldn’t be kickstarted in the first place.

Second, the movement against corruption is more than, and must be more than protests about the enactment of a Jan Lokpal Bill. It ought to be a wide-ranging effort directed not just at institutional reform but civic reform as well. It requires a much more clever, sustained and long-drawn out struggle than a year-long protest for a legislative enactment. It’s a struggle that doesn’t promise ready answers or instant solutions. But at the same time it’s a struggle that requires mass participation to succeed. Instant gratification-hungry India must be brought on board the politics of patient struggle. If India against Corruption is serious about this task, the ending of the year-long protests came at the right time. The past provides a perfect prelude that guarantees extensive media coverage, funding sources and a degree of public sympathy, if not support.  Attention now turns to the more serious business of finding constructive ways and means to rid the country of corruption. A task that requires all of us to not just to look at our leaders, but at ourselves. And reserve our desires to be instantly gratified to the local pizza delivery company.

[Cover Picture Attribution: This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license from Author Hindustanilanguage].

]]> http://www.criticaltwenties.in/nationalpolitics/the-age-of-instant-gratification/feed 0 http://www.criticaltwenties.in/nationalpolitics/2011-virat-kohlis-year http://www.criticaltwenties.in/nationalpolitics/2011-virat-kohlis-year#comments Sat, 31 Dec 2011 13:16:32 +0000 Arghya http://www.criticaltwenties.in/?p=4254 [This is not a year-end review. I am so saturated with Anna Hazare, Lokpal and corruption and 2G, which seemingly are the only five words in every Indian’s 2011 vocabulary, that writing a review about them is beyond me. Instead, I write on what has been a pet topic I have been mulling over for the last year: Virat Kohil and how he beautifully encapsulates the contradictions that lie at the heart of India, circa 2011.]

Let me say it up front. I dislike Virat Kohli. I dislike the way he plays his cricket, his attitude on the field, his incessant proclivity towards abuse, his win-at-all-costs mentality. At the same time I am keenly aware of his prodigious talent. Many a U-19 cricketer has shone at the level before fading away into obscure Ranji oblivion- Mithun Manhas, RS Ricky, Reetinder Singh Sodhi, Amol Mazumdar- the list is endless. Kohli belongs to the rare breed of those U-19 players who have seamlessly transitioned to the senior squad almost immediately. Not only did he merely make the senior squad, at the age of 23, he is already a World Cup champion having played a crucial role in India’s victory. Most notably in the final, with India tottering at 31-2 and ghastly memories of the semi-final against Sri Lanka at the Eden Gardens in 1996 surreptitiously creeping back, Kohli played a mature innings of 35 steadying the Indian ship, giving us all belief that the target could yet be achieved. Kohli’s natural talent combined with his equally natural vituperations makes him a fascinating character, one, who for me, best captures the contradictions at the heart of new and emerging India, which have played out in our national politics, like never before, in 2011.

A strong sense of self-belief is Kohli’s finest attribute. Whether in a World Cup final or in seaming conditions in England, Kohli’s virat self belief, justifiably or otherwise, never lets up. It is the same self-belief that has seen a more activist, vociferous and determined youth take to the streets in protest against corrupt politicians, eve-teasing murderers, honour killers or atrocities by the Indian army in Kashmir. A sense of injustice and wrong has for long prevailed amongst Indian youth. However in the last year, this sense of injustice has been coupled with the unprecedented gumption, to go out there, act on one’s beliefs and believe that the result is possible. New India has thus reaffirmed Swami Vivekananda’s clarion call to the youth of India to “Arise, awake and stop not, until the goal is reached.” Anna Hazare’s campaign, dismissed inexplicably by armchair intellectuals, as a “middle-class facebook activism”, for all its faults was the beneficiary of such an attitude amongst India’s youth who came out in droves to support it. And though a “strong and effective Lokpal” could not be passed this session, (and just as well) it forced Parliament to discuss the issue openly, thereby making our elected representatives accountable like never before.

Unfortunately, the flip side of this self-belief is an uncritical and almost irrebuttable belief of one’s rightness and the consequent wrongness of others. In a seemingly inconsequential incident on Day 3 of the Boxing Day Test, Kohli fielding in the deep unnecessarily attempted an ambitious and meaningless direct hit. No one was at the stumps and Ravichandran Ashwin backing up was nowhere close to preventing the overthrow. Of course, that made little difference to Kohli, who convinced he was not in the wrong, spewed some choice expletives in Ashwin’s direction. Similarly, when he was adjudged LbW for a golden duck in the second innings, he stood around and glared at the umpire as if he had just announced a call for genocide and Kohli was about to become its first victim. Needless to say, he couldn’t be caught more plumb in front.

Now conviction in one’s view is no bad thing but conviction which becomes dogmatic to not countenance criticism or allow for introspection is deeply problematic. Emerging India suffers largely from a similar malaise. The classic example of this is a foundational plinth on which emerging India is built: The 24*7 news media. In a year in which the role of the media has been scrutinised like never before, their coverage of the recent Lokpal debate in Parliament, was testimony to how uncritical and unquestioning the fourth pillar of our democracy has become. All channels were quick to claim that what transpired in Parliament was the “murder of democracy”; it was “murder at midnight” and a “travesty of representative government.” They also uniformly claimed credit for being “the first” to predict that such an “orchestrated chaos” would ensue. What was so murderous about what happened in Parliament? Is the government not entitled to defer the passage of a bill to the next session if a better debate could be facilitated? And can the discretion of the Vice-President of India so blithely be questioned by a few news anchors, without proof or special knowledge? Now it well may be that the chaos was orchestrated by the government, but surely the entire sequence of events was more complex than a banal headline. To claim, without evidence that can be brought to bear publicly, is journalism of the worst kind; of a kind that revels in the power of shaping public opinion without having to reflect even momentarily about the gossip, hearsay and rumours which shape such opinions.

