Books
CORRUPTION IN INDIA: Agenda for Action edited by S. Guhan and Samuel Paul. Vision Books, Delhi, 1997.
THE CORRUPT SOCIETY: The Criminalization of India From Independence to the 1990s by Chandan Mitra. Viking, Delhi, 1998.
PUBLIC OFFICE, PRIVATE INTEREST: Bureaucracy and Corruption in India by S.K. Das. Oxford University Press, Delhi, 2001.
THE recent disclosures by Tehelka.com have once again highlighted the widespread and deep malaise of corruption afflicting our system. Not that we needed any reminders, for rare would be the citizen who could honestly claim that he/she had not experienced the deleterious effects of the malaise. Equally popular have been the tracts on corruption – from those chronicling scams to handbooks parading their favoured remedies for ridding the system of this ill. Nevertheless the fact remains that the numerous exposes and reports seem to have enjoyed limited impact and India continues to remain high on the list of corrupt countries as per the Transparency International index.
If the problem is as universal as is widely believed, and as commonly accepted as inevitable, should we bother about reforms and solutions? Such a defeatist and cynical view has few takers not only because corruption imposes unacceptably high costs of transaction but equally because even the corrupt rarely advance a moral justification, merely a contingent defense, for their actions. As columnist and now minister, Arun Shourie wrote in a prescient essay, ‘What shall I do, where shall I begin’, the more likely reason for stasis is that there is little consensus about what first steps are needed to initiate a cleansing process.
Take as example the journalistic ‘expose’ by Chandan Mitra, editor and publisher of The Pioneer, and the Agenda for Action edited by S. Guhan and Samuel Paul, both distinguished economists with the late Guhan also having won acclaim as a no-nonsense bureaucrat. Chandan’s book, though racy and gripping, remains stronger on exhortations than details, much less solutions. He, like many before, focuses on the venality of the political class for framing rules such that businessmen are forced to become ‘secondary villaians’, that is if they have to survive. And though he remains somewhat dispirited about the efficacy of media exposes, he surprisingly retains his faith in the crusading, honest officials who ‘make a difference’. Like in Italy, where the lower judiciary took on the combined might of the Mafia, the corrupt bureaucracy and political class, he believes that the Seshans, Khairnars, K.P.S. Gills (and one suspects now the Vittals) will act as catalysts to cleanse the system.
Guhan and Paul take a very different tack – one of institutional reform to reduce the incentives and opportunities for interested persons to engage in corruption – reform the political process, restructure and reorient the government machinery, empower the citizens, and create sustained public pressure for change. Their proposals relate, in addition to the usual suggestions for electoral reform, to the role of audit, the efficacy of commissions of inquiry, the need to bring in a central right to information act, strengthening bodies like the CBI, and activating civil society organisations such as Paul’s own Public Affairs Centre to generate sustained pressure for change.
The latest in the series of such books is the offering by S.K. Das, a serving civil servant, who provides a historical account of the evolution of bureaucracy in India as his favoured route to unpacking the problem of corruption. His focus, as the title suggests, is on the conflict between public and private interests since he sees corruption as a process of subverting public good for private gains. Briefly stated, his argument is that pre-British systems of organising administration in India were structured around loyalty and patronage. Bureaucrats were appointed to public office on the basis of loyalty to the ruler and they in turn used their office for private gain. In essence, no distinction was made between public and private interests.
This did not imply that there was no problem of corruption. Be it the Mauryan or the much later Mughal rule, despite a clearly articulated hierarchy of precisely circumscribed offices and, as the Arthashastra outlines, a complex of do’s and don’ts with heavy penalties imposed for unacceptable behaviour, the system in its essence remained patrimonial. Control of civil servants and embezzlement remained matters of concern.
The entry of the East India Company did little to change the system with officials routinely siphoning off huge sums causing great public distress. Only later were measures introduced to change the patronage based system to one organised around merit. It was essentially in the 19th century that the basics of the modern bureaucracy – one based on general and impersonal rules foregrounding merit and expertise, appointment of officials through an open examination, setting up procedures for promotion, in-house training, systems of incentives and disincentives – were set up. The belief was that such a merit based system would both be more efficient as also exclude private interest from administration. In fact, the phrase civil servant, can be traced to that period.
