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60 Responses to “Qalandar on Anna Hazare and his reception”
Both the pieces are in line with the respective authors’ previously stated positions and do not surprise me.
Both the authors are well read and have written well as usual….
Aside:-
Commies ka protest is valid protest, middle class protest kare tau saala Character dheela hai…..LOL!!
Aside 2- good to see you back Q!
…I also think they often make better conversationalists when it comes to Hindi movies. Most of my leftie acquaintances seem to completely miss the point of any popular Hindi cinema, from just about any era.
Yes here I too must concede this point. and even more specifically this applies to masala cinema where those on the left completely miss what this is about. The weird thing though is that the left should be softer on masala than it is and the opposite should be true for the right!
because middle class takes the heavy toll by constantly paying the taxes and is mostly affected by corruption. and silently frames the country’s economic policies..
the biggest plus point was the involvement of youth and if there energy is channelised like this lot of better things will help
Thanks for putting this up here,Satyam.
As usual it is exquisitely written but I didnt come out quite clear as to what his stance here is. Dont want to begin anoethr long discussion re the merits of Hazare’s movement. Suffice to say, it is not the answer. He is not perfect nor is his movement or supporters. It doesnt address everything that is wrong with Indian politics.But that doesnt take away much from it. Indian politicians need reminder from time to time that just because the majority remians silent on the corruption issue they cannot be taken for granted.
If some Dalits and Muslims did not choose to join the protest then that is their choice, Anaa ,Kejriwal or anyone did not stop them…..
Who was seeing that who is Dalit and who is Muslim in the crowd anyways????
Just because some Dalit netas and Bukhari say so, does not mean that they were not involved……….
btwq its just a start more reforms pending at administrative, judicial and electional level needs to be done:
though its not a compleate sucess but does had the following points in last:
1.Govt. did take back its version of Bill.
2. Govt. didn’t introduce Jan Lokpal.. but new bill will be very similar to it.
3. Its a parliamentary procedure. Every bill is refereed to standing committee.
4. Today’s Resolution is the commitment. It will be political blunder to move back from it.
5. Its included, except National Defence and public order function of PM.
6. MPs are included. Judiciary demand was withdrawn… Judicial Accountability Bill is demanded for that.
7. This is under discussion, few states have already implemented it.
8. It will be considered by state.
9. Lower bureaucracy is included.
Munna Bhai- read my comment again.. I have NOT objected to people not mouthing Vande Matram, however I have a real problem if these people have problem that why others are mouthing vande Matram…
Aside- although Subra Swami in Devil’s advocate recently had a very interesting take…….do watch it !!!
ever since the iconic Italian communist Antonio Gramsci conferred social autonomy on them, intellectuals have conveniently ceased to regard themselves as middle class. They may be from the class—or a community—but see themselves as being above it.
In the face of some of the most amazing assertions of people’s power throughout urban India, the intellectuals have reached for their guns screaming, ‘middle class’ and, therefore, regressive and potentially fascist. The flag-waving enthusiasm of young people and retired policewomen have been equated with World Cup boisterousness and chants of “Vande Mataram”, “Bharat Mata ki Jai” and the singing of “Ram Dhun” mocked as exclusionary Hindu symbolism. The heartfelt indignation of a people angry and exasperated by the venality of national life has been painted as assaults on Parliament, the Constitution and democracy. Yesterday’s argumentative Indian, we are now told, has been transformed into demented followers of Hitler. The starry-eyed romanticism that greeted Maoist insurgents in Bastar has abruptly become poison darts directed at a largely spontaneous but non-violent upsurge.
For decades, the middle classes have been pilloried for their lack of participation in India’s civic life. Their voting record was dismal and they have been charged with being preoccupied with their own families, their jobs, their consumerist excesses, Bollywood and cricket. Their rage at an unresponsive political class, an inefficient and leaky state and thwarted aspirations have been brushed aside contemptuously because they lacked collective clout. Now, when they have come out on the streets to challenge one of the foremost impediments to India’s emergence as a global economic power, they are being charged with impetuosity and impatience.
bukhari’s political stand is known for long ..many know which party’s political agent he is …. its india who is tolerating this guy who openly called for partition of india again …
its heartning to see middle class becoming political conscious and slowly its making way to lower middle class and its time to include their assertiveness … its one of the great things which happened to indian democracy
time to make things accountable ….as for politicians and sycophants in their case there was always a thin line between commonsense and nonsense
In my opinion, Anna Hazare’s movement is a major plus for Indian democracy. And to object to its raison d’être — corruption in public life — is to completely miss the point. It is true that there are possibly other problems facing the country and they need their space and focus too. It’s just that the massive outpouring of support to his call implies that corruption indeed is the most “inclusive” problem for the Indian populace. And if I may be allowed the freedom to say this, armchair criticism of such movements are usually devoid of any alternative solutions to the problem. Yes, any criticism of his movement needs to offer a formal solution. And one that’s practical too.
Anna Hazare isn’t an Oxford or Harvard educated intellectual with a doctorate in Social Sciences; he’s a man of the masses. A thoroughly simple man with a great track record for enforcing social change, in today’s age and time, he’s almost as venerable as the Mahatma himself. But even leaving Anna Hazare aside, the most basic criticism against his crusade overlooks the “cascading” effect of such movements, or any political movement for that matter. If it’s viewed in isolation, one can often surmise (incorrectly, in my view) that it will not amount to much. That the Indian society or the vast middle class is doing token service and will ultimately go back to its previous state of political apathy once the fervor dies down.
That is indeed a possibility, but what gives me hope is that such a movement has accounted for such huge numbers when economically the country’s doing well. In normal circumstances, this kind of resonance is only witnessed when the economic structure of the country is about to break down, paving the way for widespread social unrest. The terms of the debate would have been vastly different if the GDP was showing negative growth instead of a healthy 8-9%. An increasingly “assertive” middle class is a good sign for any nation, which is a point missed by many. It’s naive to assume that this kind of militant activism will set a dangerous precedent simply because the central “issue” needs to be truly inclusive in nature.
Moreover, the fact that social as well as political upheaval stems from economic evolution should not be overlooked here. The expanding middle class is not happy to live in a cocoon of comfort, but is willing to ask some tough questions. Team Anna has even proposed a ‘Right to Recall’ bill, even more aggressive than the Jan Lokpal Bill, where the voting population would have the right to recall a sitting MP based on non-performance. It’s easy to be cynical, but there’s also a chance that this isn’t an isolated movement. There’s a possibility that this first movement could initiate a chain reaction that could alter the whole political landscape of the country. And therein lies the true worth of such an agitation – once the wheels of change are set into motion, it’s very difficult to go back. Major social upheavals will follow, as is the case with any domino effect witnessed in history.
logically let me ask a simple question if the leaders can be elected by 2 constituencies and they can resign themselves why not a right to recall is not practicable
Q – It is more a long note on politics than corruption. Read it multiple times but couldn’t get what is your thought process except that you don’t agree with this form of protest
ps – “power to call elected politicians to account, but which would not itself be elected” – Our honoroable Supreme court has that power. And those elected officials get 30-40% of 60% casted vote (of Total votes). Taking your position that the movement was not inclusive, I would say our elected officials are not inclusive as 75% (or more if you include people below age of 18 years) of people were not behind him/her!
ps1 – I am sure you must have read this, if not it is pretty comprehensive in who could be Lokpal and its members. Point (3 to 6)
A crazy man is running around naked on the streets. Some are horrified.Most are too caught up in their daily humdrum to do anything. Someone comes and puts a pair of trousers on the guy and then some ( who never bothered to do anything)start objecting with criticisms like:
It is too long.