Kohli undoubtedly has the spunk to take on the world and beat it. Cricket isn’t just a game, it’s a battle which has to be won. Much like India in 2011, which dared to take on the world on the nuclear liability bill, adopted an increasingly aggressive stance regarding permanent membership of the UN Security Council, became an independent voice in climate change negotiations, Kohli stridently blazes his willow away to glory, irrespective of the nationality of the opposition. No longer do we cower in front of sledge-happy Aussie quicks, super-fast South African ones or Pakistanis keen for restoring their national pride on the cricket ground- we take them on and quite often win.

But yet for some reason, I, despite my obvious delight in seeing India win in cricket and prosper everywhere, don’t feel happy in the same way. I still pine for elements of the older India; an India of Javagal Srinath or Anil Kumble, where despite losing more often than winning, there was an innocence to the way we played our cricket and led our lives. When winning and results didn’t matter very much but doing the right thing did. When hundred hundreds was a wonderful statistic to achieve and not a daily national obsession, when the Beatles sat easily with Bharatanatyam and Treasure Island, one of Calcutta’s first malls with New Market, one of its oldest, when life was altogether more simple and our identity more entrenched.

In no way at all am I advocating a return to an older, less economically prosperous, but more socially secure India. Not only is it not possible, but it also undesirable. What I would like to see is a coming together of Kohli’s India and Srinath’s India; where winning matters, but winning by being playing the game in the spirit of the game matters more, where being important in world politics matters, but having an independent mind matters more, where organising a protest movement matters, but ensuring that the atmosphere is not so vitiated that no debate and fruitful negotiation is possible matters more. And where we continue to remember that while we must make every effort to become a superpower in the 21^st century, our current and most pressing concern must be to ensure that every child in the country from the day she is born, can get three square meals a day. That, I hope, is what we can go some way towards achieving in 2012.

A very happy and prosperous new year to everyone!

This time last year, Kim Jong Il, Muammar Gaddhafi and Hosni Mubarak were the most powerful men in their respective countries.

Anna Hazare was barely known outside the state of Maharashtra; Arvind Kejriwal probably not beyond his immediate family.

Justice Kapadia had just promised to cut down on judicial activism in favour of clearing the massive backlog of cases in the Supreme Court of India.

Most people couldn’t spell or even pronounce Kanimozhi.

How things change in 365 days.

Well ok, except for the last thing.

How do we make sense of these tectonic changes?

That these changes have been tectonic can’t be denied. The Lokpal debate and the 2G and Commonwealth Games scams and the Government’s response in tackling have fundamentally altered the way citizens view the institutions of State. It may not be evident to us now. After all, we still put up the same nonsense at Government offices, still have Parliament being repeatedly made a mockery of by its own legislators and feel the effects of ill thought out and poorly implemented policies. On the surface, nothing’s really changed. Or so it seems. But undeniably, and even the most ostrich of persons would not deny this, something has changed in the national discourse this year.

A simple answer in one word: corruption.

Or even more simply, the giving and taking of bribes by government servants for performing their functions.

It’s a partial answer and a very incomplete one at that. Corruption is about as old as the State. To repeat Chanakya’s oft-repeated quote: “…It is impossible to know when a fish moving in water is drinking it…” Yet, this saying offers us only a partial answer of what government is, and not what it ought to be.

Chanakya’s use of analogy was not just to state the obvious in an interesting manner, but to further a complex and nuanced argument. Corruption is almost a given in an institution such as the government, but that doesn’t mean no efforts should be made to minimize or eradicate it. Rather, Chanakya’s analogy was an attempt to uncover the nature of government itself that led it to corruption.

Government (like a corporation) essentially involves dealing with other people’s property and money. How you raise it, what you use it for and who gets what are the basics of governance and the answers differ on the basis of one’s ideology and the needs of a given time, but no Government can function without doing these two essential things; raising money and spending it.

So much for the “is”.

But Chanakya also answers the “ought”; government ought to mean spending the income wisely for the welfare of the people. For, as Chanakya states repeatedly, only in the welfare of the people lies the welfare of the King (or Government if you prefer). It seems obvious enough, yet only in restating and understanding the “ought” do we get to the heart of why corruption has become the issue it has now.

As citizens, this “ought” is fundamental to why we part with our money to the Government (or perhaps our property for due compensation). The compact between Government and citizen should seem so obvious that it doesn’t need restating but it is a reflection of these times that this particular compact has to be restated. What the Lokpal Bill agitation and the Commonwealth and 2G Scam highlight are the very real threats this compact faces from corruption.

For people in their twenties and thirties, it would seem that this is the first time this has happened so.

Those with longer memories would know that the unearthing of massive corruption scandals is nothing new, nor the jailing of MPs, CMs and ministers. Not even judicial activism to fight corruption.

What’s changed this time is that where perhaps corruption was seen as an aberration to the norms of governance, the brazenness and the scale at which the Commonwealth Games and 2G scams were carried out would suggest that perhaps corruption has, far from being an anomaly in the system (to use a Matrix-ism) is in fact, the system itself. That there is no concept of public welfare anymore, and that the government exists to serve its clients – those who can pay the price and no others.