Modern bureaucracies separate officials from private interests in a variety of ways – depersonalizing the office through merit based selection precluding private means of entry; evolving uniform rule-bound procedures to eliminate private knowledge and interests from administration; setting up a system of incentives and disincentives – security of tenure, promotions etc. – to enhance efficiency and reduce capriciousness; and finally experimenting with systems of internal and external control as also influencing the degree of identification that the individual officer has with the organisation (espirit de corps). Das argues, and persuasively, that the ‘success’ of a bureaucratic system depends upon the effectivity with which it is able to play with these variables.
Clearly, as far as India is concerned, things have gone wrong at every level. Start with the notion of meritocracy. Das shows that despite the recommendations of the Kothari and later Satish Chandra committees, we have over time diluted the standards of the service. Not only do our evaluation systems not ensure the selection of the best and the brightest, over time the qualifications of those selected have been declining. He further feels that the system of instituting quotas/reservations and permitting candidates multiple attempts to enter the service has had a negative impact.
The situation vis-a-vis rewards is similar. Das believes that our civil service is badly paid, not only in comparison with the private sector but even in terms of a living wage. This, Das argues, increases the rate of temptation. Worse, despite successive Pay Commissions, the salary gap has increased over time, probably because treating the government as the employer of last resort bloats numbers and precludes fair compensation. He contrasts the situation with that in Singapore which has frozen the numbers while paying civil servants on the average nearly a fifth more than the private sector. It is our policy of protecting employment while neglecting wages which has resulted in capitulation salaries – below reservation wages which attract only the dishonest to government employment.
Das’ analysis of promotions reveals a similar picture of stagnation and disaffection. Not only are the more competent not more likely to get promotion, even those of doubtful integrity can rise to the highest levels. The situation does not improve when we examine placements, the duration spent on a post, the system of transfers, and so on. Constant misuse and political interference has ensured that we are left with a transfer industry with individuals seeking and paying for more lucrative postings.
The chapter dealing with control systems – internal and external – hardly makes for a more pleasing reading. Be it the functioning of the vigilance or anti-corruption departments, the use of confidential reports, the investigation through the CBI, the offices of the Lok Ayukta’s or vigilance commissioners – the depressing reality is that few of the corrupt have been penalised. Das clearly does not share the general excitement about the CBI as a professional and non-partisan force. If anything, the numbers prosecuted and convicted have been declining, both as a result of collusive functioning and the inefficacies of our legal system.
The external control systems of audit, judiciary or social control through shaming the corrupt have not been particularly effective either. Das does have some hope in the efforts at bringing in transparency of information and involving civil society actors – though he remains skeptical about how far all this can go. The primary villain, in his view, remains politics and politicians who are unwilling to insulate bureaucracy from undue external influences. It is not that the service should not be given political directions, but that once the goals are set, it should be left alone to devise the ways and means of implementation.
Overall then, Das is a great votary of a lean, professional bureaucracy, paid well and insulated from the political class. He also supports greater transparency and an active role for civil society. But above all, he believes that the state should seek to limit its interventionist role. Only then are we likely to have a less corrupt and more effective civil service, one where public good is not subservient to private interests.
There is some merit in Das’ arguments, buttressed by interesting examples from Singapore (his role model), Hong Kong and Japan. It is interesting that despite widespread corruption in the political sphere, the bureaucracy in Japan is left alone. And that in both Hong Kong and Singapore, the extent of corruption has dramatically declined through the use of incentives and disincentives and involving the public. This is significant because not too far back both the Hong Kong and Singapore civil services were classified as extremely corrupt. To have, in Hong Kong, created a situation wherein members of the public are not only willing to identify the corrupt, but do so openly, implies that citizens have little fear of reprisal and have faith in action being taken. These examples also belie the Orientalist construction of corruption. It is a relief to read a tract on corruption not heavily imbued with moral rhetoric. Evidently, more than engage with corruption as a cultural phenomena, Das remains firmly wedded to a rational, materialist view – good systems and procedures contribute to greater honesty.
Harsh Sethi
CULTURE, SPACE AND THE NATION-STATE: From Sentiment to Structure by Dipankar Gupta. Sage Publications, New Delhi, 2000.
