The Great Speeches of Modern India

by Rudrangshu Mukherjee

  Once the muster roll was identified and highlighted as an important primary document for defrauding people of wages, the demand to see bills and vouchers was the logical second step. People observe and take note of the incoming tractors filled with material, they count empty sacks, they notice that money is paid and a transaction concluded. A village situation does not actually allow for much secrecy. Moreover, it is even more difficult to surreptitiously hide materials like cement, chuna, and stone slabs. People even know where these materials go. But the government auditor comes and goes, gives a clean chit and all seems to go well. With new buildings about to crack and brand new check dams spouting fountains, indifference has given way to indignation. The examination of accounts is now considered as an important skill to learn. Even if they lack the opportunity to master accountancy, people are extremely well-equipped to demystify accounting technology. We have excellent systems by which illiterate women have traditionally lent money, working out dues to the last paisa. What people needed to know was the methods through which a fraud could be committed by a group of people and supported through apparently legal methods by others. The unnecessarily complicated rules and orders manipulated to facilitate corruption, need to be understood to be countered. What lies within the four corners of an official order is not necessarily just. The Right to Information issue has been talked over in seminar rooms and policy papers for over a decade. It is now among one of the catchwords of every national politician and political party. But what has brought the MKSS struggle into prominence is that it has perhaps been the first grassroots struggle to articulate the specific and primary demand for the Right to Information. While the issue emerged from the struggle for livelihood among the rural poor, their specific demands for information fell within the obvious legitimacy of the citizen’s Right to Information. While important people’s struggles like the Narmada Bachao Andolan and the victims of the Bhopal Gas tragedy have also emphasized the right to access specific kinds of information, in such cases this issue has been absorbed within their wider demands. By highlighting the inalienable birthright of all citizens to obtain information on all matters which affect their lives, the MKSS campaign gave room to a wide spectrum of interest groups to see themselves as a part of this struggle. In this case the specific demand for photocopies of bills, vouchers and muster-rolls endowed the universal importance of the issue with immediate life and meaning. Ultimately, the difference between the issue of transparency and a people’s demand for the right to information indicates the fundamental shift in who asks the questions. Demanding information is much more than the framing of a question. It is an attack on the culture of secrecy and on the vested interests which lie hidden within the structures that control decision-making. People in Rajasthan and soon after in other parts of the country began to see the significance of the issue in their own lives and struggles. The political machinery which has paid admirable lip service to the issue for years, suddenly found itself ill-equipped to deny a simple, straightforward demand, despite that demand’s implications for a radical shift in the sharing and wielding of power.

  A scam a day…

  Each morning’s newspaper brings into our homes yet another story of a nation taken for a ride. Hawala, urea, the stock market, uniforms, medicines, land, shoe contracts, bureaucrats selling the country, politicians selling themselves, investigating agencies selling time, and newspapers and magazines selling like hot cakes because of all this. The middle class hates paying bribes: bribes for a berth on a train, for clearing a building plan, for getting a government job, a transfer, a place for their children in college, for getting the phone repaired, the electricity meter fixed, the license renewed. Yet what the middle class hates even more is fighting the battle against corruption head-on. There is a need for a Lochinvar—a Seshan, a Khairnar, a Kiran Bedi, an Alphons, and an Anna Hazare. Now they have decked us out with an entire band of knights in shining armour—the Supreme Court, which has recently been celebrating its forthright activism in this never ending proxy war. While each one of these heroes have played an undoubtedly outstanding part in fighting lonely battles, are these the solutions? There is a certain degree of truth in the assertion that corruption is an ever-lingering malaise. Anti-corruption campaigns are used from time to time to alter the balance of power between competing equals. Many feel that corruption is an entirely symptomatic and superficial political issue. That the endemic causes of this debilitating illness are never examined is the outcome of such constant skirmishing amidst the upper levels of the corruption chain. After all, it is undoubtedly true that what one sees coming out in the papers is only the tip of the iceberg. We are all convinced that under any contract, through any patronage, within any sector lies a scam. We have seen how investigating agencies, and audit bodies have failed in their duties for years, even decades, so that each conspiracy has grown to gigantic proportions. We are relieved that finally some big names have gone to jail, that some others are spending a lot of time seeking bail. But none of these running battles have or will change the way the country is run.

  How then has the MKSS campaign differed? If it is only a campaign against corruption, the scams brought to light by its activities have been low-key affairs in relation to the national rip-offs. The people who have been identified as thieves are mere pawns in a system where big fish continue to call the shots. What then is the significance of the MKSS experience?

  The most outstanding factor in the campaign in rural Rajasthan is that it is a people’s struggle. Corruption for the main movers in the struggle is only an incidental though a primary issue. Corruption has been the external manifestation of the denial of a right, an entitlement, a wage, a medicine, a bag of urea, twenty kilos of ration rice, fifty-six grams of daal and eight grams of oil. It is the denial of a right to question.

