America reinvents policies to meet new challenges

By scripting the most dramatic shift in its foreign and defence policies since the end of the Cold War, the US prepares to confront a new world order 

When US  President Barack Obama said in a recent interview that, “I made a commitment to change the trajectory of American foreign policy …and I think we have accomplished those principal goals,” his statement was lot more true than popularly acknowledged. Indeed, the new set of ‘defence strategies’ unveiled by his Administration earlier this month marks the most significant shift in US foreign policy since the end of the Cold War.

In the two decades since, Washing-ton, DC has actively played the role of a global hegemon that has maintained an absolute military superiority over the rest of the world, further strengthened by its economic prowess. Indeed, even after the threat of a communist take-over had been effectively eliminated by the late eighties, the US military was only nominally downsized from its War time proportions.

In the first half of the post-Cold War era, the continued maintenance of such a mammoth defence structure was justified by military engagements in Europe (think of the ‘humanitarian intervention’ of the US-led Nato forces in the Balkan Wars) and in West Asia (a successful Gulf War saw the containment of a belligerent Saddam Hussein). Then, in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of 9/11, there emerged a new enemy in the form of Al Qaeda and its network ofjihadi groups. It was, and still is, a stateless, shadowy entity that has nevertheless been portrayed as an evil superpower, somehow akin to communist Russia or Nazi Germany, to once again rationalise the presence of a vast American military. Indeed, as the first US troops landed in Afghanistan, neo-conservatives even declared that this would be the fourth World War (the third being the Cold War), or the ‘Long War’.

A decade later, Mr Obama has now declared that war to be over. Osama bin Laden is dead (although the threat of global jihadists remains, but that is another story), US engagement in Afghanistan is winding down, and for all practical purposes, there are no longer any American boots in Iraq.

But that is not all — the past 10 years have also witnessed the sagging of America’s economic strength. Weighed down by a mounting national debt, the US economy which is yet to fully recover from the global financial meltdown of 2007-2008, can no longer afford a gigantic military — and definitely not one that had supposedly been prepped to fight two wars at the same time. Besides, the possibility of a traditional land war is almost obsolete in a nuclear and globalised 21st century.

It is against this backdrop that the new policy, which seeks to trim the US military and renounce the bipartisan consensus achieved post-1989, must be understood. From performing the traditional role of a hegemon fighting ‘nation-building wars’, Mr Obama’s new doctrine focuses America’s attention on balancing power equations among emerging nations such as India and China in the Asia-Pacific region.

This will be done through a network of regional allies on the front-stage, in diplomatic terms, and through sophisticated secret surveillance, un-manned drones and CIA-style special operations in the back-stage, in military terms. A preview of this kind of warfare is already available in the manner in which the US is carrying out counter-insurgency operations in the AfPak region.

Also, compare this to the far more boots (and weapons) intensive approach of traditional warfare and it naturally explains the smaller, leaner, more agile but technologically advanced military that Defense Secretary Leon Panetta talked about at the release of this strategic document at the Pentagon. Finally, the new strategy also fits in with the narrative of fiscal discipline and domestic cost-cutting that has become an American imperative since the economic downturn.

Grounded in realism, the new policy is a classic example of realpolitik and marks a definite break from the quest for imperial hegemony of the neo-conservative years of former President George Bush and his deputy Dick Cheney who foolishly led US troops into an expensive and ineffective ground battle in Afghanistan and Iraq.

But the new policy is not without flaws. For instance, if the Obama Administration hopes to contain China’s imperialist tendencies — and make no mistake that that is exactly what the new strategy is all about — then simply positioning ships across the Asia-Pacific from Japan to South Korea and even in far away Australia will not serve any purpose. If anything, this unnecessarily aggressive posturing of the US can only serve to provoke an already jittery China.