THIS book is a long, and somewhat passionate, theoretical sojourn by a social anthropologist searching answers for three main questions: (i) How is it possible to strengthen civil society without letting the state off the hook? (ii) Can positive discrimination be supported as a matter of state policy without giving the vested interests around permanent ascriptive identities a free hand? (iii) How can the ideology of secularism be aligned with the process of secularization of the public sphere without affiliating either to a ‘progressivist’ reading of history or to a ‘majority-minority’ mindset? That these and related issues are at the centre of social and political debate in India and elsewhere is fairly well known. Dipankar Gupta addresses them in his own inimitable style, unpacking his difference with a host of contemporary sociological and political positions.
Gupta is bothered by something more subtle and substantial, and the subtitle of the book aptly captures his anxiety. The book perceives the nation-state as a cultural space generating a multiplicity of popular sentiments and goes on to examine the structures of liberal democracy that helps keep such space alive. Two issues are involved here. If the nation-state is cultural, then how does one understand the modes of democratic governance – impartial to any cultural specificity – independent of it? Moreover, how can the state produce its citizens – a category badly needed in Gupta’s perception – who would not in any way vitiate the secular and civil character of the public sphere?
Let us pause for a moment and get acquainted with some of the terms Gupta uses for his analysis. He writes at length on how cultural groups are premised on the ‘membership’ of those who know the ‘root metaphors’ (e.g., ‘purity-pollution’ in the caste system and ‘colour differentiation’ in racist societies) attached to the group and understand their ‘regnant set of meanings’. Together, these members constitute a conceptual space where the root metaphors – polysemic and multivocal as they are – evoke a good deal of empathy, cathectivity, partisanship and aesthetic commitment. If the root metaphors change such that the regnant set of meanings fails to hold its ground, the space collapses, and culture alters. If ritual root metaphors mutually contest over some symbolic area, space turns into a ‘site’ in such periods of instability (as happened in the mandir/masjid dispute). If members of a culture migrate, they carry the space – a ‘vicarious’ and ‘mnemonic’ space, to be precise – with them in their new locale and socially and politically tend to resonate the vibrancy of their ‘home’.
Categories which are indifferent to root metaphors are called ‘non-spaces’. Non-spaces, therefore, are not cultural and are driven by lex or rules – as bureaucratic norms. While a root metaphor stands alone, has no demand for logical consistency, lex comes in a package. Root metaphors require an interactive socialization for denotation of their meanings, lex doesn’t. Space has its members – in most cases with ascriptive identities; non-space its associates who can opt to exit at will. Space cannot let context in without killing itself; non-space gives rise to enterprises only in context. Both space and non-space, however, have nothing to do with geographical size; they are distinguished either by root metaphors with a regnant set of meanings or by the domination of rules and procedures. Although modernity implies ‘a relative lack of root metaphors, whereas in tradition it is root metaphors that abound’ (44), it would be erroneous to look here for an erasure of root metaphors; ‘(s)ome root metaphors lose their vivacity... and other root metaphors take their place and call out to different spaces’ (48).
The set of root metaphors that supersedes all others in modern times is the nation-state. Briefly, the nation-state is a body of supra-local root metaphors that produces a cultural space of ‘sacrilized territory’. So the nation-state stands for all and is everywhere; even the lex has to accept its authority. Such seizure of other spaces and non-spaces is backed by the force of technology and capitalism, and the nation-state’s own root metaphors. When marginal cultural communities reveal signs of unease, a ‘bad’ nation-state calls them ‘aliens’ and ‘enemies’ (recall the Third Reich) while a ‘good’ one makes laws and regulations to draw them toward the mainstream. Diversities, therefore, ‘are good only so far as they do not conflict with the root metaphors of the nation-state’ (142). When they do, they have to be ‘cleansed of their root metaphors’ and presented ‘as artifacts’ (227). Artifacts – such as ‘clothes, food, music and literary appreciation’ – are not attached to any given encultured space (59). To accommodate cultural differences, therefore, Gupta prescribes a complete denial of any possible alternative to the culture of the nation-state.
While many would reckon this approach authoritarian, if not out and out statist, Gupta has little qualms about that. Only the state ‘can think in terms of structures that can overcome the extant differences... This is where citizenship figures as an active consideration’ (153). To actively interact with the nation-state as citizens in fraternity, individuals need ‘a set of conditions’ under liberal democracy which Gupta calls ‘the civil society’ (159). Gupta’s civil society is markedly different from the communitarians’ (Sheth, Nandy, Kothari) ‘against the state’ preference; he has no good word for traditional communities. He also criticizes Beteille who allegedly was swayed by Tocqueville’s anti-state institutionalism and failed to see the point in Hegel’s understanding of the civil society as ‘an ethic of freedom’ (180-182).
