Even after reading several articles and visiting Anna Hazare at his fasting grounds at Ramlila Maidan, I'm still not sure what I believe about his campaign. If, like me, you are deeply curious about the supposed "Indian Spring" that Anna Hazare has ignited, and if you're wondering whether this is a "revolution," I've culled various sources to put together some answers.
1. What exactly is going on at Ramlila Maidan?
As near as I can tell, Ramlila Maidan is hosting either a protest, a riot or a street carnival, depending on the angle from which you happen to view the proceedings. It's true that by squeezing past a police barricade, passing your purse through a mobile metal detector and angling your way through a truly massive, sweaty horde of men, you can catch sight of the aged Hazare sitting on a platform under the glare of at least a hundred camera crews. He is fasting.
But that's not all that's happening. There are plenty of men parading around the fairground with anti-government posters, but as at any protest these slogans rarely relate to the same issues. Almost no one is talking about the 2G scam or the CWG scam: these slogas are more about the general corruption of the Congress Party and the Gandhi-Singh nexus currently heading India's coalition government. Do people care about 2G? Absolutely. But it's easier to get angry at a person than at a sequence of events.
Meanwhile, there are also hordes of families waving flags, as if this is Independence Day. There are also chains of jobless young men for whom the protest is merely serving as an opportunity for socially-sanctioned raucousness.
2. Does that mean people don't care about corruption?
No. But something an experienced protestor quickly learns about protests is that they're never as broad-based as they claim or hope to be. The crowd at Ramlila isn't remotely representative of the number of people in India today for whom corruption is a daily scourge and inconvenience.
3. What the hell is the Lokpal bill?
Anna Hazare went on fast over the Lokpall, or so says his website. The Lokpal bill is India's Equal Rights Amendment, at least in terms of history. The first version was introduced in the Indian Parliament in the late 1960s. The goal was to create a public body that could oversee and prosecute blatant cases of corruption. Since then, despite repeated introductions, the bill has not been passed.
In 2011, Hazare went on a "fast unto death,"or until the bill is passed. The government agreed to negotiate.
4. Then what is the Jan Lokpal bill?
Here's where it gets complicated. There are two versions of the Lokpal bill, and the debate going on today is over which of these versions should be adopted. Basically, a committee of bureaucrats and activists tried to put together a compromise version of the bill and failed, at which point the government put together their own version and introduced it in Parliament. This official version, drawn up by bureaucrats, is known as the 2010 Lokpal bill. The Lokpal ("people's protector") body it proposes has almost no practical power.
Activists, pissed off at being left out of the discussions and convinced that the 2010 Lokpal doesn't give the Lokpal enough power to fight corruption, put together their own Lokpal bill, which they call the Jan Lokpal bill. (Jan means "people" or "citizenry.") This version creates a completely independent body called the Lokpal, which has the power to investigate and prosecute corruption against any and all government actors.
5. Why are people calling the Jan Lokpal undemocratic?
Because the Jan Lokpal bill in its current form creates an overarching Lokpal body that can oversee the Prime Minister, the Parliament and courts. The Lokpal body proposed in the Jan Lokpal will also be able to impose financial penalties on those who don't comply with its demands. In the United States, this would be equivalent to creating a supreme body to oversee the Supreme Court, the Executive Office and Congress. In other words, it challenges the principle of separation of powers. Read the Jan Lokpal draft in English here.
6. Why are people calling Anna Hazare undemocratic?
Essentially, Hazare's critics view the "fast unto death" as an attempt to strong arm the country's popularly elected government into bowing to the demands of a group of handpicked social activists.
7. Why does Arundhati Roy hate Anna Hazare?
The famous writer recently wrote an editorial blasting Hazare.
The first several paragraphs of Roy's editorial argue with Hazare's priorities and take issue with him for not being one of the many dedicated social activists in India who have fasted unto death for equally serious issues. This part doesn't really matter.
On a substantive level, though, Roy says this: "At a time when the State is withdrawing from its traditional duties and Corporations and NGOs are taking over government functions (water supply, electricity, transport, telecommunication, mining, health, education); at a time when the terrifying power and reach of the corporate owned media is trying to control the public imagination, one would think that these institutions — the corporations, the media, and NGOs — would be included in the jurisdiction of a Lokpal bill. Instead, the proposed bill leaves them out completely."
