Of pushing partisan agendas
How different are the dynamics of people’s politics from the dynamics of electoral politics was clear by the turn the bill to constitute the institution of Lokpal (Ombudsman) to deal with corruption took in the Indian parliament. The first, dependent on the popular support, got nowhere. But the second, dictated by number game, succeeded because the political parties could interpret the status quo, the non-passage of the Lokpal bill, in the way it suited them electorally.
When Gandhian Anna Hazare was on fast and thousands were on the streets, the Lok Sabha passed the sense of the house resolution to promise an act to cover the three points: 1. Citizen’s Charter including his right to have water and electricity; 2. the lower bureaucracy under Lokpal and (3) establishment of Lokayuktas in the states. The bill has conceded only one point, that is, the appointment of State Ombudsman (Lokayukta). And the government continues to retain the control of Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI).
When the resolution was adopted, the dynamics of people’s politics worked. Subsequently, the same house accepted a watered down bill because Anna was not on a fast and the people were only watching the outcome of the debate in parliament. There was no pressure on the government.
Still something worse happened in the Rajya Sabha because the bill emerging from the Lok Sabha was not even put to vote. True, the house had consumed the day, till midnight in speeches alone. But the manner in which the chairman, Vice-President Hamid Ansari adjourned the house sine die leaves many questions unanswered. The government could have extended the session but did not.
Whatever the government’s compulsions, it was a betrayal of the Lok Sabha resolution. That was because the dynamics of electoral politics took over when the bill was not going through in the Rajya Sabha, each party calculating how many seats it would get in Punjab, UP, Uttrakhand, Goa and Manipur.
There is a lesson for those who have put their faith in people’s politics. I recall the warning I gave on suspending the agitation. My fear, justified now, was that the momentum of demonstrations would be difficult to rebuild once stalled. Today, the impression that has gone around is that those leading the movement are whimsical, switching it off and on too often.
Now that the strategy is being reworked, it would be counter-productive to clutter people’s mind with too many details on the weaknesses of the bill. Let the movement concentrate on one point: Independence of the CBI. The agency cannot be under the government which uses it as a political instrument. Cases have been followed, dropped or kept in abeyance, depending on the support the government needed from a political party at a particular time. The Manmohan Singh coalition is not alone to blame. It was the same story when Atal Behari Vajpayee of BJP was the prime minister or Narasimha Rao.
The weakening of the movement has once again thrown up the same old question: Should people’s movements continue to stay away from participating in elections? So far they have kept themselves out. Some argue that the gamut of polls is so much ridden by money and caste that the people’s movements would have to make compromises if they propose to contest. Yet in a democratic polity, there is no running away from elections. The state assemblies and parliament are manned by the representatives of people who choose them through the ballot box. Representatives are the arbiters. Should the pressure on them be from outside with uncertain or limited results or should ‘we the people,’ as the constitution’s preamble says, give the country an alternative which would be from the grassroots. Both the Congress and the BJP, the two main parties for the last three decades, have failed the people. Their agenda is power which for them is the end by itself.
Gandhian Jayaprakash Narayan who successfully ousted the Indira Gandhi government, constituted the Janata Party which won a majority in the Lok Sabha. He too had first confined himself to the agitation alone. He met the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi to beseech her to deal with corruption and the use of large sums of money in elections. She said that her party had no money and that it was fighting against corruption ruthlessly. The Congress has taken more or less the same line today. The only difference is that the Manmohan Singh government has brought to parliament an apology of a bill to show that it was committed to dealing with corruption.
Mahatama Gandhi fought against the British through electoral system, however weak and limited. And he had to have the Congress party as an instrument to push the freedom struggle. He was not the party’s member because he wanted to build man so that he or she would rise above personal gain for the good of society. He failed but won independence.
Anna may not be a Mahatma Gandhi or a Jayaprakash Narayan. But Anna has come to represent people’s resentment against corruption and all that they suffer in their daily life. He does not have to go after one party. He transcends parties and parochial politics. He is pursuing an ideal which should remain unsullied because that is an ideal. All NGOs should help his movement, however impossible some of his team members. A failure of people’s movement is the failure of the principle of peaceful protest against mis-governance or non-governance. The nation cannot afford to lose.
The writer is a senior Indian journalist.