Civil society is then a normative project for Gupta to turn ‘legal’ citizens into ‘substantive’ citizens and he is largely persuasive in his call for launching ‘a concerted full-blown critique against the modern Indian state’ and ‘pressuring the state to deliver’ (186). Yet, Gupta criticizes Partha Chatterji (sic) for ‘erroneously’ considering colonial institutions as civil society though they did not involve ‘citizens’ (181). If the ethic of freedom is central to civil society and substantive citizenship is still unrealized, one may perhaps ask how it is possible to perceive the colonial institutions – sites of anti-colonial nationalism premised on fraternity – as unrelated to civil society as a continuing ‘project’.
The concluding section of the book deals with the policies of positive discrimination and the ideology of secularism. Gupta revises the Rawlsian ‘principle of justice as fairness’ with Durkheim’s ‘condition of minimalist resemblance’ (224). He favours positive discrimination for ascriptive identities, such as caste, only under certain conditions: (a) If the goal is a progressive dilution of such identity to enhance fraternity and ‘establish the conditions of civil society’ (210). (b) If certain ascriptive attributes are not allowed to convert into socially valuable traits ‘that break down intersubjectivity’ (216). (c) If measures are taken to free its beneficiaries from their past and make them contribute as citizens to the common pool of society (226). Based on these principles, Gupta identifies a big gap between Ambedkar’s goals and Mandal’s use of caste as a political resource.
As regards the question of cultural (religious) minority, Gupta favours what he calls the ‘thermo-dynamic principle of secularization’ which refuses to see minorities as permanent and proclaims its cultural protection but within the framework of citizenship. That is, in the public sphere of the nation-state ‘where representations from cultural spaces and non-spaces are debated and deliberated upon’ (241), certain minority preferences will have to be complied with when they don’t militate against non-spaces. This ‘would gradually convert minority communities into cultural enterprise associations and even give them a voluntary character’ (249).
This book, an extremely valuable contribution to the understanding of the Indian nation-state and its principles of governance from the perspective of an anthropologist, displays Gupta’s well-meaning intention to employ the root metaphors of the nation-state for the reformist purpose of producing a homogenized citizenship. He doesn’t, to attain this, favour glossing over cultural and social differences. Rather, he proclaims their free play in the public sphere to eventually accommodate them – within certain limits though – in the policies of the nation-state. Such limits, however, are set by principles (of fraternity, of conditions of resemblance) which are far from universal, and whose legitimacy depends largely to the extent they are accepted by these tentatively constituted identity positions of the social or religious marginality. If substantive citizenship offered better capabilities to these groups than the benefits they accrued from identity-based politics, the pace of assimilation would have increased. In conditions where the nation-state is valued more for its strategic and instrumental worth than its representative character, the journey from sentiment to structure is likely to be more hazardous and uncertain than we tend to presuppose.
Dwaipayan Bhattacharyya
RIGHTS, COMMUNITIES AND DISOBEDIENCE: Liberalism and Gandhi by Vinit Haksar. Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 2001.
Vinit Haksar’s book, Rights, Communities and Disobedience; Liberalism and Gandhi, is an important intervention at a time when our liberal intelligentsia has started talking about the country as a multicultural society. Haksar begins his book by mentioning how the topics it covers – rights, punishment and disobedience – are issues of theoretical and practical importance in multicultural societies. He also places Gandhi squarely within the liberal tradition. To evaluate Haksar’s argument one has to understand and evaluate the importance of Gandhi as a modern thinker. More importantly, one has to appreciate the extent of his influence, viz. the inspiration he has provided to movements like the one led by Martin Luther King in the United States in the fifties and sixties.
Haksar’s book arrives at its conclusion and defence of Gandhi after prolonged passages of rigorous, though often tortuous, twists of argumentation. Structurally the book has been divided into two parts; the first four chapters dealing with rights, punishments and groups and the second dealing with civil disobedience and coercion. It is particularly the second section and the last chapter of the first section that form Haksar’s appraisal of Gandhi and the liberal tradition which merit attention.
