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agitation for the Jan Lokpal Bill (JLB) is being hailed as ‘unprecedented’
and as a ‘second freedom struggle’. More grounded analysts have likened it
to the Navnirman movement led by Jayaprakash Narayan in the 1970s. However,
a more apt comparison lies closer at hand.Less than six years ago,
Parliament enacted a national Right to Information Act. This was a major
victory for the RTI campaign which aimed to empower people to fight
corruption and malgovernment. It mobilised a nationwide network of support,
bringing together activists, NGOs and ordinary citizens and effectively
using media and middle-class interlocutors. India Against Corruption, the
coalition leading the present campaign, shares the goals and the networking
strategy of the earlier campaign, and its leaders, Arvind Kejriwal, Prashant
Bhushan and Anna Hazare, were closely associated with it.
Yet the differences between the two campaigns are
striking as well as instructive. The RTI campaign and the JLB campaign both
strive for greater government accountability but their ideologies, modes of
organisation, support base and strategies diverge in important ways.
Understanding these differences is crucial if the Lokpal Bill, once enacted,
is to achieve its stated goal.
The RTI campaign grew out of the experiences of the
Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan (MKSS), the jan sangathan (people’s
organisation) in rural Rajasthan which had for two decades fought corruption
in village development works. The MKSS pioneered the use of jan sunvai,
or public hearings, as a technique to empower villagers to ‘speak truth to
power’, challenging an opaque, oppressive and corrupt system of governance.
The jan sunvai’s success depended on systematic preparation to
mobilise people to testify, collect information and check its accuracy. The
groundswell of public anger against abuse of public funds was harnessed to
create a coordinated campaign led by trained local activists.
From the villages, MKSS took its campaign to the district
and state level, staging determined demonstrations that attracted the middle
classes and intellectuals, before leading the national RTI campaign. The
national network was more eclectic; it included not only jan sangathans
like the MKSS but also individual anti-corruption activists like Anna
Hazare and Shailesh Gandhi. Notably, the RTI campaign aligned itself with
the National Alliance of People’s Movements, sangathans of the rural
and urban poor fighting against dispossession. This organisational base gave
the RTI campaign a solid political credibility.
The JLB campaign shows a distinctly different trajectory.
Even though Kejriwal’s Parivartan, which battled corruption in ration shops
in two Delhi slums, was a jan sangathan, its base was too limited to
launch a nationwide campaign. The other campaign leaders – Prashant Bhushan,
Kiran Bedi and Hazare – also cannot muster a trained cadre of activists. The
JLB campaign has mobilised participants in two ways: through social
networking and the media; and via regional chapters of Baba Ramdev and Sri
Sri Ravi Shankar’s congregations.
The coming together of a predominantly young,
white-collar constituency that communicates through text messages and
Facebook, lower-middle-class followers of Baba Ramdev and the professional
classes that practise the Art of Living gives the JLB campaign the strength
of numbers as well as the image of appearing all-inclusive. However, this
strength may dissipate once the bill is passed. Mobilising crowds for a
successful agitation is one thing; having a committed and trained activist
base to convert that success into long-term institutional change is quite
another.
If the RTI campaign embraced sangathans with an
independent left ideology, the political beliefs of the participants in the
JLB campaign are harder to pin down. Eight of the 20 founders of India
Against Corruption are religious figures, of whom only Swami Agnivesh can be
described as a champion of jan sangathans. The rest voice patriotic
sentiments and anti-government hostility without a clear analysis of how the
systemic problems that plague public affairs will be tackled. Sri Sri Ravi
Shankar’s previous social initiatives have been of doubtful value (cleaning
the sewage-laden Yamuna by picking up garbage from the riverfront) and
marked by dubious claims (11,000 Naxalites ‘converted’ to the Art of
Living).
While other founders like Hazare and Bedi have a
reputation for personal probity and courage, they endorse a form of
individualist authoritarian action that is applauded by a public hungry for
vigilante heroes. The JLB thus represents a shift in the political spectrum:
from the left of centre democratic decentralisation of the RTI campaign to
the right of centre legal-technical-fix of India Against Corruption.
The test of any law lies in its implementation. Much
disquiet has already been expressed about the overly centralised design of
the JLB and the impracticability of the mammoth bureaucratic machinery it
demands. However, making a law work also requires a mobilised public, a
dedicated and organised network at every level that will keep up the
pressure on public institutions. The ideologies, organisational structure
and support base of the JLB campaign do not indicate that it is capable of
such long-term and systematic social action.
The RTI campaign’s activist base has allowed it to
sustain an arduous struggle against corruption but the challenges have been
formidable. It remains to be seen how the JLB campaign will equip itself to
walk the talk and translate strident demands into effective action.