Media Mantar to Saffron Lila A People's Victory with Important Caveats.

. The most successful non-party political demonstration, since the first of such demonstrations in independent India of the Chipko movement in the early 1970s, got over on August 28th 2011 at the Ramlila Maidan in New Delhi. The government and the entire parliament acquiesced to the demands made by the India Against Corruption (IAC) movement bringing to an end the twelve day fast by Anna Hazare and the extraordinary people's mobilisation across the country around it. While it is definitely a time to rejoice, it is also a time to reflect. One can't help harking back to two other such events in Indian history which have great similarity with the present demonstration. The first was the Dandi march of Gandhi in 1930 and the other was the Sangharsh Yatra of the Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA) in 1991. Both these demonstrations were carefully planned and media advocacy ensured that they were orchestrated by the national and international media. While the Sangharsh Yatra had much greater planning it could not match the media attention that the Dandi Yatra got, being a single issue movement against the Sardar Sarovar dam on the River Narmada. Consequently the NBA failed to catch the imagination of the nation as the Dandi Yatra and the Civil Disobedience Movement (CDM) of 1930-31 had. In that respect, the IAC outdid the NBA in terms of both planning and media attention and has outdone the CDM in terms of being able to achieve something concrete from the rulers and even evoke the rhetoric of being a second independence struggle. In fact both the CDM and the NBA failed totally in getting the rulers to agree to any of their demands. Unlike the NBA and the CDM, the IAC had only a very narrow agenda of attacking corruption in the government and bureaucracy through a legislation for an ombudsman. As the demonstration progressed the IAC watered down its strong demand for the enactment of their version of the ombudsman legislation, "Jan Lokpal Bill", by August 30th 2011 and instead settled for a much weaker accord. Some crucial provisions of the Jan Lokpal Bill relating to the inclusion of the Prime Minister in its ambit, the enactment of citizens' charters stipulating the timeframe in which services are to be delivered and if not the punishment to be meted out, the inclusion of the lower bureaucracy in the ambit of the ombudsman and the setting up of Lok Ayukts in the states were referred for consideration to the Parliamentary Standing Committee that is discussing the absolutely worthless bill that the Government had tabled in Parliament earlier. The Congress tried, foolishly as it turns out, to discredit the IAC by saying that it is trying to usurp the power of parliament to make laws and it suggested that the IAC should contest and win elections and then make laws of their choice. However, this criticism did not hold water with the mass of middle class supporters of the IAC. The level of corruption in elections is so well known that everyone knows that it is not possible to win them without money power. Thus, if elections have to be won, then corruption must go first! Actually elections are a different ball game altogether. They involve crores of people and the IAC at the moment can tot up only a few lakhs across the country and not enough to even

save the deposit in any constituency. In the prevailing first past the post system of elections, which the Congress mischievously chose to indtroduce instead of the proportional representation variety, there is little possibility of fringe political groups winning seats in large enough numbers. Therefore, one of the shrewdest moves of the IAC team was to declare that they are not interested in contesting elections but only in creating public pressure on the already elected lawmakers to do the right thing. The IAC leadership team consists of people who are well versed in the constitutional nitty gritties and the finer points of liberal democracy being veterans of legal and advocacy crusades for better governance. Their challenge is from within the liberal democratic fold and that is why it is so potent and has also got the media to support it as compared to the mobilisations of the left or the non-party political fringe which have on occasions been much bigger. This "victory" of sorts is a culmination of some very hard preparatory work done by the IAC and many supporting organisations across the country and is in a very important sense a step forward for the non-party political fringe that had become active with the Chipko Andolan forty years ago. All the many different movements big and small that have taken place over this time and which have slowly increased the participation and awareness of the Indian masses in the bourgeois liberal democratic process in this country, have in their own ways contributed to the present success. The IAC just did not emerge out of the blue but instead is the objective result of a long drawn process of people's mobilisation and action at the grassroots across the country over the last forty years. It has built on the experience and capabilities of these earlier movements. Especially the use of the internet in which in recent years the non-party political activists have become very adept. This is why the demonstration has over time been able to spread beyond the middle class and encompass the lower classes also and gain their participation. However, it has to be acknowledged that there have been two mainstream forces that have played very significant roles in the success of the Ramlila demonstration by the IAC. The first of course is the media. When the rag tag bunch of people first congregated at Jantar Mantar under the auspices of the IAC in Delhi in the first week of April 2011, they were like any other of such "civil society" groupings that frequently hold dharnas and fasts there. In fact various organisations representing the Bhopal Gas Leak Survivors and the National Alliance of People's Movements (NAPM) have frequently staged fasts and dharnas there. However, they have never got any media support beyond some cursory mention. The IAC movement, from the very beginning, got massive media support and this fired the imagination of the middle classes across the nation which was very well mobilised by the IAC through the social networking media. A spontaneous response began building up and the media found that the TRPs of the news channels were going up and so they increased their coverage leading to further spontaneous mobilisation.