Haksar has in the fifth and sixth chapters extensively compared the Gandhian and Rawlsian ideas of civil disobedience, a comparison that leads him to conclude that the Gandhian idea of civil disobedience is superior. Haksar, however, does not find in the moral stringency associated with the Gandhian idea of civil disobedience, and the moral didacticism that this inevitably involves, the possibility of it becoming an obstacle in the efficacy of civil disobedience in the contemporary state of Indian politics. One of the most successful examples of civil disobedience that one can think of in contemporary times, one which was undoubtedly influenced by Gandhi – the civil rights movement led by Martin Luther King – definitely did not demand of its participants such degrees of moral stringency. Contrast the success of this movement to one of the major upheavals in the post-independence Indian polity, wherein high-minded Gandhian principles were invoked in the JP movement only to result in the ushering in of ever higher levels of political crudity and chaos. The fact that these two movements had such widely differing effects has much to say about the efficacy of Gandhian ideas in modern times.
The problem with Haksar’s formulation is that in his effort to defend Gandhian principles and present them as coherent alternatives to mainstream liberalism, he overlooks those aspects of Gandhian thought that are problematic. For one, if Gandhi is to be placed squarely within the liberal tradition as Haksar has, and if we are to evaluate the centrality of his ideas to contemporary India as indeed this book does, then one needs to reach a better understanding of Gandhi’s critique of modernity. This aspect is absent in Haksar’s book.
Two of the most important chapters in the book with regard to the present state of Indian politics are the fourth chapter on religious groups and Indian secularism and the third chapter on collective rights and the value of groups. Without doubt these two areas are sensitive for the Indian polity considering the momentous implications of the Shah Bano controversy in which the issue of Muslim personal law was debated in terms of individual and group rights. The fact that group rights were ultimately given preeminence and that subsequently the concept of secularism has been thoroughly reviled by the forces of Hindutva and left as obsolete and unfashionable shows the far-reaching effects of the controversy.
In his discussion of secularism Haksar differentiates between the ‘wall of separation between the state and religion’ and the ‘no-preference’ doctrine. He notes how the wall of separation model has been considered by many as being unsuitable to an excessively religious society like India and for which reason the second, the no-preference model, may be more suitable. Following Gandhi it would seem obvious that Haksar feels that a strict separation of religion and politics is undesirable and that the two need to go together. Having taken this position Haksar talks about the need to balance the contending religious interests in Indian society to reach an ultimate state of what he terms ‘harmony’, which he admits is a long way away.
While his views on balancing contending interests are convincing, there is one fundamental flaw in his evaluation of the Gandhian view of secularism. Though Gandhi remains more a man of action rather than a systematic thinker, it is curious that Haksar does not analyze the consequences of Gandhi’s combination of agitational politics and the appeal to religious pan-Islamic sentiments in the joint non-cooperation-Khilafat movement of 1920-1922. A discussion of Gandhian ideas needs to analyse this particular instance of the combination of religion and politics and the subsequent communalisation of the Indian polity in the mid to late 1920s, seen in the form of the Shuddhi, Sangathan, Tabligh and Tanzim movements.
One final point needs to be made regarding Haksar’s views on collective rights and the value of groups. Though endorsing the intrinsic worth of group activities, he does not go to the extent of considering groups as being ‘ends-in-themselves’. Haksar, while acknowledging the value of groups, thus prefers to take an individualist rather than a communitarian position. Yet, it is curious that in a defence of Gandhi’s ideas he should prefer to do so, for the Mahatma’s ideas are more akin to communitarianism rather than mainstream liberalism that Haksar has sought to present and defend. The Gandhian conception of tradition and the importance of being rooted in it as portrayed by Bhikhu Parekh (Colonialism, Tradition and Reform: An Analysis of Gandhi’s Political Discourse. New Delhi, Sage Publications, 1989) and Alasdair MacIntyre (After Virtue. Notre Dame, University of Notre Dame Press, 1981) are strikingly similar. If one adds to this particular conception of tradition the similarities between MacIntyre’s rejection of the Enlightenment and Gandhi’s critique of modernity, one needs to rethink Gandhi’s location within the liberal tradition as Haksar has argued in his book.
Amir Ali
DEFEATED INNOCENCE: Adivasi Assertion, Land Rights and the Ekta Parishad Movement by Rahul Ramagundam. Grassroots India, Delhi, 2001.