This loss of faith in government explains the agitation around the Lokpal Bill but also the land acquisition agitation in UP. Where the UP agitation was aimed at one particularly egregious misuse of governmental powers to openly benefit real estate developers at the expense of farm owners, the Lokpal agitation was sparked off mainly because it seemed that far from ensuring that a scam of the scale of the 2G scam or the Commonwealth scam never happened, the Government of the day tried to protect the corrupt through a weak and ineffective institution.

It’s easy to dismiss the “civil society” and Anna Hazare as a bunch of middle class busybodies who’ve been given undue importance thanks to a hyperactive “corporate” media.

It’s also demonstrably false.

The crowds streaming into Jantar Mantar and Ramlila Maidan in the middle of the year were not bused in and promised money and food (as many political rallies are wont to). You couldn’t classify and categorize them all under one neat socio-economic or religious label.
Yet, as if almost on cue, when Anna couldn’t “deliver” on the crowds (read “spectacle”) the media turned on him. Hardly the hallmark of a media driven campaign.

Still, what relevance does all of this have to the events of the past year in the law and the judiciary?

It has, I think, fundamentally changed the contours of the judicial activism debate. If one of the underlying premises of the institutional competence argument (as opposed to constitutional competence, more of which in a separate piece perhaps) is that government is capable of doing some things “better”, and therefore the Courts must not “meddle”, the actions of the government over the last year have called this assumption very much into question. The sorry saga of inaction, incompetence and just plain mendacity on the part of the government that was revealed in not just the mega scams but also in such issues as the right to food litigation, the black money litigation and the tax waivers for the F1 race. In the face of such a sorry state of affairs, the option is between institutional encroachment and complete and utter breakdown of the rule of law.

What has happened is that when the citizen’s faith in the government’s ability to act in the public welfare (as opposed to his or her individual welfare) itself stands questioned, the Court has, on the instance of such citizens stepped in to ensure that government acts in such a manner. In one sense, and this merits much more scrutiny than this post can possibly hope to provide, a very discernible shift is obvious in the manner in which the Supreme Court goes about its activism. No longer is activism about merely issuing writs and directions enforcing rights (howsoever defined, and yes I’m aware there’s nothing “mere” about enforcing rights, but bear with me) but also at ensuring that the government complies with its duties and obligations to the public at large.
Two very different cases, the Bellary Mining ban and the CVC case are possibly the best indicators of this (though a more comprehensive study would also include all the PILs not entertained at the threshold itself but this is not the place for it). The dominant discourse in the decisions is about protecting larger public interest and welfare in the face of State and Central Government failure to do the same. A State Government had failed to check the rampant illegal mining and ecological destruction of Bellary. The Central Government had cynically appointed an officer who faced a criminal charge of corruption as the head of the anti-corruption body. These were not instances of the Government choosing a good or bad course of action – it was a case of complete and total dereliction of duty that could not be justified with anything more than a bland ipse dixit.

In that sense, this year has probably set off a subtle yet significant shift in the Court’s understanding of its own role and the manner in which it articulates its role. Apart from being a defender of rights (fundamental, legal and constitutional) and upholder of the rule of law, it has also adopted the role of protector of the public welfare at large. Not that this is a new legal argument that is being made in Courts or that we are speaking of a new and hitherto unseen aspect of judicial review, but in terms of the Supreme Court’s role in the larger polity this is perhaps a significant (and not a few would say, welcome) shift that could take us down new and interesting paths in the history of the Indian judiciary.

Yet, this is no time for the Court to rest on its laurels (hard won though they may be). Although the battle against delays seems a Sisyphean labour at best, the spectre of large scale judicial corruption has never hung heavier over the judiciary. Though the cases of Soumitra Sen, PD Dinakaran and Nirmal Yadav came to light last year, serious action has only taken place this year.

It is no longer a case of black sheep here and there. There is a flock of dark fleece threatening to taint the whole judiciary. Indeed the illegal land allotment to judges, past and present, in Bangalore has exposed more than a few skeletons in closets. The distressing silence on the part of most of the judges involved has only fuelled further doubts about their integrity. The malaise Justice Markandeya Katju outlined with much anguish earlier this year with reference to Allahabad High Court threatens to engulf the entire upper judiciary if not stopped adequately. For the Court to retain its credibility as the foremost defender of the rule of law in this country, it must, to use a Biblical proverb, “remove the speck in its own eye.”

What does the New Year hold for us lawyers and the judiciary?

Definitely a new Chief Justice of India in September (Justice Altamas Kabir according to seniority). The Vodafone verdict, the Right to Education ruling and perhaps most importantly, the order deciding whether or not Home Minister P Chidambaram should be investigated in the 2G scam. The trial will of course continue in the Patiala House court in Delhi and we’ll all receive breathless reports of the proceedings from over-keen reporters some of whom may even have legal training!

The Lokpal Bill will probably be introduced once again in Parliament in April but no one really believes that the Government genuinely wants to tackle corruption at the highest levels. Parliament’s alleged “supremacy” already a hollow doctrine in Constitutional law, has been stripped of even more legitimacy in the light of today’s events.

As the old Chinese curse goes, we are living in interesting times. Despondence seems to be the national mood, despair a national pre-occupation and disappointment (for cricket fans and Sensex watchers alike) leaving a bitter aftertaste at the end of the year.

