The Politics Of The Ultimate Stakeholder

The Politics Of The Ultimate Stakeholder


Everyone is talking about “Anna” Hazare and his crusade against corruption. He has, by his own description, combined Gandhian ahimsa with Chatrapati Shivaji’s militancy, and this, projected via blanket media coverage, has produced spectacular results.

For his followers, he is the latest incarnation in the tradition of Mahatma Gandhi and Loknayak Jayaprakash Narayan. India, or is it Bharatmata, seems to throw up such saviours spontaneously whenever the body politic is in dire need of cleansing.

But Mr. Hazare’s clarion call won’t amount to much in the long run, unless, like the Mahatma fighting the imperial yoke, and Mr. Narayan challenging Mrs. Gandhi the 1st, he manages to also galvanise the rural masses who actually do almost all the voting. But to them, weaned on the inequities of corruption and inequality for generations, the present movement may seem a trifle exotic. So, Anna Hazare may have to broaden his message to interest them too.

While conducting his fast unto death in textbook Gandhian fashion, Mr. Hazare spiced his comments with calculated insults flung at politicians in general, and the ruling Government in particular, inspired, he informs us, by Chattrapati Shivaji.

And now, having won round one, Anna intends to install an incorruptible Lokpal soon. While the contours of this Lokpal to be are not as yet clear, he or she might possibly be moulded in the Oliver Cromwell or Maxmillien Robespierre tradition of revolutionary probity.

The charter, after all, is massive, because the Lokpal will be tasked to keep watch on all the three branches of Government as well as its bureaucracy etc. Ms. Kiran Bedi, the erstwhile supercop and Magsaysay Award winner, is thought to be a good fit.

But what will the Lokpal do to make its writ stick? How will it dictate terms to an elected Government? Or will it just be the representative of the Union of “Ultimate Stakeholders” as the CAG put it, entitled to a seat at the high table for selective deliberations?

And it must be remembered, however reluctantly, that both Cromwell and Robespierre, who turned their respective monarchies on their heads, were in fact elected and executive authorities. And Robespierre too was guillotined in the end, while Cromwell died very disillusioned with the Puritanism he spearheaded.

Part of the problem, we see now, was the introduction of impossibly high moral standards. The other was that the advent of Cromwell and Robespierre did not succesfully create the new political order they envisaged, but instead put an end to the excesses of absolute monarchy. Still, both were men of historic destiny, and represent rousing notions of purity and reform. And more than a little of their idealism and egalitarianism rubbed off on the process of political evolution, and not just in Britain and France.

In India too, Hazare’s snowballing folksy movement has taken the holders of power by surprise, their tired alibis blown skywards by this sudden gust of populist wind. Windiness of the vaporous variety was also on display. Congenitally unresponsive political, bureaucratic, judicial and associated quasi-ruling classes found themselves sputtering about “blackmail” and wagging a frightened finger at Civil Society.

Likewise, dark prognostications about this movable feast against corruption being hijacked by vested interests has not cut much mustard. And why should it, when this possibility is weighed against the Government sitting paralysed atop an absolute termite’s nest of rot of its own creation?

And so, the Mumbai motormen, the CAG Mr. Vinod Rai, top industrialists, the more politically inclined Bollywood stars, writers, poets, artists, professors, sportsmen including the all conquering MS Dhoni, NGOs who do not fear being upstaged at their long-standing and lucrative game, as well as obscure ones with nothing to lose, men and women in saffron, Delhi Metro hero Mr. Sreedharan, a pervasive and responsive media presence; and politicians from every party, except the ruling combine - can’t all be labelled conspirators and extra-constitutional subversives!

This then is an attempt at cleansing the system from without, because very few within it seem the least bit interested. That Hazare calls the present Government “Kale Angrez” does, of course, suggest some interesting parallels but also illustrates just how far the UPA Government of 2011 has drifted away from its “ultimate stakeholders”.

A Government that thinks nothing of routinely robbing, cheating and hoodwinking its ultimate stakeholders, has only itself to blame for provoking this backlash. Nobody believes in its attempts at punishing the guilty from its own ranks, particularly because it has not happened even once so far.

A Satyam like situation that has ruined its erstwhile fraudster-owner Mr. Raju, or the fate that befell the “Big Bull” Harshad Mehta, could probably never happen to a Mr. A. Raja, no matter how heinous his corruption may prove to be.

Besides, the Government has experience on its side, and the concession made by it to Hazare’s opening salvo, may be only to gain time in order to subvert his movement, take the pressure off ongoing and forthcoming Assembly elections, and to let the ardour of Civil Society, well known for its dilettantism, dissipate in time.

If the elite from South Mumbai failed to vote even after 26/11, will they change their mind after the jamboree at Jantar Mantar? And as long as the urban middle classes do not vote to at least 75% of its eligible strength, they will not affect the temper, timbre and behaviour of the political establishment. Mr. Hazare realises this and has even advocated penal measures against those who fail to cast their vote.

But in counterpoint to this perception of widespread apathy, is the profoundly more disturbing idea that Civil Society may no longer be satisfied with co-option at all. The very people who don’t vote citing lack of viable choice, may wish however to truly upset the applecart. They may be questioning the relevance of the Indian Constitution which has been so thoroughly subverted by our elected representatives.