It is too short.
It doesnt cover his chest.
It is not made in India
No minorities workers were employed in the factory where it was produced.
There is logo on it with a prominent H – obviously an act by a Hindu extremist.,
And, so on.
My problem though is that we keep talking about what kinds of clothes to put on crazy, naked men but never about how they got crazy and naked in the first place!
Or to put it another way we keep talking about crazy, naked men so that we never have to talk about young, sane men or sane and crazy women and so on!
Re: what kinds of clothes to put on crazy, naked men but never about how they got crazy and naked in the first place!
In all seriousness, that is a worthwhile debate to have but it cannot be used to negate the attempt to cloth the naked ,crazy man. I dont think even Anna claims that his bill is an all inclusive solution for all that ails the Indian democracy. A solution that solves a part of the problem cannot be mocked at because it doesnt fix the entire problem. Particularly when no one has the means, the motivation and the wherewithal to tackle the entire problem. By doing this, we would be doing a huge disservice to anyone trying to cre the ailments of the behemoth that is India ndemocracy.
that’s true but my debate has always been less directed at Anna Hazare and far more at the excitement among India’s middle classes who suddenly think a new country awaits them. I believe they will be disappointed on this very issue forget any other. If all it took was a commission or the like most of India’s problems would have been eliminated a long time ago!
Re: India’s middle classes who suddenly think a new country awaits them.
I dont think that they are stupid enough to expect that.They are just taking a little joy in the rare oppurtunity to ‘stick it to the bad guy’.
Indian middle class is hardly stupid. They might be diinterested,disgruntled but not STUPID.
Don’t think they’re stupid at all. It’s an ideological position through and through.. as I’ve said in other comments it’s a way of avoiding real politics.
Of course as a more general matter I don’t have any great faith in the collective intelligence of nations!
GF Says: You guys are just asking for alex’s brazen political take here.
Satyam Says:Yes he scared me from referring to the female equivalent of the crazy, naked man…
lol haha—just trying to sort certain pending chores and am trying to resist what might be a long drawn discussion on this topic.
incidentally and expectedly, this “crazy naked male ” reminds me of another v interesting analogy.
But due to its somewhat graphic nature and the presence of certain impressionable and (even more ) conservative souls around here—will resist the temptation to outline it…..
btw–Havent followed this current “movement” beyond a point and anyhow it will be an “outsiders detached view”!!
But to be precise and succinct—
Applaud this non-violent mass movement of looking /daring the establishment in the eye. This itself is an event –without even going into the intricacies. Time takes care of all his attendant background noise eventually but certain irreversible changes are indeed
Beyond a point, however, I feel–Power corrupts in ANY hand!!
Sometimes, “revolution” or “reform” is a question of “change of seat of power”.
Here, transfer of power from the PM/cabinet to the ombudsman (lokpal)
Human being was/is/will be a naughty (to be polite!)creature by default and without fail!
My personal take is somewhat bordering in the realms of (what is now called) tempered/skillful dictatorship—know im opening a can of worms (delberately)
Forget about a nation, this model can be illustrated even in small settings like a company (dealing with junior employees/
subordinates).
Sometimes one has to tolerate the smaller evil to keep the bigger one out.
The whims and quirks of a “reasonable” autocrat seem unsavoury but infact keeps lots of other bigger evils out (just by force).
Also believe somewhat in (Pavolvs) operant conditioning not only for human beings but also for small/big institutions, companies, nations!
In short, human being (by definition) cannot be trusted!!
However, there are many ways of sugar-lacing this “operant conditioning” –only a small aspect of which is clubbed under “management”/”carrot &stick”/”reward schemes” for the layman nowadays!!!
Just finished watching Fair game- what a powerful movie , superb performances from Penn and Naomi….
the following scene is chillingly akin to- Anna hazara movement call…
I was so impressed with this movie that I rewatched the entire movie with the commentry by Valerie Plame and Joe Wilson turned on…what an experience….wish they had deleted scenes etc. on the blue ray……
A I do not think so. Annaji is controlled by these people. They have no respect for him, only for the brand he has become. He is [physically] weak and has a host of ailments, but all these people want him for, is to fast. These people should be kicked out of the movement; otherwise, there will be no future for it.
Q What are Anna’s compulsions in retaining Kejriwal, Bedi and Bhushan?
A Financial and health compulsions. The movement has generated huge sums of money. Kejriwal is the custodian. The funds generated by the Anna Hazare brand are not in his hands, they are controlled by Kejriwal, Bedi and Bhushan. Annaji does not know how to manage the funds, so he is dependent on these people. They know this and are exploiting the situation.
remember reading this, I think you had posted this elsewhere… was a fascinating read.
Did you notice how Sagrika Ghose blatantly forged the entire FTN show….OMG !!
If she was not the CNNIBN’s owners’s wife , she would have been sacked !!
Anna Hazare demands Bharat Ratna for Sachin Tendulkar
PTI | Nov 16, 2011, 09.15PM IST
AHMEDNAGAR: Social activist Anna Hazare has said Sachin Tendulkar should be conferred with the Bharat Ratna, joining a long list of admirers who have demanded the country’s top civilian honour for the cricketer.
“Sachin Tendulkar is an icon for Indian youth. He has made India proud with his exploits in cricket. I feel he deserves the Bharat Ratna,” the anti-graft crusader said after inaugurating a tennis tournament in memory of his late mother Laxmibai at his native village Ralegan Siddhi.
The 38-year-old Tendulkar has to his name most of the batting records in Test and ODI cricket, including being the highest run-scorer and century maker in both formats, besides being the only male cricketer to score a double-hundred in ODIs.
He is on the brink of becoming the first cricketer ever to score hundred international centuries, having already hit 99 tons (51 in Tests and 48 in ODIs).
This is the first in a new NYRblog series about the fate of democracy in different parts of the world.
Growing up in India in the 1970s and 80s, I often heard people in upper-caste middle class circles say that parliamentary democracy was ill-suited to the country. Recoiling from populist politicians who pandered to the poor, many Indians solemnly invoked the example of Singapore’s leader Lee Kuan Yew. Here was an Oxbridge-educated and suitably enlightened autocrat, who suffered no nonsense about democracy, and, furthermore, believed firmly in the efficacy of publicly caning even minor breakers of the law. Devising his wise policies with the help of experts and technocrats, he simply imposed them on the population. Lee Kuan Yew’s success in transforming a city-state into a major economic power was apparent to all: clean, shiny, efficient, and prosperous Singapore, the very antithesis of corrupt and squalor-prone India.