With all the bleakness above, perhaps I should end on a positive note.

As it turns out, the Mayans were wrong! The world won’t end in 2012.

Happy New Year to all!

I went to India to visit friends, and ended up with a new perspective on life, society, history, and humanity. It was my first time in South Asia, and what I knew about India was limited to superficial topics like Gandhi’s non-violence and the large population.

I lived with my friend and her family in Chennai. I spent early mornings with her grandmother since we were the only two awake. Our discussions were thought-provoking and inspiring. We started by discussing the things I knew before I came to India: dowry and the caste system, poverty and the booming economy. Then we moved on to the larger issues.

Each morning we woke under the fans to the sounds of birds squealing, even in the city. The echo of honking horns was distant enough to not be noticed. We shared The Hindu daily paper, the grandmother did the crossword, Meenakshi (who worked for my friend’s family) served us tea and coffee and made the white-sand design in front of the door, sweeping the patios with a stick broom. At 8 a.m. breakfast was served – always something hot with spices like curry and patkis.

Always there was tea. Boiled water and milk with sugar. Always half a cup. Even on the plane when I paid 50 rupees for my tea, it was half a cup (maybe this was due to turbulence, nonetheless, it seemed a pattern).

East vs West

The grandmother explained Hinduism– the gods and the values. I was particularly fascinated by the contrast with the West, with the ideas I was raised with: go after your dreams; you can accomplish anything if you work hard enough; this is the one life you have; be yourself. In Hinduism, the grandmother explained, there is no concept of the self. Here in India, she said, time is circular. For the Westerner, time is linear and they push forward towards a certain end. Here, there is a sense of the vastness of life, of eternity. The poets understand this, she said.

The many contrasts with the West struck me throughout my journey.  On the plane connecting through Dubai to Chennai, I was the only white person on board, and there were only two other women – both traveling with families. The men in India generally ignored me, except occasionally struck up a polite conversation and mentioned their relatives in the U.S. Most asked if I was coming to study. Clothing is more conservative for women, almost all the women cover their shoulders and wear saris, street traffic is diverse and unpredictable, and there is a pervasive sense of history and tradition alive and well throughout the nation.

Culture & Politics

At meal times, the family had impassioned debates about modern Indian politics. I lived with three generations: my flatmate from Fletcher, her mother, and the grandmother. The mother calls the grandmother by her first name, per the grandmother’s progressive request. The debates at this time often centered on Anna Hazare and the anti-corruption movement – most people just follow him without knowing what he really stands for, and, are his demands even rational? We discussed the corruption in politics and law enforcement.

The discussion of marriage would come up. The mother wishes the daughter to marry soon, tries to introduce her to worthy Indian men. The mother adheres religiously to the Hindu horoscope. The horoscopes of the boy and girl must match, otherwise the union cannot occur. The daughter argued with cases that prove this untrue. The mother explained to me that in India often a marriage to an uncle or cousin is preferred, and at this another debate erupted with the daughter over the propriety of this practice. Just one household in India, so much debate and discussion. No wonder that the country is rolling forward.

Economy

Everywhere I went throughout India, I was met with fervent activity. You can feel the growth, you can sense the force with which individuals and the country as a whole are hurtling forward into their own futures, searching opportunities, selling, bargaining, pursuing education and advancement. My friend lamented that for every job you apply to, there are equally-qualified Indians you must compete with. The cities have a sense of potential and forward motion. It’s something that you don’t feel in the US anymore. The cities are growing, everyone is on their way somewhere, millions of motorbikes mix with cars, buses, small trucks and bicycles. Each strata of the economy is moving.

Media & Social Movements

During my stay, I was also met with Anna Hazare protests everywhere I went. From an auto rickshaw in Bangalore, along the rural roads outside Agra, to thousands amassing, chanting happily, around India Gate in Delhi. Every day the front page gave the latest updates, outlined the governments’ missteps, rallied the cause. The TV news headline asked, “Are you with Anna?”  The news in India is roundly criticized for being sensationalist. I enjoyed the change from my Financial Times and NPR, and relished the provocative news media that seemed to be full of analysis and critique. At night we watched the trivia show, the one featured on Slumdog Millionaire, and the daughter and mother competed to yell out the answers first; they were always correct.

Daily Life

My friends’ family might be considered middle class. Her mother is a public servant, the head of an auditing division for the government. She has a driver and a servant, like most upper class Indians. Our meals were all cooked and cleared by Meenakshi, the floors were cleaned, the outdoors swept, the laundry done. As an American, it felt like an unusual situation. Our legacy of slavery means we are raised with such antipathy toward servitude that it is an adjustment for me to get used to a person serving a family wholly, catering to their every whim. Upon reflection, though, I realized that Americans do this too – just not in the homes I was raised in. And in a country of such disparity, it is only logical that those with education and money will provide employment for those without.

The Value of Life

On my visit I was spared witnessing the begging and poverty that reins in the notorious slums. One image burned into my mind, however, is that of a one-legged man – like a pole with two arms – hopping between cars in Delhi, asking for change. I was slightly aghast, but my friend seems hardly to notice. “He’s obviously on drugs,” he noted.