Ultimately, Mr Obama’s policy is a reflection of his people’s mood. Americans are tired of foreign wars and now simply want their boys to come back home and not in a body casket, please. There may have been a time when a John F Kennedy could have captured the nation’s imagination by promising that his country would “pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty.” But those days of a zealous commitment to Americana or the rhetoric of freedom and liberty that surrounds it are long gone. Think of how quickly popular support waned for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, even though far more American soldiers died in the Vietnam and Korea. No one really bought the fourth World War logic, and they are no less glad that it is now over.

(This article was published in the op-ed section of The Pioneer on January 26, 2012).

You can’t keep people out

A rights-based approach to urbanisation is needed to protect the most vulnerable of city residents

The idea of urban space in India goes back to the times when the astonishingly well-planned dual townships of Mohenjo Daro and Harappa formed the anchor of the ancient Indus Valley civilisation. Since then, several new cities have appeared while many others have declined and withered away.

An important part of this evolution process has always been the people who moved to these cities in search of new opportunities, better prospects and, in general, a good life. In fact, the migrant population has contributed significantly to the growth of our cities, especially in post-independence India. As they move from areas where there is surplus of labour to areas of deficit, they raise the overall productivity of the labour force and balance out imperfections in the labour market. Moreover, migrants to the city also contribute to the growth of their villages back home through remittances. In other words, migrants are important drivers of our national growth.

In spite of these, migrants, especially those who are poor, unskilled and work in the unorganised sector — they make up for at least 65 per cent of the entire migrant population — are not viewed positively. They almost always face some form of discrimination in the city, and the situation is only made worse by the growing anti-migrant sentiment. More often than not, they form the most vulnerable group of city residents at any point. Their protection and well-being is perhaps the greatest challenge to urbanisation in modern-day India; a challenge that has taken on an all new proportion given the alarming rate at which the number of the country’s urban poor is increasing.

It is in this context that a rights-based approach to the problem is helpful, as a recent UN report shows. The concept of the Right To The City is a particularly powerful one. It was first suggested by French social scientist Henri Lefebvre as a radical call to all city residents to “contribute to the production of urban space”, in his 1968 book by the same name, but received large-scale attention only in the 1990s when neo-Marxist American scholars such as David Harvey realised its significance in the present-day urban context.

There are, of course, multiple interpretations of what exactly the Right to the City means, but essentially it can be defined as a right to enjoy all that the city has to offer. At the core of the RTTC lies two fundamental points: The first relates to the domain of legal entitlements and moral claims, while the second is about the distinctive idea of formal rights and substantive rights. For instance, the ‘right’ to travel, work and settle in any city has little value unless cities are made affordable (think housing), accessible (transport), safe (effective policing, street lights etc) and liveable (urban amenities) for all.

When viewed within this context of the Right to The City — the right of everyone, including migrants, to enjoy the benefits of all that the city has to offer — the phenomenon of migration and the challenges it poses takes on a whole new meaning. To understand how exactly the Right To The City is applicable, it would be worthwhile to place it as a backdrop to one of the most visible manifestations of the socio-economic deprivation faced by migrants — slums.

The operational definition of the slum, as suggested by the UN, refers to any area that exhibits certain key characteristics such as inadequate access to safe water, sanitation and other basic infrastructure, poorly constructed housing, insecure residential status and overcrowding. The Slum Census of India 2011 similarly defines slums as any a collection of poorly built, mostly temporary, tenements, crowded together usually with inadequate sanitary and drinking water facilities and unhygienic facilities. Other authorities have described a slum variously, but the essence remains the same.

The 2001census pegged the number of people living in slums across Indian cities at 43 million — this represents about 23 per cent of the entire population. In the past decade that number is estimated to have grown to a whopping 93 million people. That is, 93 million people without having access to clean drinking water and sanitation facilities, living in shoddily constructed houses in overcrowded colonies, from where too they can be evicted without a minute’s notice.

The common refrain in favour of such evictions,which are undertaken simultaneously with the large-scale demolition of slum colonies (often in attempt to ‘beautify’ our cities), is that the construction was illegal in the first place, and that the slum-dwellers were illegally occupying another’s land. While this is often true, it must be understood that illegal occupation of vacant land is usually the only option available to the poor migrant who simply cannot afford the city’s expensive housing options.