DEFEATED Innocence is a short book, a quick read about the struggles of the poor for jamin, jal, jungle. It looks at one single event, a padyatra for land rights in Madhya Pradesh by Ekta Parishad, an umbrella organization of adivasis and dalits and analyses its genesis, implementation, underlying vision and the chronology of the struggle. The book is privately published and will probably get little attention except among the converted.
This is a real pity because such books should be required reading in courses on development, sociology, law, political science and certainly Indian administration. Not because it is particularly learned but because it speaks from the point of view of local experiences and captures the richness and dignity commonplace in millions of everyday lives. For the most part governance is not studied as a subject, but it should be and narratives of contemporary struggle, told simply and sympathetically, must not be unfamiliar territory to the educated. This book is an illustrative primer on ways in which development can deprive people of all they own, especially their dignity. It profiles the eminence that exists in village after village amongst the poor and disadvantaged and the inordinate amounts of courage they must bring to their everyday lives simply in order to survive. It forces respect for the average Indian citizen. This is a quality especially missing in the education of those who go on to governing large tracts of India and in the course of their careers increasingly forget about, and become alienated from, the people whose servants they are.
The book concentrates on the padyatra as a method of highlighting issues, creating awareness of rights amongst the unlettered, mobilizing a dispossessed people and finally forcing response from the state. It stresses what goes into these efforts: the psychological preparation and the physical organization. Self-help groups and local leaderships sit night after night thinking out the campaign strategy and implementation. As they work through the logistics, they think about the consequences and agree to face upto the risks. They have to find food, water, shelter for the night, blankets and transport. Amazingly, people who have barely enough to cover themselves provide handfuls of grain, wood for their fires, utensils, and a safe haven wherever the swelling numbers come to rest. Every day brings a triumph of spirit, as when the yatris win a long negotiation for compensation while the body of the dead woman killed in a work accident lies rotting in the sun. Or it brings a test of mettle, as when the chief minister will finally only agree to announce yet another task force to look into land distribution. Throughout it all those entrusted with the leadership make efforts to keep spirits up, keep the fight focused and get the message out to the world that there is a fight for justice going on here.
In the absence of an effective and self-confident state – a state that can free its people from want, ensure personal security and safety, and assure equity and human dignity – the business of governance is increasingly slipping into the hands of non-state actors. The poor have few alternatives. They can choose to remain passive recipients of uncertain government largesse or remain oppressed and ruled by traditional systems of caste and power. Or, as is often the case, the vacuum is filled by violent actors from the far left and far right who depend on oppression and violence to ensure dominance.
Large self-help groups like Ekta Parishad offer an attractive alternative. In an area full of armed feudal landlords, disaffected bands of violent Marxists, caste based vigilante groups, dacoits, and everyday traffickers in women, the leadership of Ekta Parishad espouses a declared policy of non-violence. The ideological position of the Ekta Parishad is ‘to rediscover the radical in Gandhi.’ They base themselves on the notion of village revitalization and empowering the very last person – something which the market economy of today thinks is quaint, anthropologically interesting to observe and examine, but hopelessly out of tune with the realities of the day. Its arguments and persuasion are framed in terms of the demand for implementation and realization of constitutional guarantees and protection provided by law.
Groups like the Ekta Parishad organize lakhs of people across thousands of villages into self-helping communities. They can do so only because they are welcome. But by challenging power relations and indicating the ineffectiveness of the local administration, the Parishad, given its ability to mobilize the victims into a force for change, has come to occupy a very contested space. For one, it has become an affront to the state in a way that the presence of absolute poverty itself has never been. On the other, the very real armed revolutionaries of the locality see their own ability to capture peoples’ imagination and loyalty blunted by non-violent struggles and meet this with violence and intimidation. The long absence of any meaningful land reform also ensures that the final weight of the millstone in which the adivasi and dalit poor are ground down, is compounded by the unbroken oppression of the feudal landlords. The intervention of independence and constitutionalism have made little difference here. A slew of laws against forced labour, usury, untouchability, women’s equality and caste based discrimination have not budged old power structures. In fact the old power elite have made a smooth transition into modernity and transformed themselves from feudal overlords into present day political representatives without much of a wrinkle to their ancient power base.
