A nice coverage by The Daily Telegraph, UK
A new 'Gandhi’ shakes India
By Patrick French 9:06PM BST 17 Aug 201188
The streets of India are choked with anti-corruption crusaders, and walls are
marked with busy slogans. Last week in Delhi I noticed a bumper sticker: “I AM
FOR A CORRUPTION FREE INDIA. ARE YOU?” Who could fail to agree with that? It is
the sort of self-righteous political claim (like “I’m pro-justice. Are you?”)
that is designed to cancel debate rather than to encourage it.
In its assertive power, it matches the stunningly successful campaign of Anna
Hazare, the born-again Gandhian who has tied up the government in knots with
his hunger strikes. Hazare, 74, was yesterday released from Delhi’s Tihar jail.
He refused to depart until he gained further concessions. He only left on
Thursday after he was granted permission by the authorities to hold a 15-day
hunger strike in a city park. The authorities find themselves in an absurd,
unwinnable situation.
Since the 1990s, India has changed faster than at any point in its history, and
its GDP has doubled in just over a decade. The partial unshackling of the
economy from state- administered control by the “Permit Raj” has set in train
an economic and social transformation. Unlike China, which depends on exports,
most of India’s boom and its rapid annual growth rate of 8 per cent arise from
home- grown expenditure and consumption. Billionaires abound in India, even as
hundreds of millions remain trapped in grotesque poverty. But perhaps more
important in the longer term, is the emergence of an ambitious and assertive
middle class.
This new middle class is impatient. It is not particularly concerned with
constitutional niceties or conventions, and it has seen other, less privileged
social groups gain political concessions through muscle power on the streets.
Immediately after independence in 1947, many institutions of the modern state
were set up or adapted from the colonial period. Some have functioned well,
while others have not. In the two decades since liberalisation, these
institutions have proved inadequate for dealing with the rapid pace of change.
The police and the Central Bureau of Investigation are often incompetent or
corrupt. The legal system is woefully slow, and almost a third of senior
judicial appointments are unfilled. Basic mechanisms for chasing corruption,
whether at state or at national level, do not function properly. In the past
year, the government has been hit by corruption allegations over contracts for
the 2010 Commonwealth games, the awarding of mobile phone operating licences,
and the construction of an apartment block for war widows which was allocated
to army chiefs and political cronies.
Politicians, many of whom are the sons and daughters of other politicians, have
failed to develop or entrench the reforms of the early 1990s. Effective
legislation has not been introduced to make things change. It is this failure
that makes people ready to back an outrider. They know the daily consequences
of corruption – having to bribe a policeman for a traffic offence, or an
official to issue a death certificate for a relative.
Anna Hazare’s message is simple. He is an elderly ex- soldier, an ascetic and a
disciplinarian. His dress is styled after Mahatma Gandhi. He dislikes alcohol,
cable television, the chewing of paan and the eating of meat – indeed when
three men from his village appeared drunk, he tied them to a temple pillar and
flogged them with his army belt. To his younger supporters, his old-fashioned,
undemocratic simplicity is attractive. There are other campaigners, such as
Irom Sharmila, an extraordinarily brave woman who has been on hunger strike for
more than 10 years (she is force fed) calling for an end to the mistreatment of
people in Manipur in the north- east. They have never attracted a fraction of
the interest that Hazare has gained.
To combat corruption, he proposes a new body, independent of government, which
would administer high-speed justice. It would have the power to investigate and
prosecute government officers, judges and politicians – even the prime
minister. His opponents suggest that, while well-intentioned, his proposal
would create a Gestapo. A year ago, the name of Anna Hazare was known mainly to
rural activists. In April, he catapulted to national attention by going on a
public fast at Jantar Mantar, Delhi’s equivalent of Speakers’ Corner. Crowds
gathered, politicians were ritually denounced and assorted movie stars joined
him on the dais. In the months since, Hazare and his cohorts have sought to
impose their programme on the government, buoyed by noisy public support.
This bizarre situation – where elected representatives started to bow to the
demands of a self-appointed saint – has depended only partially on the elderly
Gandhian’s canny, populist strategy. At every turn, the organisers of his
campaign have been aided by the blundering of the ruling Congress Party. Their
response has been a masterclass in ineptitude. First, they allowed Hazare and
his appointees from “civil society” to determine the proposed shape of new
legislation. Then they quarrelled with him as he began negotiating with senior
ministers; then they made concessions; then he announced he would go on another
hunger strike if further demands were not met.
Through all this, the government led by the 78-year-old bureaucrat turned prime
minister Manmohan Singh, has failed in even the most basic aspects of public
and media relations. They have not faced down the more preposterous aspects of
Hazare’s campaign. The ultimate leader of the Congress Party, the notoriously
private Sonia Gandhi, who keeps watch over Singh, has been in hospital in the
United States. It is apparent that even members of her entourage do not know
what is wrong with her, and information about her illness has certainly not
been shared with the nation. The opposition BJP has been able to direct the
debate over corruption, backing Hazare when and where it suits them, and
calling the Congress leaderless.
Now Hazare has cornered the government by raising the pitch of the argument,
just two days after India’s 64th independence day. A fast unto death is a
touchy subject in India because of the memory of Mahatma Gandhi, who used the
tactic against the British. One thing successive viceroys and prime ministers
particularly feared was the popular uprising that would quickly follow if he
died on their watch. The viceroy Lord Wavell wrote in his diary in 1944 that if
Gandhi were to die in prison: “I might go down to the readers of two thousand
years hence with the same reputation as Pontius Pilate.” Many in India are
calling the present events “the second freedom struggle”, since the government
is relying on quasi-colonial laws to maintain order and restrict freedom of
protest. There is the obvious irony of Congress being the party that used these
techniques against the British. The reality, though, is that Anna Hazare is an
imitation of Gandhi, pursuing a different agenda. But with the government
paralysed, the impetus is on his side.
First he was told that he would not be allowed to hold another public fast,
then when he refused to back down, the Delhi police carted him off to Tihar. As
a site of incarceration, it could not have been more badly chosen. It is home
to politicians and businessmen on trial for corruption, who have been refused
bail because of the angry public mood against graft. In a neighbouring cell
sits Suresh Kalmadi, accused of being responsible for awarding corrupt
contracts that led to the fiasco of the Commonwealth Games facilities not being
ready on time.
When the authorities switched tactics and released Hazare – supposedly at the
instigation of Rahul Gandhi, the heir apparent of the ruling dynasty – he
refused to budge. By this time though, the streets of many cities were packed
with furious supporters wearing “I AM ANNA” headbands. A train was stopped by
protesters, and other publicity-hungry campaigners – such as the wealthy godman
Baba Ramdev and the “Art of Living” guru Sri Sri Ravishankar – arrived to visit
Hazare.
In their anger and frustration, the striving members of the emerging middle
class who feel excluded from the halls of power, have turned to Hazare and his
promise of a silver bullet to end corruption. And his success will make it
increasingly difficult to argue against proposals which would, in practice,
create yet another layer of government in a country that has too much
bureaucracy, and would create a body armed with the kind of powers over the
lives of individuals that have previously only been given to Superman.