Worse still, such eviction and demolition programmes lead to long-term cumulative impoverishment that has been routinely ignored by babus who sanction these acts. The occasional resettlement and rehabilitation programme that sometimes accompanies such mass evictions have proved to be largely inadequate. They benefit only a handful of slum residents while the poorest of the lot find themselves literally on the road, stripped of even their meagre possessions.

This only feeds a vicious circle of urban poverty. But for this to halt, a whole new perspective is necessary. This must be based on the understanding that migration is not a phenomenon that is borne out of poverty but one that contributes to our national growth. Migration is not about dependence on the city but about development of the country.

Finally, migration is also a matter of ‘right’. Those who move to the cities have the Constitutional right to do so. Article 19 states, “All citizens have the right to move freely… reside and settle… practice any trade or profession throughout the territory of India”. Also, Article 21 provides that no person shall be deprived of their personal liberty. Taken with the concept of the Right To The City, several experts working in the field of urban planning say there is sufficient ground to render slum evictions not only illegal but also label them a gross violation of human rights.

Indeed, slum demolitions and forced evictions form some of the worst practices performed by the Indian state. Not only do they violate human rights to adequate housing, but also the right to livelihood, health, education, culture and the  right to live with dignity.

It is high time the civic authorities took note of the ground realities and make a concerted effort to go beyond the hollow slogan of ‘inclusive cities”. They will find that The Right To The City approach provides an excellent starting point.

(This article was published in the Op-ed section of The Pioneer on December 26, 2011.)

Can technocrats save the Euro?

It's a tough call for the new leaders of Greece and Italy but the cost of failure is enormous

As the Great Euro Mess got messier, the past weekend witnessed a desperate bid by Europe’s political class to clean it up. Over the course of three days, two democratically elected leaders — the Prime Ministers of Greece (the epicentre of the Euro crisis and Italy (the greatest threat to the future of the Union) — were eased out of their offices and replaced by field experts handpicked by Brussels to perform the magic.

On Sunday, scam-ridden billionaire Prime Minister of Italy Silvio Berlusconi lost his position to Mr Mario Monti, a former high-ranking member of the European Commission (the executive body of the European Union). Only two days earlier, Mr Berlusconi’s counterpart in Athens, the embattled political scion of Greece, Mr George Papandreou, was succeeded by a former vice-president of the European Central Bank, Mr Lucas Papademos. Both Mr Papademos and Mr Monti have significant influence and are well-regarded within the corridors of high power that extend from Berlin to Paris via Brussels.

However, it is outside the corridors of power, on the streets of Athens and Rome, that the two will have to prove their mettle. While they are respected by people of their respective countries neither has any significant experience in popular politics. Mr Monti was made a lifetime member of the Italian Senate only earlier this month while Mr Papademos, who is currently the head of a transitional National Unity Government, is not even a Member of Parliament. Yet, it is interesting to note that, while the continent’s intellectual elite have not taken too kindly to the fact that neither Mr Papademos nor Mr Monti is an elected representative the masses remain largely unperturbed.

In fact, there is a palpable sense of hope and optimism in Athens. Unlike the week-kneed Papandreou, his successor is seen as someone distanced from Greece’s deeply-entrenched political system, a man of principles and an ‘an expert’ who will fix the country’s problems perceived to have been perpetuated by a group of self-serving politicians who now are a discredited class.

Similarly, in Rome and elsewhere in Italy, the people heaved a collective sigh of relief as Mr Berlusconi — a man they had elected to power three consecutive times — prepared to leave office. Even the financial markets reacted appropriately.

Clearly, there is a strong anti-incumbency sentiment at work and there is no doubting the sense of popular disenchantment with the current crop of politicians. It has produced a counter-narrative that, with the politicians out of the way the country is now in “a safe pair of hands”.

To what extent this presumption will hold true is yet to be tested. For one, Messrs Papademos and Monti do not have history on their side. Technocrats before them have routinely failed to register significant political gains not just in European countries but across the world.