There is a greater sense in India of kind of a predetermined destiny – you are born into a place in life, and that is your lot. This life, after all, is only temporary, and we each of us become a part of the greater universe when we pass along, or our soul returns into another body, to live life anew. Along with the sense of the cycles of life, came a shocking (for an American) lack of respect for life. Maybe this is cultural; maybe due to the extensive poverty; maybe due to the fact that a country with over 1 billion people no longer values each one. My bus driver on a two-day tour through Jaipur and Agra sped recklessly, clashed and raced with other drivers angrily, oblivious to the risk of 42 lives that were in his hands. Three days later, on the front page of the Hindustan Times, a small paragraph related that 10 people died on a bus when another driver, after a bout of road rage, doused the bus in oil and set it aflame. My friend doesn’t bat an eye. This kind of thing is so common, she said.

This contrasted starkly in my mind with the respect paid to animals associated with religious practices – cows and many living beings – which are greatly respected and not killed when it can be avoided.

Lessons

As I prepared to leave behind my first experience in India, I was most impacted by the dualism of a country: rich and poor, and the powerful mix of the traditional with the modern. Democracy is loved, but the people struggle to counter the now endemic corruption in their politics and police. Dowries are now illegal, but if a girl dies within 7 years of her marriage, it is presumed to be a dowry death and the in-laws are presumed guilty unless proven innocent. Untouchability is illegal and caste system frowned upon, but the reservation system for universities reserves room for certain castes. It is an affordable country for a foreigner, but inflation is on the rise and prices especially in booming cities have been skyrocketing.

Sadh, one of the many Indian gurus, says that in your life, if you don’t do what you can’t do, there is no problem but if you don’t do what you can do, that is a tragedy. Spiritual leadership is prominent here; even the most modern and logical have a guru that they follow. From India, for now, what I learn that I can do is to place a higher value on spirituality, tradition and history, and to continue to develop intellectually and find peace amidst the craziness of the world. India made me realize that in contrast to the pressures I feel in America, for now, I don’t want to seek to have an impact on the world, as we are often urged in our American education. Instead, I have realized that I still need the world to have an impact on me.

There is so much that a Westerner can gain from the more ancient eastern cultures and values, and so many fascinating contrasts to watch evolve. This history is full of exotic stories of kingdoms, palaces, astronomers, the birth of religions, and the modern India is still fully immersed in that history, amidst growing economy and leading fields of technology, innovation, and ­­communication. There is so much more to be learned about life and the self in India than I ever feel in the US. I hope to return for a longer period of time to do more learning and growing, and for many more conversations over half cups of tea.

This is a response to a thought exercise: in light of the protests led by Anna Hazare, what would your advice to the Government of India be?

The Government is undoubtedly losing the PR battle to Anna Hazare. Before I put forth my views on what the Government can do in this situation – I’d like to state my position on the protests led by Anna Hazare. I believe that Hazare has tapped into the increased alienation many sections of society feel from the state, which was exacerbated by recent instances of corruption at the highest levels. However, I disagree with Hazare and his team’s use of these protests to pressurise the Government to introduce and pass the Jan Lokpal Bill in Parliament by September 8, primarily because it is a horrendous draft and also concerns surrounding parliamentary processes. The people on the streets want a strong response to corruption. But Hazare is adamant that the Jan Lokpal Bill is the only solution. I also believe that critical provisions of the Jan Lokpal Bill are unconstitutional and agree with the NCPRI’s critique of the draft.

Coming to the issue of what the Government of India can do right now — the Government’s first step should be to immediately withdraw its Lokpal Bill from Parliament. It must then partially concede to Hazare’s demand and debate the Jan Lokpal Bill in Parliament and call for an extensive debate on it within Parliament. It must refuse to concede to the demand that the Jan Lokpal Bill should necessarily be passed. The Government should then ensure that the debate is conducted with the same rigour, dignity and purpose as we saw in the Rajya Sabha during Justice Soumtira Sen’s impeachment.

If the Government wants to regain control of this situation, it must walk the talk on the critical role of Parliament in Indian democracy. Smart politics, one would assume, demands that Parliament debates the Jan Lokpal Bill rather than the Government’s Lokpal Bill. Reactions from political parties so far make it evident that support for the Jan Lokpal Bill inside Parliament is negligible. Yes, political parties have spoken out strongly against the Government’s response to corruption so far and its arrest of Anna Hazare but there has been hardly any political support for the Jan Lokpal Bill. The Government must seize this narrow window of opportunity to regain some lost ground.

This would also serve as a successful tactic to push the BJP on the defensive. In his response in Rajya Sabha, Arun Jaitley was careful to avoid any reference to the contents of the Jan Lokpal Bill. The BJP has not revealed its hand and yet there are reports of organisations like the ABVP forcing some colleges to shut down (in Bangalore atleast) to facilitate student participation in the protests. Irrespective of the level of BJP’s support for Hazare’s protest, it is doubtful whether it would translate into support for the Jan Lokpal Bill inside Parliament. Even if the BJP does support it, the numbers will not stack up in favour of the Jan Lokpal Bill but there is a fascinating question to consider: will the BJP vote in favour of the Jan Lokpal to capitalize on the current public mood for electoral gains in 2014? Or is 2014 too far away for such a move to pay dividends?

A critical issue that will have to be considered is whether parties must issue a whip for this vote. The Government must push for a vote without a whip being issued by any of the political parties. Issuing a whip and then defeating the Bill would open it up to further accusations of manipulating Parliament. The Government must rely on a robust debate in Parliament to highlight the controversial and unconstitutional aspects of the Jan Lokpal Bill. This is the only way for the Government to take the focus away from itself and direct it towards the deeply flawed Jan Lokpal Bill.