Such yearnings for technocratic utopia may seem to have little in common with the middle class protests against “corruption” that recently gained much attention before abruptly losing steam at the end of the year. Led by Anna Hazare—an army veteran described in the foreign press as a “simple man in a Gandhian cap” when he went on a hunger strike last summer— the movement was presented by sections of the media in both India and the West as a long overdue political awakening of the middle class, even as India’s “second freedom struggle.” With his unambiguous denunciations of venality in public life, Hazare seemed to have alerted tens of millions of otherwise apolitical Indians to the possibilities of civil society, mass mobilization, and grass-roots activism.
And yet over the past few weeks the movement has dramatically collapsed, with its support dwindling and the key reforms it supported stalled by Indian politicians, who are determined not to cede their legislative authority to someone they see as an interloper. As he gained prominence, Hazare’s articulate spokespersons had trouble shielding his own less appealing views from public scrutiny. It turns out, for example, that the so-called “Gandhian” methods that he relied on to create a “model village” in his native central Indian town included flogging and beating; he also advocated hanging for corrupt politicians. And then there was his barely disguised Hindu chauvinism; he was ready, he claimed, to go to war with Pakistan in order to maintain the Muslim-majority valley of Kashmir as an “integral” part of India.
Questions are now being raised about how Indian television networks portrayed the movement: whether, as India’s leading scholarly journal, Economic and Political Weekly (EPW) asked recently, middle class reporters providing a “saturation” of mostly adulatory coverage of Hazare to an essentially middle class audience exaggerated his influence and impact, converting “a protest into a ‘movement,’ a few cities and a village into ‘the nation.’”
In fact, all along, there was little about Hazare and his conspicuously middle class followers that suggested support for greater democracy—which in an overwhelmingly poor country like India has always been synonymous with the promise of social justice and dignity to the majority. Over the past two decades, as India’s economy has opened up to globalization, the ranks of India’s middle and upper middle classes have grown—current figures, in the generally boosterish discourse of investment consultants, range from McKinsey’s cautious but still generous 150 million, or less than 20 percent of the population, to the wild-sounding 300 million.
The international image of an inexorably “rising” India is largely due to these Indian beneficiaries of global capitalism. As Amartya Sen points out, “since the fortunate group includes not only business leaders and the professional classes, but also the bulk of the country’s intellectuals, the story of unusual national advancement gets, directly or indirectly, much aired — making an alleged reality out of what is at best a very partial story.”
With this mostly urban constituency in mind, Hazare’s vision was narrowly focused on the alleged misdeeds of elected officials—above all those in the ruling National Congress Party, which has traditionally sought votes from the Indian poor—and bureaucrats. Among other things, he called for the establishment of an unelected anticorruption agency, which, lavishly budgeted, would have extraordinarily wide powers of surveillance, policing, and prosecution—and, by implication, make the state more efficient and technocratic and less encumbered by the unruly and lengthy processes of parliamentary democracy.
The current Indian government has been marred by a series of corruption scandals, particularly one involving its auctioning of the mobile phone spectrum, which resulted in the loss of an astounding $39 billion to the national exchequer. And yet, by failing to elaborate what he meant by “corruption,” Hazare left many important questions unanswered. For instance, is corruption really a malignant tumor in India’s political and economic system, one that can be excised with some effort, or, is corruption, in many ways, the system itself? As Katherine Boo points out in her new book Behind the Beautiful Forevers, a chronicle of lives in a Mumbai slum, “in the West, and among some in the Indian elite, this word, corruption, had purely negative connotations; it was seen as blocking India’s modern, global ambitions.” But few of these critics of corruption acknowledge that, as Boo writes, “among powerful Indians, the distribution of opportunity was typically an insider trade.” This was demonstrated most recently by a series of taped phone conversations, made public in late 2010 by the news magazine Outlook, between a corporate lobbyist and some of India’s most famous businessmen, journalists, and politicians (some of them can be found among Hazare’s more well-off supporters), which revealed how powerful businessmen not only influenced economic policy-making, ensuring clear playing fields for themselves, but also managed to install their own candidates in senior ministerial positions, such as the telecom minister accused of underselling the mobile phone spectrum to his preferred bidders.
Keeping the definition of corruption deliberately vague, and speaking of it in mostly moral and sentimental terms, Hazare’s campaign acquired some support from the urban poor, even as he worked to put the democratic system at the mercy of a few self-appointed guardians of morality. Hazare never focused on the distress resulting from income inequality, which has doubled in the last two decades, or on the gross abuses of corporate as well as state power: the dispossession, for instance, of the rural poor by mining companies, or human rights abuses by Indian security forces in Muslim-majority Kashmir. There was more clarity to be had about the aims of Hazare’s movement from its affluent supporters, which included glamorous figures from Bollywood, the media, and India’s iconic companies. Many of them call for an end to the state’s subsidies for the poor and low-caste Indians. These “rising” Indians see social welfare programs as wasteful, and endangering the apparently smooth working of the free market, even though, as Amartya Sen recently observed, they “don’t question things such as subsidy on diesel for rich people….Whenever something is thought of to help poor, hungry people, some bring out the fiscal hat and say, ‘My God, this is irresponsible.’”
In part, such responses reflect the misgivings that have emerged as India’s extraordinarily ambitious experiment in mass democracy has collided with its equally bold experiment in free-market capitalism. The complaints against democracy I heard growing up had already become more strident in the 1980s and 1990s, when many previously suppressed and voiceless Indians began to challenge the supremacy of upper-caste politicians, and the “unwashed” masses began to throw support behind their own leaders–rustic politicians with alarming manners–such as Uttar Pradesh’s Dalit “Queen” Mayawati and Laloo Prasad Yadav of Bihar–who embodied, in nervous middle class imaginations, the “Caligulan barbarity” of India, as Salman Rushdie put it, portraying a politician based on Yadav in his novel The Ground Beneath Her Feet.
Over the years, as India embarked upon rapid economic growth, an expanded middle class and businessmen seeking greater political influence gravitated to authoritarian figures within the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the right-wing Hindu nationalist party that held power in Delhi from 1998 to 2004. The most prominent of these is Narendra Modi, the chief minister of Gujarat, who has attracted many of India’s leading businessmen to his state by offering low corporate taxes and special economic zones and suppressing all trade union activity. Accused of complicity in the murder of more than 2,000 Muslims in the anti-Muslim riots in Gujarat in 2002, Modi is nevertheless hailed as a “dynamic” leader by India’s leading businessmen, such as Ratan Tata and Mukesh Ambani—and has been recently praised by Hazare. (Dogged by court cases stemming from the massacre, however, he is unlikely to realize his ambitions to become prime minister.)
In the 2000s, many middle class hopes and expectations came to be invested in Manmohan Singh, prime minister since 2004. Though he belonged to the National Congress party, he seemed to embody the superior wisdom of the technocrats; educated at Oxford, he had worked as a World Bank and IMF economist, and had never been elected to the Indian parliament. Yet under Singh growth in India has remained wildly uneven—and deeply compromised by corporate influence on political processes. A U.S. diplomatic cable released this year by Wikileaks shows a senior Hindu nationalist politician admitting that virtually all economic growth of recent years has been concentrated in the four southern states, two western states (Gujarat and Maharashtra) and “within 100km of Delhi.” In another cable about Pranab Mukherjee, the finance minister being groomed to be India’s next PM, Hillary Clinton is revealingly blunt: “To which industrial or business groups is Mukherjee beholden?”