For instance, the erstwhile Soviet Union was effectively the world’s first technocracy — its Politburo consisting of a large number of engineers. Similarly, in the US it was a technocrat in the form of former Defence Secretary Robert McNamara who led the country into the disastrous Vietnam War.

Closer home, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is no less a technocrat than either Mr Papademos or Mr Monti — in fact, like both men, he too is a former central banker and a well-regarded economist who scripted India’s early stellar growth story. Yet, as Prime Minister, Mr Singh has failed to deliver.

Moreover, Italy and Greece have already had similar periods of brief technocratic rule. Between 1993 and 1994, a former central banker, Mr Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, served as Prime Minister of Italy. Later, as Finance Minister, he even oversaw Italy’s induction into the Eurozone.

Similarly, former Bank of Greece director Xenophon Zolotas held the top job in Athens from 1989 to 1990 after no single party won a majority in the previous general election. Mr Zolotas headed an apolitical non-partisan unity Government until fresh elections were held the next year — very similar to Mr Papademos’s current political arrangement with the Greek Government. And ultimately even the Eurozone itself is a technocrat’s creation.

However, none of this should serve as a reason to write off Europe’s newest leaders who, make no mistake, have taken on some of the toughest responsibilities in the world right now. In Rome, Mr Monti will have to convince investors that it is indeed possible for Italy to cut its 1.9 trillion Euro debt and actually spur economic growth even while austerity measures continue to cripple the population.

But before that Mr Monti must build his own Government that will last till 2013 — and that is already proving harder than expected. For Mr Monti, who is yet to be officially instated as Prime Minister, the honeymoon is already over.

Meanwhile in Athens, Mr Papademos too has been given a tall order to fill. And he only has 100 days to deliver results until the next elections are held in February. In this time, Mr Papademos will have to do what no Greek politician wants to, i.e. implement greater austerity measures and carry out the unpopular conditions of the bailout package. Indeed, it is worthy mention that his predecessor, Mr Papandreou, had to quit office because he had dared to suggest that the austerity measures be subject to a popular referendum. Three days later, following tremendous pressure from Brussels, which simply could not afford the risk of losing the referendum, he took back his suggestion.

Many have pointed to exactly this episode as an example of how technocracy is taking over European democracies. This is far from the truth. Democracy is more than just referendums.

Besides, if the Greek are allowed to vote on the bailout package, the Germans too should be allowed to decide on the same for they are the ones paying for it. And, if Greece and Germany are allowed this luxury, why should the people of Spain, Portugal and other European countries not have their say? This is simply an untenable situation.

Democracies work best when Govern-ments have ample space and freedom to function. At the end of their terms, after the people have experienced the pros and cons of their policies, the electorate is free to make its decision known at the next general election.

Also, those crying themselves hoarse about a technocratic takeover in Europe would do well to remind themselves that both Mr Papademos and Mr Monti have been selected by the elected representatives of their countries and are perfectly legitimate leaders in their own right. This is not a hostile takeover.

It is, however, true that technocrats such the heads of the European Central Bank, the European Commission, the European Council and the International Monetary Fund, do have an important role to play in the decision making processes of the Eurozone. Yes, at some point the member states will have to come to an agreement over how best to implement an effective system of democratic checks and balances but that is a task for future.

For now, the focus must be on resolving the imminent crisis at hand and preventing another global recession. In the meantime, critics may take comfort in the fact that while technocrats may be at the helm of affairs for now, the nerve centre of the Eurozone lies in the hands of German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicholas Sarkozy — two popularly elected leaders who represent the collective will of 145 million people across continental Europe.

(This article was published in the Oped section of The Pioneer on November 17, 2011.)

Miracle of a start-up nation

This is a money story that is actually worth starting with some figures. Per capita venture capital investment in this one country in recent years has been about 2.5 times greater than in the whole of continental Europe, 80 times greater than in China and 350 times greater than in India. After the US, this country has more companies listed on the NASDAQ than any other in the world. On the eve of the 2008 global financial crisis, this was the only country that registered a meaningful growth in venture capital. So, who are we talking about? Is it fast-growing Brazil, competitive Norway, Asian powerhouse Singapore or maybe European giant Germany? None of the above, actually.