The risk that the Jan Lokpal might become law is a minute one compared to the control the Government will regain on the issue. And the perceived risk, I would assume, is more in the realm of logic rather than realpolitik.

However, the Government needs to ensure that a simultaneous process of formulating a strong Lokpal Bill is initiated. It must form a non-partisan drafting committee of unquestionable integrity involving representatives from various political parties and different voices from civil society. It must send the message that it does not consider Hazare’s team to be the sole representative of civil society and could perhaps ensure that only one of them is on this new drafting committee. The Government must commit itself to supporting this committee’s draft in Parliament.

Dithering on the creation of a strong Lokpal is no longer an option for the Government and we must thank Anna Hazare for that. If there was ever a time for the Government to surprise its opponents, it is now and it must do it by exceeding expectations.

]]> http://www.criticaltwenties.in/nationalpolitics/what-should-the-government-of-india-do/feed 1 http://www.criticaltwenties.in/nationalpolitics/in-praise-of-parliament http://www.criticaltwenties.in/nationalpolitics/in-praise-of-parliament#comments Thu, 18 Aug 2011 18:22:54 +0000 Arghya http://www.criticaltwenties.in/?p=3710 [I have always been a fan of The Guardian’s ‘In Praise of...’ column on its editorial page. This is a personal attempt  inspired by it]

At a time when it has become the norm in civil society, large sections of the media and the judiciary to criticise Parliament and politicians, it was refreshing to see Parliament serve a strong reminder to the nation as to what it is capable of. The impeachment motion against Justice Soumitra Sen of the Calcutta High Court had all the makings of a dramatic spectacle— the dramatis personae- a judge accused of corruption being brought to ‘the bar’ of the Rajya Sabha for the first time in its history, the legislators determined to mete out justice, amongst them several legal eagles with sharp minds and sharper oratory; the setting- the hallowed halls of Parliament, the cornerstone of Indian democracy, the context- in the midst of unprecedented popular protests against corruption in governance, challenging the legitimacy of Parliament itself.

In such heady and tumultuous circumstances, witnessing the equanimity with which the MPs of the Rajya Sabha conducted themselves during the impeachment proceedings was heartening. There was no playing to the galleries, no hyperbole, little superfluity- instead, the speeches arguing both for and against the impeachment were measured, the scrutiny of the legal points, rigorous, the assessment of the Justice’s character, balanced, the reactions to his impassioned plea of innocence, honest, and the humour, refreshing. At its very root, the debate was essentially human—a coming together of divergent points of view that sounded very much like what the average Indian on the street would have said regarding the consequences that ought to be faced by a judge of a High Court who had been accused and twice found guilty of corruption.

This was especially creditable given the setting and the circumstances. To be sure, there was nothing ordinary about a judge being brought into Parliament, eloquently and passionately pleading his innocence, claiming he was being made a sacrificial lamb to protect a higher judiciary that was rotten at the core. In fact with allegations flowing thick and fast against a former Chief Justice and other judges, Parliament would have been very much out of its comfort zone, in the awkward and unfamiliar position of having to form an opinion and pass judgment on the higher judiciary, an institution, that has of late, assumed a halo of immunity. Equally there was nothing ordinary about the protests a few kilometres away outside Tihar Jail, where one man had captured the popular imagination by challenging the supremacy of Parliament itself. Parliament could scarcely have risen to the occasion better and served a more fitting riposte to its detractors than by discharging its constitutional obligation of impeachment wisely and responsibly, in a manner that would have made both the drafters of the Constitution, and the people of India proud.

The argument used by the government to pre-emptorily detain and arrest Anna Hazare and his aides, i.e. that it was upholding the letter of the law and preventing a breach of the peace, is specious. While no government can be faulted for adhering to the rule of law, when the law it purports to uphold, contains restrictions on the constitutional right to protest to such an extent that it emasculates the said right completely, upholding such a law can be morally problematic. Any government in the world is capable of decreeing any inconvenient activity illegal by passing a self-serving executive order. Per se, such an argument adds little in the way of justifying such action. Further, as in the public protest by Baba Ramdev, it was apparent that the government allowed the protest to go on in defiance of the permission given to it (the law), and upheld it only when it became clear that the protesters could not be deterred through negotiations. For a government and a nation for whom the rule of law is more akin to a tradable commodity rather than a sacrosanct virtue, any sudden resort to it to justify an action, must be viewed with utmost scepticism.

The legal argument notwithstanding, the political judgment shown by the government in first arresting and then releasing Anna Hazare, is curious. In the three intervening months between Anna’s first fast in April and now, much water has flown under the bridge. Significantly, at certain times in the past three months, Team Anna has been roundly criticised by civil society itself for its authoritarian approach as well as the substance of its draft Bill, which has been panned for its flawed institutional vision. Instead of capitalising on these differences, the government has, on the contrary, inadvertently bridged them by arresting Anna, which has been perceived by all and sundry as an attack on democracy and the constitutional right of protest. By doing so, it has also lost the moral high ground of being a reasonable government that is willing to negotiate and open to compromise with civil society campaigners, albeit through constitutionally entrenched parliamentary channels.