During Singh’s reign as prime minister, India has also witnessed a strong backlash against globalization among the poor. The most striking instance is the militant Communist movement representing landless peasants and indigenous forest peoples in Central India—these are Indians fighting their dispossession by mining companies that are backed by the Indian government. Early last year, India’s Supreme Court censured the government for creating an informal militia against Communist militants. Claiming that “the poor are being pushed to the wall,” the court blamed increasing violence in the country on “predatory forms of capitalism, supported by the state.”
Since then Singh has also lost his main constituency: the beneficiaries, both real and potential, of “rising” India. Periodicals such as Foreign Affairs, The Economist, and The Financial Times that in 2005 hailed India as a “roaring capitalist success story” now wonder if India is descending into a Latin-American-style oligarchy. In recent months the global recession has also begun to affect the Indian economy. Inflation is running into double digits. Industrial production has declined; at one point, the rupee had fallen nearly 20 percent again the dollar; and foreign capital—the mainstay of India’s remarkable growth in the last decade—flows steadily out of the country. As though sensing the prevailing winds, India’s biggest companies are putting the bulk of their investments abroad.
Among the middle class Indians convinced that “India Shining” (in the election slogan of the BJP) is on the verge of becoming a superpower, these recent setbacks have been met with stunned disbelief, followed by rage against the most visible target: a corrupt, social-welfarist state. Not surprisingly, the demand raised by Anna Hazare’s middle class protesters was mind-numbingly simple: political corruption must be eradicated from India in order to make the country more business friendly and speed up its tryst with greatness. Initially, Hazare’s message benefited greatly from a rightward shift by India’s corporate-owned dailies and 24-hour news channels, where pundits spoke excitedly of the politicization of previously apathetic businessmen and salary earners, hailing the rise of civil society against a venal and inept government. But when it came to concrete legislative action, the absence of broad support for this authoritarian-minded movement became clear.
In reality, the Indian government is paralyzed between its old promise of basic sustenance and justice to the poor majority, and its increasing—perhaps, unavoidable—embrace of a form of capitalism that, geared toward private wealth creation, makes such social democracy unsustainable. Hazare’s insistence that the government, overruling parliament, adopt his plan for an anti-corruption czar, was far less about protecting the rights of the masses than establishing the grounds for a Lee Kuan Yew-style technocracy: one that with arbitrary and unlimited power over all Indian citizens could bypass democratic institutions, enhancing the political power of an unelected, unaccountable, and fundamentally anti-political elite.
Few assumptions about India’s middle class, or even about the “free” Indian media, as carriers of democratic values have emerged unscathed from his movement. The social media networks that helped Hazare were far from being hard-wired for democracy. Citing an extensive survey that revealed urban youth in India to be profoundly right-wing, the Indian novelist and TV anchor Sagarika Ghose pointed out recently that Facebook and Twitter, crucial to the Tahrir Square uprising in Egypt, are “dominated” in India “by young people openly pouring scorn on ‘pseudo-secular liberals,’ minorities and the so-called ‘anti-nationals.’”
Shrinking into irrelevance, Hazare’s movement still offers an important lesson: that the much-vaunted civil society really is an open space in which the Moral Majority and Tea Party, Gaza’s Hamas, Egypt’s Salafis, and India’s RSS can flourish just as well as such progressive movements as Occupy Wall Street and the Arab liberals who many assumed were the source of last year’s uprisings. Civil society can host an insurrection of the masses, as in Tahrir Square, and also stage, as in India or Thailand, a revolt of the elites. As for the idea that middle classes in developing countries ensure the spread of democracy, it seems just as persuasive as the communist teleology that made revolution by working classes in developed countries look inevitable.
August 30, 2011 at 9:06 AM
said something similar though far less eloquently here:
http://satyamshot.wordpress.com/2011/06/15/bachchan-1154/#comment-102754
August 30, 2011 at 10:15 AM
Disagree on the “far less eloquently” part — I had read that, it is a fantastic comment…
August 30, 2011 at 10:31 AM
Both the pieces are in line with the respective authors’ previously stated positions and do not surprise me.
Both the authors are well read and have written well as usual….
Aside:-
Commies ka protest is valid protest, middle class protest kare tau saala Character dheela hai…..LOL!!
Aside 2- good to see you back Q!
August 30, 2011 at 10:36 AM
LOL! And good to be chided by you once again! Right-wingers make great friends. I just don’t want them in government!
August 30, 2011 at 10:38 AM
…I also think they often make better conversationalists when it comes to Hindi movies. Most of my leftie acquaintances seem to completely miss the point of any popular Hindi cinema, from just about any era.
August 30, 2011 at 10:43 AM
Yes here I too must concede this point. and even more specifically this applies to masala cinema where those on the left completely miss what this is about. The weird thing though is that the left should be softer on masala than it is and the opposite should be true for the right!
August 30, 2011 at 10:39 AM
LOL !!
aside-Om Puri made a complete a$$ of himself trying to defend his statement!
August 30, 2011 at 10:42 AM
agreed..
August 30, 2011 at 1:03 PM
because middle class takes the heavy toll by constantly paying the taxes and is mostly affected by corruption. and silently frames the country’s economic policies..
the biggest plus point was the involvement of youth and if there energy is channelised like this lot of better things will help
August 30, 2011 at 1:06 PM
agree iffron and another plus point was it being Non Violent…
August 30, 2011 at 10:22 AM
Thanks for putting this up here,Satyam.
As usual it is exquisitely written but I didnt come out quite clear as to what his stance here is. Dont want to begin anoethr long discussion re the merits of Hazare’s movement. Suffice to say, it is not the answer. He is not perfect nor is his movement or supporters. It doesnt address everything that is wrong with Indian politics.But that doesnt take away much from it. Indian politicians need reminder from time to time that just because the majority remians silent on the corruption issue they cannot be taken for granted.
August 30, 2011 at 10:35 AM
To be honest rajen, if the piece is unclear it probably accurately reflects my views, in that I am more than a little conflicted about it…
August 30, 2011 at 10:35 AM
If some Dalits and Muslims did not choose to join the protest then that is their choice, Anaa ,Kejriwal or anyone did not stop them…..
Who was seeing that who is Dalit and who is Muslim in the crowd anyways????
Just because some Dalit netas and Bukhari say so, does not mean that they were not involved……….
August 30, 2011 at 10:17 PM
I don’t know what has corruption has do to do with Dalit or Muslims or any criteria?
Infact Kejriwal’s speech was very inclusive and invoked Ambedkar many times before Anna broke his fast. Many Muslim leaders objected to Bhukari.
http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2011-08-28/mumbai/29937652_1_shahi-imam-syed-ahmed-bukhari-delhi-s-jama-masjid
http://www.indianexpress.com/news/muslim-leaders-back-anna-in-fight-against-corruption/836710/
http://www.hindustantimes.com/Mumbai-Muslims-differ-with-Delhi-Imam-over-Hazare-campaign/Article1-737249.aspx
Bedi and Kejriwal met Bhukari to allay his apprehensions..
http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/article2389143.ece
August 30, 2011 at 10:43 AM
Add GF’s reading of the New Agneepath’s BGM to the mix and you have the troika of Raavan, Kans and Duryodharna here …..LOL!!