The answer is tiny Israel.

Unbelievable but true, Israel today is home to a huge number of start-up companies that attract a staggering amount in venture capital from around the world, and effectively represent the world’s greatest concentration of innovation and entrepreneurship. The trillion dollar question here is: How does “a country of 7.1 million people, only 60 years old, surrounded by enemies, in a constant state of war since its founding, with no natural resources produce more start up companies than large, peaceful and stable nations like Japan, China, India, Korea, Canada and the United Kingdom.” Geopolitical experts Dan Senor and Saul Singer explain exactly this in their new and exciting book, Start-Up Nation: The Story of Israel’s Economic Miracle.

The book opens with a description of a 2007 meeting between the legendary CEO of Renault and Nissan, Mr Carlos Ghosn, and a young Israeli entrepreneur, Mr Shai Agassi. The meeting had been orchestrated by a man no less than Mr Shimon Peres who was then waiting to become the President of Israel. The introductory chapter then goes on to describe how the meeting would eventually lead to a ground-breaking partnership between Mr Ghosn’s corporate automobile giant Renault and Mr Agassi’s little known start-up company Better Place that aims to develop the electric car as a feasible alternative to conventional automobiles. If successful in its mission, the joint venture, which has the blessings of the Israeli Government, will have a tremendous impact on modern day business, politics and environment. And much of that would be attributed to a twenty-something entrepreneur from Israel who, clichéd as this might sound, was inspired to make the world a better place.

Through out the course of the book, the authors draw upon such examples to describe how Israel became the world’s “start-up nation.” As Mr Singer explained in an exclusive interview to The Pioneer, Israel has more start-ups than any other country its size because it has successfully leveraged its adversity-driven culture into a source of creative energy that supports innovation and high levels of entrepreneurial activity. “An entrepreneur takes adversities and converts them into opportunity. That’s what Israel has done,” said Mr Singer.

One of the most telling examples of how Israel has turned around its adversities into opportunities for economic growth and development is the manner its entrepreneurs have leveraged their unique military training. Because of the fact that the tiny Jewish state is surrounded by sworn enemies, some of which are opposed to its very existence, Israel has always had an effective defence force as well as a system of conscription which means that every citizen must enlist in the military. Yet, as Mr Singer points out, “the Israeli military is a very different kind of military. It can’t rely on either a large number of weapons or soldiers. Early in the day, the country’s founding father Ben Gurion had realised that the only way for Israel to survive was better technology and more innovation.”

Hence, the Israeli military routinely bestows upon its young recruits, especially those selected to elite units, the best of the training facilities available and exposes them to state-of-the-art infrastructure and technology. This in turns allows them to make the best of their abilities. More importantly though, it is the manner in which the Israeli military prepares even its foot soldiers to face unpredictable situations by coming up with individual, out-of-the-box responses — unlike traditional militaries which focus on conformity — that later serves as a huge impetus to their entrepreneurial spirit. As Mr Singer puts it, “The Israeli military teaches you to take initiative, to improvise — do things that entrepreneurs do. Mostly, you learn what a mission is — something that needs to get done, no matter what.”

In other words, compulsory military training in Israel has helped create an environment where every individual is forced to develop an entrepreneurial spirit. Start-Up Nation lists several such ‘cultural factors’ that have helped build Israel into a ‘cluster’ for start-ups, much like Silicon Valley in the US or even Bangalore here in India. Primary among them would be the Jewish emphasis on education, believes Mr Singer. “Great universities were started early on in the 1920s when there were nothing but swamps in Israel and the country was still fighting for existence. But that investment paid off much later,” he notes. Similarly, the Jews as a community have a penchant for debate — the Talmud after all is one big debate, says Mr Singer. This allows for a more questioning mind, an open approach to problems as well as converts into lack of social (or, even professional) hierarchy which again frees up space for innovation and individual thought.