The government’s action is especially surprising given the actual nature of the two draft bills prepared in the course of the last three months. Whereas the government’s draft has its share of problems, as it reserves the majority power of appointment of Lokpal members, circumscribes its jurisdiction to prospective acts (2G and Commonwealth scams excluded) and has significant penalties for complaints found to be without substance, the civil society draft is equally if not more problematic as it naively seeks to create an all-weather institution, a go-to behemoth for all of India’s problems. It is inexpertly drafted, pays little heed to the constitutional principle of separation of powers and the time-tested necessity of checks and balances to ensure that power is not used irresponsibly. Some of these defects have been pointed out by Aruna Roy and other members of the NCPRI as well as Justice JS Verma, a former Chief Justice of India, both prominent members of civil society. However, despite these deep flaws, not once has the government attempted to show the public that its own draft, legally and institutionally, proposes a wiser solution. No attempt to widen the already existing fissures in civil society has been witnessed, nor has there been any criticism of Team Anna, barring discussion regarding the inclusion of the Prime Minister and the higher judiciary, on the unworkable and arguably unconstitutional provisions in their draft, whose wholesale adoption is the cause behind the proposed fast in the first place. Either this is extraordinary political naïveté on part of the government, or perhaps, it does not want a strong, anti-corruption institution after all, despite vehement promises to the contrary. Either way, debates on the substance of the law have been conspicuous by their absence and the government’s willingness to allow this to happen is particularly surprising.

This is not to detract from the blackmail involved in indefinitely fasting for the passage of a particular draft of a statute. A distinction must be drawn here between a fast for the passage of a strong Lokpal bill, as had happened in April and the passage of the Jan Lokpal Bill drafted by Team Anna, as is happening now. A key aspect of the democratic process is the room for reasonable disagreement. By adopting a method of negotiation that scuttles this room completely, Anna’s fast refuses space for actual differences of opinion amongst people and holds the government to ransom. Tomorrow, mining barons from Bellary, Hindu fundamentalists from Kandhamal and land mafia from all over the country could kick up large crowds and have analogous protests wanting their versions of the mining bill, the communal violence bill and land acquisition bill passed. Modern Indian democracy is not the rule of the mob. Anna’s latest salvo takes the country dangerously close to that path.

In the final analysis, it is however the government that has allowed the situation to come to such a pass. By allowing the debate to degenerate into a simplistic corrupt government v. non-corrupt civil society polarisation, it has ceded vast amounts of space to civil society and the opposition. At the same time by using coercive measures unwisely, it has been hoist by its own petard. Time and again, it has been caught out, and has bungled— with the sudden constitution of the ad hoc joint Lokpal Bill drafting committee, the flip-flop over Baba Ramdev’s protest and now the continuing dithering over Anna Hazare’s latest fast. Embattled by controversy, it seems that the government is set on emulating the scorpion of legend by plotting its own end. Ancient Iberian myth meets modern day Indian reality, Delhi, Circa 2011.

The 1996 World Cup was when I was probably beginning to understand cricket well enough to *get* the awesomeness of Jayasuriya’s assaults, Lara’s scintillating counter-attack against South Africa, and of course, the biggest…upset…ever (Kenya v WI). Was in the Chinnaswamy Stadium with my grandfather, watching probably the most titanic and emotional India-Pakistan encounter… ever (this year’s semis included) because, with all due respect, somehow, we managed to beat a better team.

The 1999 World Cup was probably the last cricket I saw with my granddad (even if it was just on the tv). Not surprising because he was already three heart attacks down and after the last one, his only request from the doctor was to get him to live long enough to see the 1999 World Cup (of course, in the hope that India would lift it again, but that was not to be). I can’t remember too many matches of this World Cup, but I do remember the feeling in the pit of my stomach during India’s embarrassing collapse against Zimbabwe. I’ve only ever had that feeling once afterwards, and that was when I saw the last over of the 2008 Perth Test Match. It’s the kind that brings stinging tears to your eyes.

The fact that the 2003 World Cup coincided with my AISSE XII Board Exams is neatly reflected in my “performance” in the exams. The match I remember the most is India v England featuring possibly one of the greatest bowling performances by an Indian in ODI cricket. Yes, Ashish Nehra you did write your name on the same wall featuring Anil Kumble and Kapil Dev. Though the match I had most fun watching was probably Australia v Kenya in the Super Sixes as 40 year old Asif Karim bowled one of the all time great spells of spin bowling in ODI cricket: 8.2-6-7-3! Against Australia!!

I have no memories of the 2007 World Cup. I am told that at the precise moment Dhoni was out LBW to Muralitharan playing back to a doosra, a vein exploded so hard in my forehead that the blood rushed into my brain and erased all memories of that World Cup.

You will forgive me if I confess to you that I did not believe India would win this World Cup at any stage. At 150 odd for 5 against Australia I did not believe. With just 260 on board against Pakistan, I did not believe. When Gautam Gambhir charged out of his crease in a stunning brain freeze in the finals, I did not believe. When Dhoni finally stepped out of his crease and set the ball in a long arc over the long on boundary… I still couldn’t believe. Years of under-performance, failure, crushed hopes and broken expectations had taught me to build defences against the inevitable disappointment, and it took me a while to dismantle the defences and embrace the feeling.

By the time I got the feeling though, perspective had reared its ugly head on the horizon, and before I knew it, Anna Hazare was a on a fast-unto-death in Jantar Mantar.

Mehta makes several points, the essence of which can be stated in two arguments: First, Anna Hazare’s call for protest against corruption, calling for an improved Jan Lokpal Bill is subversive of democracy; second, that it is premised on an institutional imagination of weeding out corruption by creating another guardian (the Jan Lokpal) to guard against the current guardians, i.e. the politicians, bureaucrats, police and the judges. Consider each of these arguments in turn.