August 30, 2011 at 10:45 AM
Ha!!! On that note not sure if you saw this the other day:
http://satyamshot.wordpress.com/2011/08/23/arundhati-roy-on-anna-hazare-hindu/#comment-102614
August 30, 2011 at 12:02 PM
I was hoping you’d pick up on that comment, LOL!
August 30, 2011 at 12:57 PM
glad to have not disapppointed you..LOL!!
August 30, 2011 at 12:35 PM
totally diagree to core neverthless a good write up but it ignore the support at root level for a noble cause and the ground realities
August 30, 2011 at 12:43 PM
btwq its just a start more reforms pending at administrative, judicial and electional level needs to be done:
though its not a compleate sucess but does had the following points in last:
1.Govt. did take back its version of Bill.
2. Govt. didn’t introduce Jan Lokpal.. but new bill will be very similar to it.
3. Its a parliamentary procedure. Every bill is refereed to standing committee.
4. Today’s Resolution is the commitment. It will be political blunder to move back from it.
5. Its included, except National Defence and public order function of PM.
6. MPs are included. Judiciary demand was withdrawn… Judicial Accountability Bill is demanded for that.
7. This is under discussion, few states have already implemented it.
8. It will be considered by state.
9. Lower bureaucracy is included.
August 30, 2011 at 12:59 PM
People who have problems with Vande Matram and Bharat Mata Kee Jai should leave Bharat……IMO….
August 30, 2011 at 10:24 PM
I don’t agree with it. For some people mouthing it would be uncomfortable for other reasons (language , religion) not that they are not patriotic.
August 31, 2011 at 8:01 PM
Munna Bhai- read my comment again.. I have NOT objected to people not mouthing Vande Matram, however I have a real problem if these people have problem that why others are mouthing vande Matram…
Aside- although Subra Swami in Devil’s advocate recently had a very interesting take…….do watch it !!!
August 30, 2011 at 1:03 PM
Don’t mess with the middle class
http://www.swapan55.com/
ever since the iconic Italian communist Antonio Gramsci conferred social autonomy on them, intellectuals have conveniently ceased to regard themselves as middle class. They may be from the class—or a community—but see themselves as being above it.
In the face of some of the most amazing assertions of people’s power throughout urban India, the intellectuals have reached for their guns screaming, ‘middle class’ and, therefore, regressive and potentially fascist. The flag-waving enthusiasm of young people and retired policewomen have been equated with World Cup boisterousness and chants of “Vande Mataram”, “Bharat Mata ki Jai” and the singing of “Ram Dhun” mocked as exclusionary Hindu symbolism. The heartfelt indignation of a people angry and exasperated by the venality of national life has been painted as assaults on Parliament, the Constitution and democracy. Yesterday’s argumentative Indian, we are now told, has been transformed into demented followers of Hitler. The starry-eyed romanticism that greeted Maoist insurgents in Bastar has abruptly become poison darts directed at a largely spontaneous but non-violent upsurge.
For decades, the middle classes have been pilloried for their lack of participation in India’s civic life. Their voting record was dismal and they have been charged with being preoccupied with their own families, their jobs, their consumerist excesses, Bollywood and cricket. Their rage at an unresponsive political class, an inefficient and leaky state and thwarted aspirations have been brushed aside contemptuously because they lacked collective clout. Now, when they have come out on the streets to challenge one of the foremost impediments to India’s emergence as a global economic power, they are being charged with impetuosity and impatience.
August 30, 2011 at 1:07 PM
bukhari’s political stand is known for long ..many know which party’s political agent he is …. its india who is tolerating this guy who openly called for partition of india again …
August 30, 2011 at 1:24 PM
its heartning to see middle class becoming political conscious and slowly its making way to lower middle class and its time to include their assertiveness … its one of the great things which happened to indian democracy
time to make things accountable ….as for politicians and sycophants in their case there was always a thin line between commonsense and nonsense
August 30, 2011 at 1:35 PM
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Lokpal-stir-Anna-propped-up-as-saint-says-Arundhati-Roy/articleshow/9799619.cms
btw its called a loss of mental imbalancement
new rant of rao from cia to rss to corporates now its time for world bank( whole world is behind it except chinese communalism)
she is comparing it to pornography
she deserving is the new rakhi sawant/paris hiltion of literature
August 30, 2011 at 6:15 PM
In my opinion, Anna Hazare’s movement is a major plus for Indian democracy. And to object to its raison d’être — corruption in public life — is to completely miss the point. It is true that there are possibly other problems facing the country and they need their space and focus too. It’s just that the massive outpouring of support to his call implies that corruption indeed is the most “inclusive” problem for the Indian populace. And if I may be allowed the freedom to say this, armchair criticism of such movements are usually devoid of any alternative solutions to the problem. Yes, any criticism of his movement needs to offer a formal solution. And one that’s practical too.
Anna Hazare isn’t an Oxford or Harvard educated intellectual with a doctorate in Social Sciences; he’s a man of the masses. A thoroughly simple man with a great track record for enforcing social change, in today’s age and time, he’s almost as venerable as the Mahatma himself. But even leaving Anna Hazare aside, the most basic criticism against his crusade overlooks the “cascading” effect of such movements, or any political movement for that matter. If it’s viewed in isolation, one can often surmise (incorrectly, in my view) that it will not amount to much. That the Indian society or the vast middle class is doing token service and will ultimately go back to its previous state of political apathy once the fervor dies down.
That is indeed a possibility, but what gives me hope is that such a movement has accounted for such huge numbers when economically the country’s doing well. In normal circumstances, this kind of resonance is only witnessed when the economic structure of the country is about to break down, paving the way for widespread social unrest. The terms of the debate would have been vastly different if the GDP was showing negative growth instead of a healthy 8-9%. An increasingly “assertive” middle class is a good sign for any nation, which is a point missed by many. It’s naive to assume that this kind of militant activism will set a dangerous precedent simply because the central “issue” needs to be truly inclusive in nature.
Moreover, the fact that social as well as political upheaval stems from economic evolution should not be overlooked here. The expanding middle class is not happy to live in a cocoon of comfort, but is willing to ask some tough questions. Team Anna has even proposed a ‘Right to Recall’ bill, even more aggressive than the Jan Lokpal Bill, where the voting population would have the right to recall a sitting MP based on non-performance. It’s easy to be cynical, but there’s also a chance that this isn’t an isolated movement. There’s a possibility that this first movement could initiate a chain reaction that could alter the whole political landscape of the country. And therein lies the true worth of such an agitation – once the wheels of change are set into motion, it’s very difficult to go back. Major social upheavals will follow, as is the case with any domino effect witnessed in history.
