Indian anti-corruption movement under fire

On 4 November, 2011, 74-year-old Indian social activist Anna Hazare broke almost three weeks of self-imposed silence with a vow to reform the leadership of his anti-corruption campaign. The irony of that gesture was not lost on Hazare’s critics.

General Secretary Digvijaya Singh, of the ruling Congress party, accused senior figures in Hazare’s movement of using him to achieve their own political goals.

“Poor Anna is being made a scapegoat or a mask to fulfil their political agendas, because he has a greater political credibility among the people,” Singh told current affairs programme Devil’s Advocate.

At issue was the claim that several members of the protest movement’s leadership, dubbed Team Anna, had themselves abused positions of trust. In April, lawyer Shanti Bhusha was declared to have evaded stamp duty to the value of 13 million rupees (NZ$330,000) and to have vastly underpaid for a house in the city of Allahabad.

In September, Arvind Kejriwal, a former Inland Revenue Service officer, was sent a notice for non-payment of income tax of almost one million rupees. Then, in October, former high-ranking police official Kiran Bedi was accused of falsifying travel expenses while in the police service.

It was an embarrassing turn of events for Hazare. The former army driver first captured public interest almost a decade ago, when he helped rescue his village from the effects of drought and led a movement against alcoholism. The village became a model community, widely copied in his home state of Maharashtra. Hazare has also campaigned against the crippling custom of lavish weddings, and in support of a Right of Information law. In April 2011, he went on a hunger strike to demand effective anti-corruption legislation and the creation of an independent body (the Jan Lokpal) to investigate suspected wrongdoing.

Mumbai journalist Kalpana Sharma said Hazare recognised that centralised bureaucracies created conditions in which corruption could flourish. Sharma worried that Hazare’s most recent campaign might therefore be at odds with his philosophy of empowering people to effect change at village level, rather than waiting for government action.

Others have more fundamental concerns. Sukhadeo Thorat, a professor of economics at Jawaharlal Nehru University, warned that a dangerous precedent would be set if Team Anna achieved its goals by resorting to “coercive and unconstitutional means”. In The Hindu newspaper, Thorat reminded readers of the dangers to Indian democracy outlined years earlier by the Dalit scholar BR Ambedkar, who oversaw the drafting of the country’s constitution.

“He urged the people to abandon bloody as well as coercive methods to bring about change. This means abandoning methods of civil disobedience, non-cooperation, coercive forms of satyagraha [non-violent resistance] and fast.”

“Anna and his team should recognise that for a new democracy like ours, which is operating within the framework of undemocratic relations based on the caste system, constitutional methods and social morality need to be cultivated and promoted with a purpose. The Lokpal Bill is too important a piece of legislation to be passed under threat and unreasonable deadline.”

Hazare’s movement has also come under fire for its seeming willingness to indulge in political activism. Claiming to be non-partisan, it has nevertheless targeted the Congress party by campaigning against one of its candidates in a recent by-election. Such actions have exposed ideological cracks within the movement, with two leaders resigning on the grounds that it had become too political. A third called for the team to be restructured.

Hazare responded by promising to overhaul the way in which leaders were chosen. But another senior member of Team Anna, Maneesh Sisodia, struck a defiant note, saying that the recent controversy must not detract from the movement’s central goal.

“There is a conspiracy behind these allegations and its aim is to scuttle the passage of the Jan Lokpal Bill.”

Hazare’s hunger strikes have won over tens of thousands of people tired of India’s endemic corruption. Hazare has threatened to begin another if the Government does not pass the anti-corruption legislation during the next session of parliament, which is scheduled for 22 November to 21 December.

“If an effective Jan Lokpal is in place, it would help the country to get rid of corruption and also help utilise more funds towards development work,” said Hazare in a recent letter to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

The potential savings are considerable. This year, in what was dubbed a “season of scams”, instances of bribery reached levels seldom seen even in India. They included alleged financial malpractice by officials running the Delhi 2010 Commonwealth Games involving billions of dollars and the loss of an estimated US$40 billion (NZ$50.1 billion) in revenues as a result of the improper sale of telecoms licences. A similar amount is said to have been stolen in Uttar Pradesh from programmes subsidising food and fuel for the poor.

By Vaughan Yarwood
Images
1.Anti-corruption campaigners in Pune hold up posting featuring photos of Anna Hazare.
2. Newspapers announcing the end of Hazare’s latest fast for anti-corruption legislation. (Image by Ganesh Dhamodkar, sourced under a Creative Commons licence from Wikimedia.)