The notion that a relatively spontaneous protest movement that has garnered wide support from people across all divides who make up India’s democratic polity, and their call for an improved anti-corruption legislation through greater citizen participation, is itself subversive of democracy is a curious one. In making it, Mehta bases his argument on two fundamentally flawed assumptions. First, that democracy means and only means representative democracy, where the government is accountable to the people only through their elected representatives. Second, that India is a fully functional constitutional democracy where such accountability can be an effective way of speaking truth to power. Nothing, in fact could be further from the truth.

A democratic system of government certainly involves elections as a key method for incorporating accountability. But that is not its sum total. Quoting Ambedkar’s words from the very same ‘Grammar of anarchy’ speech that Mehta adverts to “if we wish to maintain democracy not merely in form, but also in fact” it requires representatives of the people to serve the interests of the people, uphold social democracy and rule of law in the country. To ensure that they do this, there is a continuous process of checks and balances, not limited to periodic elections by which such accountability is imposed. Writing in the media, fighting the government in court, and assembling in public places to make one’s voice heard are crucial ways in which such checks can be exercised. This protest movement and its call for greater citizen participation in drafting the Jan Lokpal Bill is an extension of these methods. It is disingenuous to suggest that such citizen participation in law-making is exceptional— industrial lobbies, NGOs, think-tanks and subject experts play a key role in most legislations that are drafted. The difference between the present demand and the status quo is merely one of form and not substance, and need not be exaggerated.

At the same time, in making this assumption, Mehta tends to romanticise both the concept of an election as well as India’s ‘functional constitutional democracy’. It cannot be anybody’s argument that elections in India are spotlessly clean and facilitate the best candidates winning; on the contrary, elections are so fraught with murky dealings, candidate and voter intimidation and the need to get one’s hands dirty that the system doesn’t even allow the best candidates to take part many a time, let alone win. The fact, as Mehta notes, that an accountability discourse has developed, seeking accountability in ways other than periodic elections, is the surest sign yet of such failure. Insofar as India’s ‘functional constitutional democracy’ is concerned, it is almost as functional as a refrigerator is in making water boil. It would suffice merely to say that in an ideal system where legislators are above board, the government faithfully furthers national interest, courts dispose matters on time and anti-corruption authorities are themselves not corrupt, constitutional democracy alone, as Mehta understands it, can be a viable check on the government. But that doesn’t sound much like India in 2011 does it? So fanciful is this assumption that there is no need to labour this point any more.

The second permeating theme through Mehta’s arguments is the naïveté of the institutional imagination that pervades Anna Hazare’s movement. According to him, “We should not turn a complex institutional question into a simplistic moral imperative.” Of course we should not turn any institutional question, complex or otherwise into a moral imperative. But by assuming that the issue of widespread corruption in India and protests against it are concerned purely with an institutional question in the first place or should be, is missing the wood for the trees. Corruption and Anna Hazare’s simple call to respond to it are institutional questions only secondarily; primarily they are questions of justice. If as a result of a bribe, the 2G spectrum license goes to X and not to Y who had the better bid, Y has been unjustly treated; if the organisers of the Commonwealth Games gave a lucrative toilet paper contract to a relative, then all the other toilet paper manufacturers who bid for the contract have a claim of injustice, and if the country’s elected representatives gloss over these various injustices or selectively act on them, that in itself is an injustice of the highest order and every citizen of India can claim a violation of justice, to which they want to put a decisive end by rising in unison.

This is exactly what is happening in Jantar Mantar currently. The Jan Lokpal Bill, as Gautam Patel says is merely the vehicle to achieve this end. Several portions of the proposed Bill are problematic, as Mehta rightly points out. Even some of the drafters of the Bill, like the widely respected Lok Ayukta of Karnataka and former Supreme Court judge Justice Santhosh Hedge, think so. But the Bill is not intended to become law in toto. It is a negotiating text, to be read with the government’s own text, problematic on perhaps more counts than the Hazare draft, to arrive at a final law that is clear, coherent and effective in achieving its desired ends. And in proposing such a text, it is clearly not the intention of the drafters to create ‘a draconian new institution that diminishes everything from the Prime Minister’s Office to the Supreme Court.’ The office of a Lokpal, known elsewhere as an Ombudsman, operates comfortably alongside elected organs of government and courts in several other countries. There is no reason why they cannot harmoniously function in India as well. Besides, shoring up the malfunctioning institutions which exist and creating new ones which are necessary to take care of pressing new problems are not mutually exclusive tasks. To keep with Mehta’s educational analogy we need the M.A. not only because the B.A. is not good enough but because more people want more challenging standards of education in the arts than what the B.A. can provide.

As this piece is to be published, news is filtering in that the government has in part accepted Anna Hazare’s demands in relation to the Jan Lokpal Bill. This is a crucial first step in India’s fight against its own corrupt system. A fight, begun by a few good men and women. Which touched a chord with people everywhere.

Why did such a spontaneous uprising happen, rallying around a relatively little know activist, that too at a time when people could have been happily celebrating the World Cup victory? We may ponder over this question many years hence. But one fact is certain— there is something beautifully human about this protest in every sense. Vast numbers of people coming together in Delhi, even more pledging their solidarity and support by organising their own protests in cities across the world, the chaos, the frenzy, the disagreements about next steps, the patent flaws in the drafted statute, everything about the protest conveys the simple human emotion of standing up for what one thinks is right, without sophistry, nuance, or caveats.  And that’s something an academic argument, for all its sophistication, can never capture.