Possibly because of the shattering, post the 2008 meltdown, of the dreams of climbing up corporate ladders fanned by unfettered economic growth, the middle class hit the streets in a big way across the country in April 2011. We have to think why the middle class has come onto the streets in such a way. Not that most of them understand the nitty gritties of the Lokpal Bill or its efficacy or otherwise in rooting out corruption. Its just an expression of disgust at the massive corruption that is taking place and the impunity of those who are engaging in it. Most of the middle class finds it difficult today to live the consumerist lifestyle that it aspires to. Aspirations that have arisen after being bombarded by advertisement and programming on television that rampantly promote greed and consumerism. The majority of the middle class see that those among them who are part of the government and bureaucracy can easily satisfy their consumerist greed by taking bribes over and above the relatively fat salaries that they now get. While the Congress and the BJP governments in the Centre and the states are all corrupt, the left too could not provide a solution to this while it was in power in West Bengal and Kerala. In fact the Left Front administration in West bengal was one of the most corrupt in the country. Consequently there is a sense of disgust against the whole political and bureaucratic class among the middle class that is not in government service and it has hit the streets against those of the middle and upper classes who are in government service or in politics and are skimming off public money. The media being staffed by the middle class also initially picked up the cause and when the media owners saw the TRPs rising they pursued with their coverage. This time around in August 2011 too the media provided round the clock coverage and as has now become clear the TRPs of the news channels had gone up by nearly 100% in the last fortnight. Thus, this demonstration is a great victory for the media too which is the fourth pillar of liberal democracy along with the executive, legislature and the judiciary. Without the tremendous media support it received, the IAC would not have been able to register the victory that it has. The other force behind this victory is the saffron brigade. They played their cards pretty shrewdly. Throughout the country and especially in the Ramlila grounds the members of the various organisations of the saffron brigade were very active and this was most visible in the frequent chants of "Vande Mataram" and "Bharat Mata ki Jai". Ashok Singhal of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad has stated that his cadres supplied free food to the people at the Ramlila grounds and obviously people also to swell the crowd. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) too supported the movement wholeheartedly inside and outside parliament to ensure that the Congress was thoroughly discredited. Some of the BJP leaders in fact criticised the party for not doing more to take advantage of the situation created by the IAC and the spontaneous upsurge. Meanwhile, Medha Patkar, of NBA and the NAPM reportedly took on the onerous task of convincing the Shiv Sena in Maharashtra to support the Jan Lokpal Bill and Kiran Bedi openly thanked the BJP for its support. Thus, what started off as a media mantar at Jantar Mantar in April 2011 finally ended as a saffron lila at the Ramlila Grounds in August 2011.