  The information movement in central Rajasthan focused on development works because of their importance to rural employment and wages. For the poor in this area, these are their means of living and survival. People’s support has been the most important evaluator of the importance of an issue in any mass organization. As a result, mass organizations will always take up issues that people consider important. However, all struggles have a very important element of dialogue and communication. The oppressed will have to seek allies in their battle for survival, by exposing the bankruptcy of their oppressors’ position. The mere demand for the right kind of information can undermine the confidence of far more powerful opponents. But there will have to be a conscious collective effort to frame the right questions. Even if answers are not provided, much is gained because it only confirms for those silently watching, that there is indeed something to hide.

  To explicitly refuse to provide information is also very difficult in today’s circumstances. Institutions in democratic and liberalized India have played great lip service to the jargon of transparency. By forcing action on such pronouncements, the people have an opportunity to define the debate in their terms, rather than be saddled with yet another manipulative definition.

  Survival is just the act of existence, technically shorn of all additional needs. Its limits are defined by the World Bank’s ‘safety nets’ designed to keep the nose of a drowning population just above the water. When there was a welfare state and there were avowals of 20 and 5 point programmes and Garibi Hatao, the state still had a stated objective of fighting poverty, and the responsibility to meet basic needs. Now we are told that the market will do it all. With the almost unrestricted entry of multinationals and global pressures, it is vitally important that the people on the margins seek answers from the state as to the reasons why even the little they have is being snatched away. The poor in India have never really been dependent on state support. But when they are ousted from their own homes, driven off their land, beaten to death, raped and rendered jobless, they must surely have a right to ask questions which the state is duly bound to answer. Information becomes tangible—a home, food, a well, a school, employment, fuel, and f
odder.

  People need to know why their names are not on ration cards, and how much sugar, kerosene, or grain is entered in the PDS register. They need to know what medicines are free, and how many doctors should come and when. An endless number of questions must be answered, which do not relate to defence or to the security of the state. This is people’s money raised and spent in their name.

  It is both tragic and ironic that fifty years after independence we should ask not for information for better living, for better education but merely to ensure our survival. At this level, there is much less room for theoretical arguments and doublespeak. No matter how others may describe their condition, those fighting a battle for survival speak a language that is shorn of decoration. Their questions will be incisive, and their demands will instinctively be pinpointed and direct. We need to search for and create forums where such voices will be heard and others will be compelled to listen. The large numbers of middle class fence sitters must realize that their own future is precarious and tenuous. Because the entire edifice of organized extortion is built upon grassroot structures of exploitation, and questions asked at the bottom will threaten all the way to the top.

  Technology and export mean ‘progress’. Repeatedly multinational corporations with their Indian partners have entered areas deemed ripe for ‘development’ and ‘progress’. Multinational mining companies have found bauxite in Koraput, Raigada, and surrounding areas in tribal Orissa. People protest when they are ousted from their land and homes. But no one listens. Answers are given only in the state’s repressive measures and grand statistics of foreign investment.

  In Alwar, Rajasthan arable fertile land is acquired for a ‘public purpose’ through forced sales and used to establish liquor distilleries. Official statements issued from Jaipur blithely proclaim that large numbers of jobs will be created, and that pollution has been eliminated by new and magical technology. It requires only a public hearing in the village to expose the utter falsity of these arguments.

  In South Canara multinationals are coming in to set up joint ventures and land reform laws considered sacrosanct are circumvented by creating a new concept called ‘Zoning’. The government claims that land ceiling laws are intact.

  Human Rights Commissions are set up by the state, while fake encounters, custodial deaths, and disappearances increase. Hunger, minimum wages, and the right to food, shelter, and clothing are no longer classified as human rights issues.

  We need to call a halt to this misrepresentation. The truth must come out. Access to information exposes the gap between the legal framework of a state and its actual functioning. It lays bare the realpolitik of a class that aggressively rules in the name of the Republic, the national anthem and the National Flag, and which has put down dissent by simplistically branding it as anti-national and anti-state. This access exposes the ruling class and lays bare its loyalties. It allows us to chart the degrees to which we have been pawned off and sold. But more critically by empowering citizens to be watchdogs, it gives us a unique opportunity to curtail the arbitrary exercise of power.

  This has been a year of scams. At one end of the chain of profit the scams concern big business and big pay-offs, but at the other end are the commodities on which the poor subsist—fodder in Bihar, muster rolls in MP, medicines and grain across the country. If the people in Bihar had been able to check the register, the embezzlement would have been detected long ago. Fodder is voluminous, tangible and plainly visible. Yet years of audit and state vigilance managed to see this non-existent fodder.