August 31, 2011 at 12:37 AM
logically let me ask a simple question if the leaders can be elected by 2 constituencies and they can resign themselves why not a right to recall is not practicable
http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2010-08-18/india/28304714_1_regional-parties-bjp-and-bsp-national-parties
August 31, 2011 at 8:03 PM
great comment Saket…
August 31, 2011 at 10:28 PM
Excellent comment Saket.. your point on popular mobilization is particularly persuasive.
August 30, 2011 at 11:09 PM
Q – It is more a long note on politics than corruption. Read it multiple times but couldn’t get what is your thought process except that you don’t agree with this form of protest
ps – “power to call elected politicians to account, but which would not itself be elected” – Our honoroable Supreme court has that power. And those elected officials get 30-40% of 60% casted vote (of Total votes). Taking your position that the movement was not inclusive, I would say our elected officials are not inclusive as 75% (or more if you include people below age of 18 years) of people were not behind him/her!
ps1 – I am sure you must have read this, if not it is pretty comprehensive in who could be Lokpal and its members. Point (3 to 6)
http://www.annahazare.org/pdf/Jan%20lokpal%20bill%20by%20Expert%20(Eng).pdf
August 31, 2011 at 10:28 AM
The whole episode can be summed by this metaphor:
A crazy man is running around naked on the streets. Some are horrified.Most are too caught up in their daily humdrum to do anything. Someone comes and puts a pair of trousers on the guy and then some ( who never bothered to do anything)start objecting with criticisms like:
It is too long.
It is too short.
It doesnt cover his chest.
It is not made in India
No minorities workers were employed in the factory where it was produced.
There is logo on it with a prominent H – obviously an act by a Hindu extremist.,
And, so on.
August 31, 2011 at 12:12 PM
LOL, good one!
My problem though is that we keep talking about what kinds of clothes to put on crazy, naked men but never about how they got crazy and naked in the first place!
Or to put it another way we keep talking about crazy, naked men so that we never have to talk about young, sane men or sane and crazy women and so on!
August 31, 2011 at 12:27 PM
You guys are just asking for alex’s brazen political take here.
August 31, 2011 at 12:45 PM
Yes he scared me from referring to the female equivalent of the crazy, naked man…
August 31, 2011 at 8:04 PM
LOL Rajen……
August 31, 2011 at 2:12 PM
Re: what kinds of clothes to put on crazy, naked men but never about how they got crazy and naked in the first place!
In all seriousness, that is a worthwhile debate to have but it cannot be used to negate the attempt to cloth the naked ,crazy man. I dont think even Anna claims that his bill is an all inclusive solution for all that ails the Indian democracy. A solution that solves a part of the problem cannot be mocked at because it doesnt fix the entire problem. Particularly when no one has the means, the motivation and the wherewithal to tackle the entire problem. By doing this, we would be doing a huge disservice to anyone trying to cre the ailments of the behemoth that is India ndemocracy.
August 31, 2011 at 2:20 PM
that’s true but my debate has always been less directed at Anna Hazare and far more at the excitement among India’s middle classes who suddenly think a new country awaits them. I believe they will be disappointed on this very issue forget any other. If all it took was a commission or the like most of India’s problems would have been eliminated a long time ago!
August 31, 2011 at 2:29 PM
Re: India’s middle classes who suddenly think a new country awaits them.
I dont think that they are stupid enough to expect that.They are just taking a little joy in the rare oppurtunity to ‘stick it to the bad guy’.
Indian middle class is hardly stupid. They might be diinterested,disgruntled but not STUPID.
August 31, 2011 at 6:01 PM
Don’t think they’re stupid at all. It’s an ideological position through and through.. as I’ve said in other comments it’s a way of avoiding real politics.
Of course as a more general matter I don’t have any great faith in the collective intelligence of nations!
August 31, 2011 at 2:32 PM
I’m in danger of being dragged into rise of planet of apes– any good??
August 31, 2011 at 5:05 PM
I loved it..
September 1, 2011 at 2:35 AM
WAY better than I expected — I HIGHLY recommend this Alex!
August 31, 2011 at 6:35 PM
GF Says: You guys are just asking for alex’s brazen political take here.
Satyam Says:Yes he scared me from referring to the female equivalent of the crazy, naked man…
lol haha—just trying to sort certain pending chores and am trying to resist what might be a long drawn discussion on this topic.
incidentally and expectedly, this “crazy naked male ” reminds me of another v interesting analogy.
But due to its somewhat graphic nature and the presence of certain impressionable and (even more ) conservative souls around here—will resist the temptation to outline it…..
btw–Havent followed this current “movement” beyond a point and anyhow it will be an “outsiders detached view”!!
But to be precise and succinct—
Applaud this non-violent mass movement of looking /daring the establishment in the eye. This itself is an event –without even going into the intricacies. Time takes care of all his attendant background noise eventually but certain irreversible changes are indeed
Beyond a point, however, I feel–Power corrupts in ANY hand!!
Sometimes, “revolution” or “reform” is a question of “change of seat of power”.
Here, transfer of power from the PM/cabinet to the ombudsman (lokpal)
Human being was/is/will be a naughty (to be polite!)creature by default and without fail!
My personal take is somewhat bordering in the realms of (what is now called) tempered/skillful dictatorship—know im opening a can of worms (delberately)
Forget about a nation, this model can be illustrated even in small settings like a company (dealing with junior employees/
subordinates).
Sometimes one has to tolerate the smaller evil to keep the bigger one out.
The whims and quirks of a “reasonable” autocrat seem unsavoury but infact keeps lots of other bigger evils out (just by force).
Also believe somewhat in (Pavolvs) operant conditioning not only for human beings but also for small/big institutions, companies, nations!
In short, human being (by definition) cannot be trusted!!
However, there are many ways of sugar-lacing this “operant conditioning” –only a small aspect of which is clubbed under “management”/”carrot &stick”/”reward schemes” for the layman nowadays!!!
August 31, 2011 at 8:06 PM
Satyam Can you please delete the two videos that I have posted……. they are not contributing anything constructive here…..
September 3, 2011 at 5:50 AM
The Hero Myth
September 3, 2011 at 9:50 PM
Just finished watching Fair game- what a powerful movie , superb performances from Penn and Naomi….
the following scene is chillingly akin to- Anna hazara movement call…
September 4, 2011 at 10:51 AM
I was so impressed with this movie that I rewatched the entire movie with the commentry by Valerie Plame and Joe Wilson turned on…what an experience….wish they had deleted scenes etc. on the blue ray……
September 4, 2011 at 11:09 AM
quite enjoyed the movie.. didn’t think it was Sholay (!) as you did but otherwise enjoyed it.
September 5, 2011 at 9:19 AM
ha ha ……..
November 16, 2011 at 1:47 PM
Meet Anna’s Blog Writer
http://www.openthemagazine.com/article/nation/meet-anna-s-blog-writer
Q Is Anna a free decision-maker?
A I do not think so. Annaji is controlled by these people. They have no respect for him, only for the brand he has become. He is [physically] weak and has a host of ailments, but all these people want him for, is to fast. These people should be kicked out of the movement; otherwise, there will be no future for it.