Start-Up Nation is particularly timely because, as Mr Singer puts it, “the book puts the focus back on what’s real and what’s not. The housing bubble and the financial bubble were unreal, so they popped. Increase in productivity, on the other hand, is what is real.” And increase in productivity comes from innovation which happens best at small start-up companies. In the aftermath of the global financial crisis, a lot of countries, including the US, are asking key questions like how can we innovate more, how can we be more entrepreneurial. It seems like Israel has some of the answers. The world, particularly India, should take note.

(This article was published in the Op-ed section of The Pioneer on September 29, 2011.)

Raucous mass protest leads to anarchy

Anna Hazare’s cause may have been noble but the methods adopted by him and his band of civil society activists to try and force the Government to capitulate and accept his version of the Lokpal Bill — or the so-called Jan Lokpal Bill — were far from being democratic. They went against every canon of parliamentary democracy and amounted to blackmailing the executive and legislature

The ‘Fast’ is over. Now, the simple Gandhian who once lived in a temple is recuperating at one of India’s most expensive hospitals. He and his aides have seemingly made up with the big bad Government, their erstwhile arch enemy. Ms Kiran Bedi has claimed that Mr LK Advani had addressed her as beti, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has sent the 74-year-old a bouquet of flowers and a ‘Get Well Soon’ note. All versions of the Lokpal Bill (as many as four at the time of writing) will be scrutinised by the parliamentary standing committee dealing with the Bill. Everybody is happy. Well almost everybody, except for Protest TV which is clearly in withdrawal and hence chasing a very reluctant Dr Naresh Trehan, still unaware that while hundreds were feasting at Ramlila Maidan, thousands were being swept away by floods in other parts of the country. But that is another matter. 

For now is a good time to look back on the fortnight that was; what it meant and how it played itself out. I go back to one of my most striking memories from that time. 

It was Day 09 of ‘The Fast’. Negotiations with the Government which had reportedly reached a point of breakthrough in the first round of talks had collapsed by the third. When Team Anna members returned to Ramlila Maidan that evening, they voiced their fears of a police crackdown. In response, there was adequate public uproar. Then, the diminutive Gandhian who had captured the nation’s imagination with his deceptively simple demand to eradicate corruption from the country took centre-stage. Standing against a giant backdrop of Mahatma Gandhi, Anna Hazare spoke in simple Hindi: “If the authorities come to get me, I’ll go with them. Mere peeche bhagwan ki shakti hai. Jao Parliament ka gherao karo. Jail bharo.” As the several thousand strong crowd responded to his comments by cheering in unison and wildly waving the Tricolour, I was left with a niggling sense of unease. My mind went back to Nirad C Chaudhuri’s infamous comment that Mahatma Gandhi was a ‘worse dictator’ than Adolf Hitler.

And then I heard veteran police officer Kiran Bedi suggest, just for good measure I believe, that police should defy the orders of their political masters just in case they ordered that the nation’s latest messiah-on-fast be force-fed or taken away. That sent a chill down my spine. By next day morning Ms Bedi and her colleagues’ fears were proven to be unfounded — the police never intervened on Wednesday night — but I felt mine take shape when on my way to work on Thursday morning I saw khaki-clad men block all roads leading to the Prime Minister’s official residence. Four metro stations that were in the vicinity were also shut until further orders. Anna Hazare had goaded his supporters to gherao 7 Race Course Road and it seemed like there was a good chance that they might be coming soon.

By Friday, the security situation seemed to have simmered down. As my auto passed by a group of young men sporting ‘I-am-Anna’ topis, waving the Tricolour and yelling Vande Mataram at the crossing that led to Ramlila Maidan, I thought of the many twenty-somethings I had seen jostling to be on camera, screaming on national television, “We are here to support the corruption.” In recent weeks, led by the new-age Gandhi, 21st century Indians had proudly proclaimed, “Annatum sangharsh karo, hum tumhare saath hain.” I could not help but wonder about the prospects of this ‘freedom struggle’ if the sangharsh had to be carried out instead by these supporters. Would they do more than just sloganeering and feasting at Ramlila Maidan? This was after all their second freedom struggle.