What she's saying is that corruption isn't just a government problem, it's become the Indian way of life. This is a serious problem, and she has a point. Corporations cheat shareholders all the time. The media wheels, deals and lies about both. Today's India is plagued by a culture of constant and unchecked corruption. Conflicts of interest, insider trading, etc - there are a million little ways in which the oligarchies that power this country conspire to keep the common man out.
A single Parliamentary bill will not fix this.
8. Why do Muslims hate Anna Hazare?
They don't. Many support him, but some Muslim leaders fear that Anna's campaign might be taken over by the BJP (India's second major political party, which does not currently hold the Parliament, and which skews Hindu nationalist) or the RSS, a paramilitary rural army of Hindu nationalists that has been implicated in several acts of religious violence/riots in modern Indian history. These claims, which Hazare contests, were made by the Congress Party, whose leaders Hazare has indicted for corrupt behavior. The BJP, meanwhile, has thrown all its weight behind Hazare in an attempt to destabilize the Congress Party-led coalition government.
But Muslim leaders aren't the only ones concerned about Hazare's past. Hazare has a "do as I preach" history: his first notable act was helping to transform his home village from penury to a "model town" of relative prosperity through the introduction of sustainable farming techniques. Unfortunately, Hazare's model village hasn't held a democratic council election in a quarter of a century.
9. Is this really a revolution?
Yes and no. Hazare is a canny campaigner. Modern India is one of the world's most unequal democratic societies, but not necessarily financially. The Gini coefficient for India - a statistical measure for income inequality used by the United Nations and other development agencies - is lower than that of the United States. But India also falls much lower on the human development index and much higher on the failed states index, all of which means that government corruption has always been a touchstone issue. And it's not as if Indians have only recently realized that their state is incurably corrupt - any schoolchild knows this. But people have either accepted corruption or subverted it to suit their own purposes (see #7, above)
10. Is the Indian government really that corrupt?
Last week I bought bananas from a fruit vendor. He didn't have change for my Rs. 100 note. I joked,"Have you stashed your change overseas?" Without even blinking he shot back, "Do I look like a politician to you?" The government might actually be more corrupt than the public realizes, which is really saying something. The problem is that because most of these accounts are kept secret, nobody really knows how much money has been embezzled over the years. But all this is changing. Politicians are in for a reckoning, Hazare or no.
1. What exactly is going on at Ramlila Maidan?
As near as I can tell, Ramlila Maidan is hosting either a protest, a riot or a street carnival, depending on the angle from which you happen to view the proceedings. It's true that by squeezing past a police barricade, passing your purse through a mobile metal detector and angling your way through a truly massive, sweaty horde of men, you can catch sight of the aged Hazare sitting on a platform under the glare of at least a hundred camera crews. He is fasting.
But that's not all that's happening. There are plenty of men parading around the fairground with anti-government posters, but as at any protest these slogans rarely relate to the same issues. Almost no one is talking about the 2G scam or the CWG scam: these slogas are more about the general corruption of the Congress Party and the Gandhi-Singh nexus currently heading India's coalition government. Do people care about 2G? Absolutely. But it's easier to get angry at a person than at a sequence of events.
Meanwhile, there are also hordes of families waving flags, as if this is Independence Day. There are also chains of jobless young men for whom the protest is merely serving as an opportunity for socially-sanctioned raucousness.
2. Does that mean people don't care about corruption?
No. But something an experienced protestor quickly learns about protests is that they're never as broad-based as they claim or hope to be. The crowd at Ramlila isn't remotely representative of the number of people in India today for whom corruption is a daily scourge and inconvenience.
3. What the hell is the Lokpal bill?
Anna Hazare went on fast over the Lokpall, or so says his website. The Lokpal bill is India's Equal Rights Amendment, at least in terms of history. The first version was introduced in the Indian Parliament in the late 1960s. The goal was to create a public body that could oversee and prosecute blatant cases of corruption. Since then, despite repeated introductions, the bill has not been passed.
In 2011, Hazare went on a "fast unto death,"or until the bill is passed. The government agreed to negotiate.
4. Then what is the Jan Lokpal bill?
Here's where it gets complicated. There are two versions of the Lokpal bill, and the debate going on today is over which of these versions should be adopted. Basically, a committee of bureaucrats and activists tried to put together a compromise version of the bill and failed, at which point the government put together their own version and introduced it in Parliament. This official version, drawn up by bureaucrats, is known as the 2010 Lokpal bill. The Lokpal ("people's protector") body it proposes has almost no practical power.