Since both Naxals and constitutionalists struggle for the same cause, movements like the Ekta Parishad are often branded as incubators of revolution and seen as a threat to local law and order by a tense administration unused to being questioned by the poor. Unsubstantiated accusations of being the cat’s-paw of foreign influence, religious proselytizers, or fellow travellers of violent groups, dog efforts to promote a development that is not centred around profit but people. While the state is often in open armed confrontation with the violent groups, it nevertheless resents the power and independence of non-violent organizing groups and seeks to curb them in a thousand ways. You have only to look at the steady growth of curbs on NGOs and their right to associate, to discern this pattern.
Ideally the law should adjudicate these conflicts dispassionately. But the notion that legislation or the legal system can come to the rescue has little mention in the book. Given how increasingly far away the legal system is from ordinary lives it is hardly surprising that large mass movements place little stress on the law as a tool for social change. Instead it becomes clear how at every stage the legal system vandalizes the poor of their possessions. To add insult to injury, the laws mock the poor by requiring that at every turn they need to read and write in order to resist a land acquisition order, to stake their claim to be the tiller of land, to protest if someone has encroached on it, to get permission to use forest produce or even to retrieve illegally confiscated tools. Whether it is to steer clear of infringing the many rules and orders that bind their lives or whether it is to get just about any entitlement, the citizen needs to present authority with a card, a registration, a ledger entry, release, license or official certificate. Deprived of education for 50 years, the majority must rely on bribing their way through or be subservient to the powerful so they can catch the crumbs of patronage as they fall off the tables of the mighty. They are reduced to seeking audience and making grovelling petitions to the magistrate or local authority who continue to be their mai-baap in ways that would have made any coloniser or conquistador envious.
It is hard to understand why people so tragically poor, so ground under the heel of ‘law’, and so cheated by its provisions should continue to rely on its ability to provide some protection and seed change. But despite all, peoples’ movements like Ekta Parishad are rooted in notions of rule of law. With little evidence to back it up, there remains a touching belief that in the end the law will come to the aid of the true. They often approach the higher courts and even win their cases. But court directions hardly benefit the ground situation. In fact a court victory often exacerbates the situation on the ground. Often it only leads to complete flouting of the law, lays bare the dumb defiance that is prevalent among officials in the system and increases the bitterness of the sufferers. While activists can make the courts annunciate a broad principle of social justice, the time and energy wasted in approaching local courts to adjudicate urgent issues of everyday survival seems laughable in the context of the rural poor. So direct action is increasingly the option emphasized by those seeking after remedies for wrongs done to them. Certainly the risk may be great but the possibility of seeding change can be greater than waiting for your day in court.
Rahul Ramagundam, a PhD student at JNU, and the author of Defeated Innocence identifies himself, as all advocates of good governance must, with the uphill struggle for equity, social justice and human rights being fought by the majority of India’s people – the poor. The author teases out all the strategies and the methodologies that can lay the foundation for sustained activism for social justice.
Written with deep sympathy by a clear and sharp-eyed observer of the struggle for survival, the author walks along with the yatris as they try to regain the basic entitlements which are theirs by right, theirs by law, theirs by history and yet made unavailable to them by the design of modern development, the machinations of the system and the neglect and lethargy of the administration. What accompanies the reader throughout the text is the extraordinary will, determination and courage that must be needed by every poor, unlettered, often hungry and neglected individual preoccupied with issues of survival, to join together, handful by handful, out of isolated hamlets to become a great and purposeful march for justice. In coming together they stake their all in concerted acts of protest in the best traditions of the Mahatma. There is little promised and no guarantee of success. Indeed, as the book’s title indicates, there is every possibility of defeat staring them in the face. Yet it would seem that they need this effort of self-determination if only to give themselves a sense of their own humanity, even if no one else will recognize it.
The logic of the marcher’s cause is so commonsensical that it is bewildering to understand why so many lives must be lost, and time and money wasted, in wresting each entitlement from those entrusted with democracy. The sheer effort and energy of dispossessed people to wake up each morning and determine to take on the system in solidarity with each other must become more widely known. On reading this slim book there is the faint chance that envy, if not full-blown admiration, may jerk more privileged readers at least halfway out of their seats and summon a weak cheer, even as the tired elite hand sinks back into lethargy with a moan about ‘where this country is going to.’ Quite clearly it is going to the people.
Maja Daruwala