Q What are Anna’s compulsions in retaining Kejriwal, Bedi and Bhushan?
A Financial and health compulsions. The movement has generated huge sums of money. Kejriwal is the custodian. The funds generated by the Anna Hazare brand are not in his hands, they are controlled by Kejriwal, Bedi and Bhushan. Annaji does not know how to manage the funds, so he is dependent on these people. They know this and are exploiting the situation.
November 16, 2011 at 1:49 PM
http://www.caravanmagazine.in/PrintThisStory.aspx?StoryId=1050
November 16, 2011 at 1:58 PM
remember reading this, I think you had posted this elsewhere… was a fascinating read.
Did you notice how Sagrika Ghose blatantly forged the entire FTN show….OMG !!
If she was not the CNNIBN’s owners’s wife , she would have been sacked !!
November 16, 2011 at 2:08 PM
true!
November 16, 2011 at 1:50 PM
Anna Hazare demands Bharat Ratna for Sachin Tendulkar
PTI | Nov 16, 2011, 09.15PM IST
AHMEDNAGAR: Social activist Anna Hazare has said Sachin Tendulkar should be conferred with the Bharat Ratna, joining a long list of admirers who have demanded the country’s top civilian honour for the cricketer.
“Sachin Tendulkar is an icon for Indian youth. He has made India proud with his exploits in cricket. I feel he deserves the Bharat Ratna,” the anti-graft crusader said after inaugurating a tennis tournament in memory of his late mother Laxmibai at his native village Ralegan Siddhi.
The 38-year-old Tendulkar has to his name most of the batting records in Test and ODI cricket, including being the highest run-scorer and century maker in both formats, besides being the only male cricketer to score a double-hundred in ODIs.
He is on the brink of becoming the first cricketer ever to score hundred international centuries, having already hit 99 tons (51 in Tests and 48 in ODIs).
December 3, 2011 at 11:54 PM
India’s trial by ire
http://www.hindustantimes.com/News-Feed/ColumnsOthers/India-s-trial-by-ire/Article1-777201.aspx
December 7, 2011 at 6:37 PM
Open letter to Rahul Gandhi-
http://www.indianexpress.com/news/tomorrows-battles/884759/0
January 26, 2012 at 11:09 AM
Indians Against Democracy
Pankaj Mishra
This is the first in a new NYRblog series about the fate of democracy in different parts of the world.
Growing up in India in the 1970s and 80s, I often heard people in upper-caste middle class circles say that parliamentary democracy was ill-suited to the country. Recoiling from populist politicians who pandered to the poor, many Indians solemnly invoked the example of Singapore’s leader Lee Kuan Yew. Here was an Oxbridge-educated and suitably enlightened autocrat, who suffered no nonsense about democracy, and, furthermore, believed firmly in the efficacy of publicly caning even minor breakers of the law. Devising his wise policies with the help of experts and technocrats, he simply imposed them on the population. Lee Kuan Yew’s success in transforming a city-state into a major economic power was apparent to all: clean, shiny, efficient, and prosperous Singapore, the very antithesis of corrupt and squalor-prone India.
Such yearnings for technocratic utopia may seem to have little in common with the middle class protests against “corruption” that recently gained much attention before abruptly losing steam at the end of the year. Led by Anna Hazare—an army veteran described in the foreign press as a “simple man in a Gandhian cap” when he went on a hunger strike last summer— the movement was presented by sections of the media in both India and the West as a long overdue political awakening of the middle class, even as India’s “second freedom struggle.” With his unambiguous denunciations of venality in public life, Hazare seemed to have alerted tens of millions of otherwise apolitical Indians to the possibilities of civil society, mass mobilization, and grass-roots activism.
And yet over the past few weeks the movement has dramatically collapsed, with its support dwindling and the key reforms it supported stalled by Indian politicians, who are determined not to cede their legislative authority to someone they see as an interloper. As he gained prominence, Hazare’s articulate spokespersons had trouble shielding his own less appealing views from public scrutiny. It turns out, for example, that the so-called “Gandhian” methods that he relied on to create a “model village” in his native central Indian town included flogging and beating; he also advocated hanging for corrupt politicians. And then there was his barely disguised Hindu chauvinism; he was ready, he claimed, to go to war with Pakistan in order to maintain the Muslim-majority valley of Kashmir as an “integral” part of India.
Questions are now being raised about how Indian television networks portrayed the movement: whether, as India’s leading scholarly journal, Economic and Political Weekly (EPW) asked recently, middle class reporters providing a “saturation” of mostly adulatory coverage of Hazare to an essentially middle class audience exaggerated his influence and impact, converting “a protest into a ‘movement,’ a few cities and a village into ‘the nation.’”
In fact, all along, there was little about Hazare and his conspicuously middle class followers that suggested support for greater democracy—which in an overwhelmingly poor country like India has always been synonymous with the promise of social justice and dignity to the majority. Over the past two decades, as India’s economy has opened up to globalization, the ranks of India’s middle and upper middle classes have grown—current figures, in the generally boosterish discourse of investment consultants, range from McKinsey’s cautious but still generous 150 million, or less than 20 percent of the population, to the wild-sounding 300 million.
The international image of an inexorably “rising” India is largely due to these Indian beneficiaries of global capitalism. As Amartya Sen points out, “since the fortunate group includes not only business leaders and the professional classes, but also the bulk of the country’s intellectuals, the story of unusual national advancement gets, directly or indirectly, much aired — making an alleged reality out of what is at best a very partial story.”
With this mostly urban constituency in mind, Hazare’s vision was narrowly focused on the alleged misdeeds of elected officials—above all those in the ruling National Congress Party, which has traditionally sought votes from the Indian poor—and bureaucrats. Among other things, he called for the establishment of an unelected anticorruption agency, which, lavishly budgeted, would have extraordinarily wide powers of surveillance, policing, and prosecution—and, by implication, make the state more efficient and technocratic and less encumbered by the unruly and lengthy processes of parliamentary democracy.
The current Indian government has been marred by a series of corruption scandals, particularly one involving its auctioning of the mobile phone spectrum, which resulted in the loss of an astounding $39 billion to the national exchequer. And yet, by failing to elaborate what he meant by “corruption,” Hazare left many important questions unanswered. For instance, is corruption really a malignant tumor in India’s political and economic system, one that can be excised with some effort, or, is corruption, in many ways, the system itself? As Katherine Boo points out in her new book Behind the Beautiful Forevers, a chronicle of lives in a Mumbai slum, “in the West, and among some in the Indian elite, this word, corruption, had purely negative connotations; it was seen as blocking India’s modern, global ambitions.” But few of these critics of corruption acknowledge that, as Boo writes, “among powerful Indians, the distribution of opportunity was typically an insider trade.” This was demonstrated most recently by a series of taped phone conversations, made public in late 2010 by the news magazine Outlook, between a corporate lobbyist and some of India’s most famous businessmen, journalists, and politicians (some of them can be found among Hazare’s more well-off supporters), which revealed how powerful businessmen not only influenced economic policy-making, ensuring clear playing fields for themselves, but also managed to install their own candidates in senior ministerial positions, such as the telecom minister accused of underselling the mobile phone spectrum to his preferred bidders.