Consequently, even while celebrating this major victory of the non-party political process we have to be aware of its drawbacks if this movement has to seriously challenge the state and not just tinker with the way in which governance is done in this country. First of all as those in the non-party political process know from bitter experience, there are always many slips between the cup and the lip. So some hard campaigning has to be done to see that a strong Lokpal Act is indeed legislated and the institutions required for its implementation are all put in place. This is in fact the biggest hurdle as all the recent progressive legislations like the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, the Right to Information Act, the Panchayat Extension to Scheduled Areas Act and the Forest Rights Act are being sabotaged by the bureaucracy and the mainstream political parties. For this the IAC will have to become a much more disciplined and cadre based organisation than the spontaneous voluntary outfit that it is at present. The left of various shades and a considerable section of the non-party political fringe have been critical of this mobilisation and have tried to denigrate it. Most surprisingly one of the criticisms has been that the IAC has been dictating to parliament which is the supreme body in a liberal democracy. When this supreme body has been effectively made a handmaiden to the dictates of national and multinational corporates it is indeed surprising to see people who have been otherwise critical of bourgeois liberal democracy suddenly rise up in support of the sanctity and supremacy of the parliament. The more appropriate reaction would be to rejoice at the fact that the parliamentarians have been discomfited no end and been forced to listen to the people albeit supported by the media. So it is heartening to see that many lower class organisations across the country have gradually come out in support of the IAC and have seen in it a possibility of grandstanding their own forlorn and often seemingly futile struggles. The problem, however, is that the middle classes, who are spearheading this movment, do not want to give up their consumerist culture but at the same time want to be free of corruption. If one tells them that there has to be a radical reorganisation of the development process and the sacrifice of many comforts that we now enjoy, the consumerist culture in particular, then one will not get the same kind of support. In fact Anna Hazare does mouth such statements as "gram swaraj and decentralisation are the need of the hour" but this gets drowned out in the Lokpal Bill cacophony, while at at the same time giving him a selfless Gandhian halo. It was this kind of halo that helped Gandhi also to become a messiah of the masses especially after the Dandi Yatra and the CDM. It would be interesting to see whether Anna can succeed where Gandhi failed and overturn the modern industry based development model for an anarchist decentralised village based model of development. Though the chances are low given that like Gandhi, Anna and his immediate IAC team too have a weak understanding of the logic of capitalist accumulation and especially of the kleptocratic dispensation that presently rules the world from Wall Street. Significantly, corporate corruption which generates the most amount of black money has not been touched at all by the IAC with its fixation on government corruption. Anna Hazare, after all recuperated from the rigours of his fast in a

corporate hospital. If this issue is raised many of the middle and upper middle class supporters would desert the movement. For the present it is a positive development that what the left and fringe players like environmentalists and anarchists could not do in trying to stop unwieldy development projects or ensuring tribal autonomy, the IAC has been able to do make the government listen to the people's demands for the time being. Possibly the ongoing alliances like the NAPM could be brought into the fold of the IAC or vice versa and their experience in mass mobilisation could be drawn upon. However, if that happens there is also the danger that with a more fundamental and broad based agenda of change, the IAC might lose the media support that it now has for a limited platform and it will also definitely be deserted by the saffron brigade. Like grassroots RTI activists who have faced threats and imprisonment from vested interests and have even been murdered, one of whom Shehla Masood was done in just on the day the second phase of the movement was starting, those implementing the Lokpal Act too will be targeted. Finally there is the issue of the saintly halo around Anna Hazare. While it has helped in mobilising huge numbers of people, especially from the lower classes and not only from the middle class, it is doubtful whether this kind of hagiography will aid in building up a strong cadre based organisation that is prepared to implement a good Lokpal Act at the grassroots. Anna Hazare, with his Gandhian halo, happened to be the man of the moment when he launched the fast in April 2011 at a time when possibly the non-government servant middle class, and especially those suffering from their home loan, vehicle loan, education loan and credit card repayment rates shooting skywards due to runaway inflation (caused incidentally by speculation on the world commodity markets and not by corruption), had had enough. This halo has only been reinforced by the Ramlila demonstration. However, Hazare, while breaking his fast, said that just wearing a cap with his name on it would not make the wearer an Anna Hazare. For that, he said, the wearer would have to make sacrifices and fight for justice. This is something that can only be achieved through dedicated cadre building at the grassroots so as to forge a strong mass organisation. The challenge, thus, for the many organisations of the non-party political process which have not been active participants in the present demonstration for various reasons, is to build on the marked discomfiture of the mainstream political parties and use the Lokpal Act when it comes into force to push forward their more varied and deeper agenda of people's development and governance. There are many infirmities in the IAC but it is better to look at the positives.