These people, and who knows how many there truly are, in places rural and urban, may want to nominate their rulers henceforth after all, and set the cat amongst the pigeons with regard to the notion of elected legitimacy. They may think it the best way to improve the quality of our governance. Mr. Hazare then may indeed have quite a few things in mind when he calls this the beginning of a long struggle.

(1,056 words)

11th April 2011
Gautam Mukherjee

Reality check

Reality check


Bertrand Russell, a towering Leftist philosopher himself, critiqued the Bolshevik Revolution, that too shortly after it took place, saying that the Communists did not live up to the theory of their creed.

The dictatorship of the proletariat was, said Russell, just a plain old dictatorship, presided over by Lenin and Trotsky, with Stalin still carrying the bags and bringing up the rear at the time. And the “proletariat” consisted of carefully vetted yes men of the goonish persuasion, busy ruthlessly gutting all dissent in the ranks.

That Mr. Russell was right has been borne out by the collapse of Communism and its offshoots of Fabian Socialism and even Scandinavian and French versions of Welfarism; albeit for a variety of reasons other than venality. But these reasons do not offer much comfort because they range from indictments such as rank naïveté to a revolutionary wooliness - as in Cuba, lost in a time warp, ignorant of the thrust and parry of human nature.

But such disintegration might be the fault of the original formulations of Karl Marx himself, writing away in the warm bowels of the British museum while Engels picked up his bills. All people alas are simply not created equal, except in their mother’s eyes and in the eyes of God, and that is all there is to it.

Indian democracy for all its impressive Election Commission supervised exercises, of largely free and fair elections, doesn’t work in a particularly democratic way. After the votes are counted, the netas prefer to take a page out of the colonial book and render themselves inviolate.

The voter that actually can be herded to the hustings, is only seen as important at election time, when he and she is wooed, flattered, bullied and threatened if necessary, and/or mildly bribed with cash, kind, and liquid refreshment for his vote.

This is because not a single institution with the possible exception of the RTI mechanism has been created since independence to actually empower the hapless voter. Nothing beyond anodyne grievance mechanisms that are designed to be better at stone-walling than actual redressal. And a judicial system that delivers at snail’s speed.

The urban voter, growing more numerous as progress sends more and more people into cities and towns, does not get much change out of his elected representatives. As for the rural voter, still constituting the backbone of the election process; his plight is best described in the numerous R.K. Laxman cartoons over the decades since independence.

All of them are variations of the same theme. They feature helicoptering visits of politicians in dazzling white malmal, solicitously enquiring about the welfare of their destitute voters, while the latter stare uncomprehendingly in their tattered loin cloths, their bellies distended with promises, painfully trying to make sense of the big man’s questions.

The great white hope out of this third world morass that mocks at our rapid GDP growth, is the dawning realisation amongst some politicians that development and growth in the hinterland, amongst the great unwashed, may be the way to obtaining and holding on to power. That is, without the constant flux and eddy that characterises the old politics of caste, creed, regionalism, dynastic and nepotistic succession, and so on.

Bihar and Gujarat, both run by determined men of humble origin, certainly demonstrate this possible new maxim. And both states have also succeeded in lowering the boom on corruption with Chief Ministers demonstrating a high level of personal integrity, and thereby leading their political and bureaucratic flock by example, if not by the nose or ear. And let it be remembered that neither state was exactly a paragon of probity in the past!

But apart from the evolution of our polity from an elected anarchy, that owes more to the bazaar than it does to the Westminster model: towards something more coherent; we may be forced to re-evaluate many assumptions about the virtues of elite leadership.

Many of this miniscule species, are now, it is seen, morally spent, and unlike their ilk in the decades before independence, do not have the will or desire to provide leadership to an emerging world power. Our elite, sustained quite largely by inherited privilege, may be too enfeebled by good living and cronyism to make any serious effort at anything as selfless as nation building. And many amongst this charmed circle have even forgotten how to be ashamed.

However, happily for the multitude, the people from the smaller towns and villages, identified both by management thinkers such as Ms. Rama Bijapurkar and business heads such as Mr. Ratan Tata, as the “treasure” at “the bottom of the pyramid”, both in terms of their collective buying power and their aggregated human resource, hold out hope for the future and may well come to the rescue.

If they do, turning exceptions into the rule of thumb, it will be a most welcome if unbidden phenomenon, that may however have its roots in the earlier democratisation of our elected representatives, with the higher caste politician being joined plentifully by others of much humbler antecedents.

This has had some raucous consequences, such as chairs and microphones hurtling through the air in state legislatures; and some falling away of notional airs and graces past their prime, including the villainy and lecherousness of the rural “Chowdhary” in film after Bollywood film of a certain vintage; and even an explosion in corruption like starving people with sudden access to the banquet table; but through all this turbulence has come a renewal of unseen but subliminal benefits.

The parallel, while drawn in the blood of millions, could be the emergence of the working classes after the debacle of the first World War in Europe. The old aristocracy was largely wiped out then, but not only because of the attrition of leadership involved. Folly, arrogance, insouciance and incompetence may have had a good deal to do with their demise, and the consequent changing of the world order.

Here in India, the small towns and villages are demonstrating a competence and leadership that comes with not being jaded. The small towner is not ashamed of his origins or his culture any more, and these days looking at the calibre of the city folks, he has little reason to doubt his relative competitiveness. The old manipulations and stratagems of the elite therefore may be no more than at a last gasp of history.


(1,064 words)

5th April 2011
Gautam Mukherjee