Keeping the definition of corruption deliberately vague, and speaking of it in mostly moral and sentimental terms, Hazare’s campaign acquired some support from the urban poor, even as he worked to put the democratic system at the mercy of a few self-appointed guardians of morality. Hazare never focused on the distress resulting from income inequality, which has doubled in the last two decades, or on the gross abuses of corporate as well as state power: the dispossession, for instance, of the rural poor by mining companies, or human rights abuses by Indian security forces in Muslim-majority Kashmir. There was more clarity to be had about the aims of Hazare’s movement from its affluent supporters, which included glamorous figures from Bollywood, the media, and India’s iconic companies. Many of them call for an end to the state’s subsidies for the poor and low-caste Indians. These “rising” Indians see social welfare programs as wasteful, and endangering the apparently smooth working of the free market, even though, as Amartya Sen recently observed, they “don’t question things such as subsidy on diesel for rich people….Whenever something is thought of to help poor, hungry people, some bring out the fiscal hat and say, ‘My God, this is irresponsible.’”
In part, such responses reflect the misgivings that have emerged as India’s extraordinarily ambitious experiment in mass democracy has collided with its equally bold experiment in free-market capitalism. The complaints against democracy I heard growing up had already become more strident in the 1980s and 1990s, when many previously suppressed and voiceless Indians began to challenge the supremacy of upper-caste politicians, and the “unwashed” masses began to throw support behind their own leaders–rustic politicians with alarming manners–such as Uttar Pradesh’s Dalit “Queen” Mayawati and Laloo Prasad Yadav of Bihar–who embodied, in nervous middle class imaginations, the “Caligulan barbarity” of India, as Salman Rushdie put it, portraying a politician based on Yadav in his novel The Ground Beneath Her Feet.
Over the years, as India embarked upon rapid economic growth, an expanded middle class and businessmen seeking greater political influence gravitated to authoritarian figures within the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the right-wing Hindu nationalist party that held power in Delhi from 1998 to 2004. The most prominent of these is Narendra Modi, the chief minister of Gujarat, who has attracted many of India’s leading businessmen to his state by offering low corporate taxes and special economic zones and suppressing all trade union activity. Accused of complicity in the murder of more than 2,000 Muslims in the anti-Muslim riots in Gujarat in 2002, Modi is nevertheless hailed as a “dynamic” leader by India’s leading businessmen, such as Ratan Tata and Mukesh Ambani—and has been recently praised by Hazare. (Dogged by court cases stemming from the massacre, however, he is unlikely to realize his ambitions to become prime minister.)
In the 2000s, many middle class hopes and expectations came to be invested in Manmohan Singh, prime minister since 2004. Though he belonged to the National Congress party, he seemed to embody the superior wisdom of the technocrats; educated at Oxford, he had worked as a World Bank and IMF economist, and had never been elected to the Indian parliament. Yet under Singh growth in India has remained wildly uneven—and deeply compromised by corporate influence on political processes. A U.S. diplomatic cable released this year by Wikileaks shows a senior Hindu nationalist politician admitting that virtually all economic growth of recent years has been concentrated in the four southern states, two western states (Gujarat and Maharashtra) and “within 100km of Delhi.” In another cable about Pranab Mukherjee, the finance minister being groomed to be India’s next PM, Hillary Clinton is revealingly blunt: “To which industrial or business groups is Mukherjee beholden?”
During Singh’s reign as prime minister, India has also witnessed a strong backlash against globalization among the poor. The most striking instance is the militant Communist movement representing landless peasants and indigenous forest peoples in Central India—these are Indians fighting their dispossession by mining companies that are backed by the Indian government. Early last year, India’s Supreme Court censured the government for creating an informal militia against Communist militants. Claiming that “the poor are being pushed to the wall,” the court blamed increasing violence in the country on “predatory forms of capitalism, supported by the state.”
Since then Singh has also lost his main constituency: the beneficiaries, both real and potential, of “rising” India. Periodicals such as Foreign Affairs, The Economist, and The Financial Times that in 2005 hailed India as a “roaring capitalist success story” now wonder if India is descending into a Latin-American-style oligarchy. In recent months the global recession has also begun to affect the Indian economy. Inflation is running into double digits. Industrial production has declined; at one point, the rupee had fallen nearly 20 percent again the dollar; and foreign capital—the mainstay of India’s remarkable growth in the last decade—flows steadily out of the country. As though sensing the prevailing winds, India’s biggest companies are putting the bulk of their investments abroad.
Among the middle class Indians convinced that “India Shining” (in the election slogan of the BJP) is on the verge of becoming a superpower, these recent setbacks have been met with stunned disbelief, followed by rage against the most visible target: a corrupt, social-welfarist state. Not surprisingly, the demand raised by Anna Hazare’s middle class protesters was mind-numbingly simple: political corruption must be eradicated from India in order to make the country more business friendly and speed up its tryst with greatness. Initially, Hazare’s message benefited greatly from a rightward shift by India’s corporate-owned dailies and 24-hour news channels, where pundits spoke excitedly of the politicization of previously apathetic businessmen and salary earners, hailing the rise of civil society against a venal and inept government. But when it came to concrete legislative action, the absence of broad support for this authoritarian-minded movement became clear.
In reality, the Indian government is paralyzed between its old promise of basic sustenance and justice to the poor majority, and its increasing—perhaps, unavoidable—embrace of a form of capitalism that, geared toward private wealth creation, makes such social democracy unsustainable. Hazare’s insistence that the government, overruling parliament, adopt his plan for an anti-corruption czar, was far less about protecting the rights of the masses than establishing the grounds for a Lee Kuan Yew-style technocracy: one that with arbitrary and unlimited power over all Indian citizens could bypass democratic institutions, enhancing the political power of an unelected, unaccountable, and fundamentally anti-political elite.
Few assumptions about India’s middle class, or even about the “free” Indian media, as carriers of democratic values have emerged unscathed from his movement. The social media networks that helped Hazare were far from being hard-wired for democracy. Citing an extensive survey that revealed urban youth in India to be profoundly right-wing, the Indian novelist and TV anchor Sagarika Ghose pointed out recently that Facebook and Twitter, crucial to the Tahrir Square uprising in Egypt, are “dominated” in India “by young people openly pouring scorn on ‘pseudo-secular liberals,’ minorities and the so-called ‘anti-nationals.’”
Shrinking into irrelevance, Hazare’s movement still offers an important lesson: that the much-vaunted civil society really is an open space in which the Moral Majority and Tea Party, Gaza’s Hamas, Egypt’s Salafis, and India’s RSS can flourish just as well as such progressive movements as Occupy Wall Street and the Arab liberals who many assumed were the source of last year’s uprisings. Civil society can host an insurrection of the masses, as in Tahrir Square, and also stage, as in India or Thailand, a revolt of the elites. As for the idea that middle classes in developing countries ensure the spread of democracy, it seems just as persuasive as the communist teleology that made revolution by working classes in developed countries look inevitable.
January 26, 2012 at 11:10 AM
this piece gets to a few of the reservations I’ve had in the whole Anna Hazare matter..