Activists, pissed off at being left out of the discussions and convinced that the 2010 Lokpal doesn't give the Lokpal enough power to fight corruption, put together their own Lokpal bill, which they call the Jan Lokpal bill. (Jan means "people" or "citizenry.") This version creates a completely independent body called the Lokpal, which has the power to investigate and prosecute corruption against any and all government actors.
5. Why are people calling the Jan Lokpal undemocratic?
Because the Jan Lokpal bill in its current form creates an overarching Lokpal body that can oversee the Prime Minister, the Parliament and courts. The Lokpal body proposed in the Jan Lokpal will also be able to impose financial penalties on those who don't comply with its demands. In the United States, this would be equivalent to creating a supreme body to oversee the Supreme Court, the Executive Office and Congress. In other words, it challenges the principle of separation of powers. Read the Jan Lokpal draft in English here.
6. Why are people calling Anna Hazare undemocratic?
Essentially, Hazare's critics view the "fast unto death" as an attempt to strong arm the country's popularly elected government into bowing to the demands of a group of handpicked social activists.
7. Why does Arundhati Roy hate Anna Hazare?
The famous writer recently wrote an editorial blasting Hazare.
The first several paragraphs of Roy's editorial argue with Hazare's priorities and take issue with him for not being one of the many dedicated social activists in India who have fasted unto death for equally serious issues. This part doesn't really matter.
On a substantive level, though, Roy says this: "At a time when the State is withdrawing from its traditional duties and Corporations and NGOs are taking over government functions (water supply, electricity, transport, telecommunication, mining, health, education); at a time when the terrifying power and reach of the corporate owned media is trying to control the public imagination, one would think that these institutions — the corporations, the media, and NGOs — would be included in the jurisdiction of a Lokpal bill. Instead, the proposed bill leaves them out completely."
What she's saying is that corruption isn't just a government problem, it's become the Indian way of life. This is a serious problem, and she has a point. Corporations cheat shareholders all the time. The media wheels, deals and lies about both. Today's India is plagued by a culture of constant and unchecked corruption. Conflicts of interest, insider trading, etc - there are a million little ways in which the oligarchies that power this country conspire to keep the common man out.
A single Parliamentary bill will not fix this.
8. Why do Muslims hate Anna Hazare?
They don't. Many support him, but some Muslim leaders fear that Anna's campaign might be taken over by the BJP (India's second major political party, which does not currently hold the Parliament, and which skews Hindu nationalist) or the RSS, a paramilitary rural army of Hindu nationalists that has been implicated in several acts of religious violence/riots in modern Indian history. These claims, which Hazare contests, were made by the Congress Party, whose leaders Hazare has indicted for corrupt behavior. The BJP, meanwhile, has thrown all its weight behind Hazare in an attempt to destabilize the Congress Party-led coalition government.
But Muslim leaders aren't the only ones concerned about Hazare's past. Hazare has a "do as I preach" history: his first notable act was helping to transform his home village from penury to a "model town" of relative prosperity through the introduction of sustainable farming techniques. Unfortunately, Hazare's model village hasn't held a democratic council election in a quarter of a century.
9. Is this really a revolution?
Yes and no. Hazare is a canny campaigner. Modern India is one of the world's most unequal democratic societies, but not necessarily financially. The Gini coefficient for India - a statistical measure for income inequality used by the United Nations and other development agencies - is lower than that of the United States. But India also falls much lower on the human development index and much higher on the failed states index, all of which means that government corruption has always been a touchstone issue. And it's not as if Indians have only recently realized that their state is incurably corrupt - any schoolchild knows this. But people have either accepted corruption or subverted it to suit their own purposes (see #7, above)
10. Is the Indian government really that corrupt?
Last week I bought bananas from a fruit vendor. He didn't have change for my Rs. 100 note. I joked,"Have you stashed your change overseas?" Without even blinking he shot back, "Do I look like a politician to you?" The government might actually be more corrupt than the public realizes, which is really saying something. The problem is that because most of these accounts are kept secret, nobody really knows how much money has been embezzled over the years. But all this is changing. Politicians are in for a reckoning, Hazare or no.
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