  Information has enabled an exposure of the contradiction between promise and action. It has been a battle led by the poor (or an organization of the poor) against exploitation by vested interests in government and outside, who have used anti-poverty programmes to exploit them. It is immensely significant because the entire edifice stands on this huge foundation of institutionalized robbery. At this ‘grassroots’ level an exposure reveals that for the people at the receiving end of such extraction, corruption and exploitation mean the same thing.

  This campaign has also demonstrated to the middle class that their security is extremely fragile and that their own future is propped by a tottering structure. It is this marriage of interests between the poor and the middle class that contain the seeds of a people’s movement against something much larger than corruption. The specifics will vary from area to area. But this movement has found a tool which exposes the contradictions of an economic order based on profit and money, which promises ‘sustainable development’ for all. It strips the veneer from statistics, and presents specifics. It allows those at the bottom to not merely demand that their voice be heard but that their questions be answered. In some of their questions are contained the ingredients of a debate on ethics and governance for which our entire people are ready. After all, despite the huge increase in personal resources among the middle and upper income groups, there is a degree of disquiet about how simplistically the whole development blueprint has been packaged. There is unhappiness with the obvious lack of ethics in governance, and there is at least a nagging doubt that things are not quite as they are made out to be. The questions being raised by the poor are based on an indisputable reality—at gross variance with what has been put on record. The Emperor is indeed wearing no clothes!

  We are faced with an unholy nexus of contorted institutions in our polity today. A colonial bureaucracy and a corrupt representative democracy disguise their misdeeds behind a facade of democratic and constitutional legitimacy. Feudal social relationships show their colours again and again woven into our democratic polity. Caste and Hindutva re-emerge as weapons to re-instate past glory. Relationships in political parties, between the citizens and their representatives are coloured by the feudal hangover. Arbiters of justice perpetuate the patriarchal treatment of women. Reactionary opinion is reflected in various judicial pronouncements all over the country—Bhanwri’s case in Rajasthan is symbolic. Miss World contests are superimposed on the picture of traditional Indian womanhood symbolized by Sati. The Shiv Sena hosts Michael Jackson, justifying his artistic freedom, while M.F. Hussain is pilloried for the artistic liberty he took while painting Saraswati—a cameo of how communalism in India conveniently draws a meandering boundary of acceptable limits! We need to slice through the confusion being created. The unemployed youth in Maharastra need to think about how many jobs the proceeds of Michael Jackson’s concert will create for them, and the responsibilities of the ruling Shiv Sena in generating employment through policy decisions and financial allocations. Citizens of Bangalore need to know exactly how much it cost the administration to play surrogate hosts to the Miss World contest, and how much Amitabh Bachchan paid. We have to ask the right questions so that the focus on issues basic to people’s living intensifies.

  Democracy and a real share of political power are far beyond the reach of the common person. Elected representatives have amply demonstrated their lack of concern for the people who have elected them to power. Ethics has become divorced from governance, people from their representatives, development from the well being of those for whom it is set in motion, literacy from responsibility. Corruption has therefore become the manifestation of today’s governments and their hypocritical stances. In their complacency, political parties have not stopped to look critically at themselves or their actions. Civil servants have sold their souls to the devil with Faustian sophistry. Voters have been beguiled by revival of caste loyalties and the tainted promise of a taste of paradise. Global alternatives have narrowed to a Hobson’s choice of free markets emblematized by Kentucky Fried Chicken, Pepsi, Uncle Chips, Star TV and the horrifying prospects of having all natural resources raped for the gods of profit. Intellectuals have sunk ever deeper into their armchairs of bewilderment.

  Representative democracy has become a farce. The representative represents only himself. Votes are bought, the voters forgotten, issues lost. The representative refuses to be answerable. The overlay of caste politics has deepe
ned the chasm. The process of election is reduced to a head count of legislators required to cobble together a majority. Governance is somehow keeping this flock together. Democracy has been reduced to this one vote. Vying with each other for power sharing, opposing parties find it convenient to keep away from people. Their ideologies, if any, have been subsumed by the thirst for power and position. Theoretically, their functioning depends on power invested in them by popular mandate. They are answerable to the people. But this has never worried them, because they let it be known that the well being of the people, and their vote, depends on bureaucratic and political handouts. They are the attenuated outcome of a feudal behavioural pattern. Those who rule have lost all credibility, but a decadent ruling class continues secure in its belief that no alternative exists. In fifty years we have managed to shatter all our dreams.

  There are occasions when the collective perceptions of a struggling group provide us with an opportunity to break through the fog of confusion and listlessness. There is no magic wand which can show the way, but there are moments when even a single step forward breaks the spell of lethargy. The information campaign has grown in both potential and magnitude to a point where it can affect us all. It needs to be recognized and established as an explicit fundamental right because it has shown that its application will strengthen democratic functioning in a very basic manner.