The freedom rhetoric has always been a fine one that has rarely, if ever, failed to motivate crowds. Moreover, it also makes for excellent ‘breaking news’ material that 24/7 news channels clearly can’t ever get enough of. But I don’t begrudge the TV-wallahs their TRPs. I am far more concerned about the masses’ inability to distinguish between a country’s battle for sovereign independence versus a popular demand to bring about certain systemic changes within the established framework of parliamentary democracy. 

What happened at Ramlila Maidan this past fortnight, or what happened at Jantar Mantar in April, is absolutely not the same as what happened at August Kranti Maidan in 1942 when Mahatma Gandhi called on the British to ‘Quit India’, or even remotely similar to what happened in Tahrir Square this February when popular pro-democracy protests led to the ouster of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. India’s current political leadership, for all its moral depravity and its endless ability for corruption, is neither a foreign coloniser nor a despot. It is a popularly elected leadership and India a functioning democracy, warts and all.

This is of course not to wholly favour the Government’s argument that only parliamentarians have the right to make policy. That is just technical bunk that has only served to alienate the masses even further from the UPA’s agenda. There are several examples from India and abroad, and over a long period of time, wherein historic legislation was introduced only after the public put pressure on Government to bring about changes that were in consonance with the needs of an evolving society. Think women’s rights and labour laws. 

In India, the Right to Information Act is the most recent example of how civil society has been crucial to introducing social reforms throughout history. But not once were they allowed to usurp the authority of Parliament. The Right to Information Act went through the appropriate channels of policy-making before it was approved by Parliament, without anybody whipping up the kind of mass hysteria that now surrounds the Lokpal Bill. Besides, it is wholly unrealistic to expect that Parliament will approve just about any piece of legislation that is imposed upon it by anybody and everybody. This is a sure shot path to anarchy.

And it somewhere on this path that Anna Hazare and his team have crossed the thin line that differentiates between legitimate protest and dispirited blackmail. Anna Hazare had all the right to protest against the Government’s version of the Lokpal Bill, be it through anashan or dharna or sit-ins or whatever other non-violent means that he fancies. He is also wholly entitled to mobilise public support for an alternate version that he believes is much superior. But when he threatens the Government with large-scale civil disobedience — as he repeatedly did in recent days — that is when he crossed that thin, unmarked line; that is when his completely legitimate form of protest became an unacceptable exercise in blackmail, plain and simple.

But this, I believe, is something that Anna Hazare is well aware of since he had already said that he had no qualms about blackmailing the democratically-elected Government of his country. He insisted that this was the only way that the morally corrupt Government of the day could be forced to introduce the kind of reforms that India desperately needs; that left to its own devices, it will never bring about the any worthwhile changes and surely not one that will plug the loopholes of a faulty system from which they have profited tremendously. 

Anna Hazare’s demands stem from a deep and abiding distrust of politicians, from his belief that they can do no right, that none of them have an honest bone in their body. And it is somewhere here that his anti-corruption movement begins to resemble a Bollywood film where it is a clear-cut case of the good guy versus the bad guy. Here, Team Anna comprises the good guys and all politicians are the bad guys. At the core of their fight lies the institution of the Lokpal.

As envisioned by Team Anna, and defined in its Jan Lokpal Bill, the Lokpal will essentially have sweeping powers over all organs of the Government including the power to investigate and prosecute. This is hugely problematic. Even a layman should realise that investing absolute powers in any one institution that is not even elected by the people and hence not accountable to Parliament is a frightening proposition. This is of course not to say that the Government’s version of the Lokpal Bill would have been the solution to the problem. That version has its own flaws. In their original forms, neither draft was worth any serious consideration at all. But thankfully, both have evolved and mostly for the better. Clearly, the need of the hour is to have a reasoned and calm debate on the matter, away from the recent din at Ramlila Maidan.


(This article was published in the op-ed section of The Pioneer on August 31, 2011.)