Lokpal Bill: Why Anna Hazare flopped & what it means
30 DEC, 2011, 10.42AM IST, SAUBHIK CHAKRABARTI,ET BUREAU
=================================================The commentariat's verdict on Anna Hazare's severely underwhelming Mumbai venture is that with Parliament seized of the Lokpal issue, people made the right call. There's some amount of fantasy in that argument. The fantasy is to assume that those people who had come out for Anna in August were simply waiting for the proper forum to take up the matter.
But those who went to Ramlila or to Azad Maidan or elsewhere in August were, for the most part, not there for Lokpal per se. They were there because they thought something could finally be done about corruption.
In Mumbai in December, Team Anna's agenda was somewhat different - we want our kind of Lokpal, that's what they principally said. When the agenda changed from the broad, easily digestible slogan of anti-corruption to narrow, legalistic debate on Group C/D government employees and CBI functioning, upping the emotional tempo was always going to be difficult.
Not even in Ramlila, not even with (as has been alleged) "outside help", could Team Anna have got most of their August supporters to come back in December. That would have been true even if Delhi was having a mild winter - because even in a warmish winter, it's tough to attract crowds on the basis of bitter debates on clauses of a bill.
That's the principal reason the Anna's Mumbai show looked so forlorn. The event would have lacked drama even if it hadn't coincided with Parliament's session. True, the coincidence didn't help Anna. But the absence of it wouldn't have really changed his Mumbai experience. Anna's strategists didn't think of something politicians always do - never get into the details. We critique politicians all the time for making things simplistic.
But they are in the business of courting public approbation and they know the devil of losing people's attention is in the details. This is not such a bad thing as it sounds, of course. Democracies everywhere have different forums for slogans and details. Legislatures can and do deal with both. Courts - with some scary exceptions - deal with the second. Protest meetings can be organised only around the first.
In fact, and interestingly, Team Anna's focus on details stands in contrast with many other civil society-type/radical protests. When Arundhati Roy finds beauty in an armed Maoist and when she says India is Hindu-corporatist-something-something state and the state is selling people out via MoUs with big companies, she isn't interested in details - she's offering us the slogans. If Arundhati Roy were to analyse the new mining bill - she's smart, she doubtless can - she won't be half a radical star as she's now.
Similarly, those who organise movements against GM crops or industrial projects are chary of a debate on the minutiae. Many of them are perfectly capable of debating details, but they don't organise their movements around that theme.
But could Team Anna have done things differently? Probably not, and that's the other problem it had. Once its first mission - getting the political class to take up the Lokpal issue - succeeded, it could have only agitated on details, especially since the slogan of poll reforms didn't get anyone excited.
If that's the explanation for what happened this week, what are the implications? They are not bad at all, from general welfare point of view.
Team Anna deserved to be pegged down. There were plenty of odd things about the team from the beginning, and there was no question ever, even in the minds of those sensible people who felt the political class needed a bit of a scare, that Kejriwal and Co. could run a permanent Occupy Governance campaign.
Now, Anna can possibly only find meaning via poll campaigns. There, he and his strategists get into a business that's far rougher and tougher than anything any of them has probably encountered. If they can influence elections, they are due the influence that comes from it. If they can't, they are due the relative irrelevance that will come. Either way, the "we can run things from the pulpit" moment is probably over, for a while at least. And that's good.
The political class has had to debate the details of Lokpal, which is good, and now has a somewhat narrower escape route than before on abandoning new institutional responses to corruption. Let's not underestimate the creative non-compliance of the political class.
But it would be very surprising if politicians soon start acting as if corruption, except when haranguing a rival party, is a non-issue again. This doesn't sound like much. But given the infernally complex calculus of Indian politics, this is a non-trivial improvement, and one that probably has a bigger potential.
For governments, at the Centre or in the states, there's a useful lesson as well. Engage those who are blocking projects in the name of the people with details in the name of the people. Protest leaders won't mostly be interested, but keep at it. Try to change the public conversation - from slogans to details. Just recall Anna's Mumbai show - details did that to him.
30 DEC, 2011, 10.42AM IST, SAUBHIK CHAKRABARTI,ET BUREAU =================================================The commentariat's verdict on Anna Hazare's severely underwhelming Mumbai venture is that with Parliament seized of the Lokpal issue, people made the right call. There's some amount of fantasy in that argument. The fantasy is to assume that those people who had come out for Anna in August were simply waiting for the proper forum to take up the matter.
But those who went to Ramlila or to Azad Maidan or elsewhere in August were, for the most part, not there for Lokpal per se. They were there because they thought something could finally be done about corruption.
In Mumbai in December, Team Anna's agenda was somewhat different - we want our kind of Lokpal, that's what they principally said. When the agenda changed from the broad, easily digestible slogan of anti-corruption to narrow, legalistic debate on Group C/D government employees and CBI functioning, upping the emotional tempo was always going to be difficult.
Not even in Ramlila, not even with (as has been alleged) "outside help", could Team Anna have got most of their August supporters to come back in December. That would have been true even if Delhi was having a mild winter - because even in a warmish winter, it's tough to attract crowds on the basis of bitter debates on clauses of a bill.
That's the principal reason the Anna's Mumbai show looked so forlorn. The event would have lacked drama even if it hadn't coincided with Parliament's session. True, the coincidence didn't help Anna. But the absence of it wouldn't have really changed his Mumbai experience. Anna's strategists didn't think of something politicians always do - never get into the details. We critique politicians all the time for making things simplistic.
But they are in the business of courting public approbation and they know the devil of losing people's attention is in the details. This is not such a bad thing as it sounds, of course. Democracies everywhere have different forums for slogans and details. Legislatures can and do deal with both. Courts - with some scary exceptions - deal with the second. Protest meetings can be organised only around the first.
In fact, and interestingly, Team Anna's focus on details stands in contrast with many other civil society-type/radical protests. When Arundhati Roy finds beauty in an armed Maoist and when she says India is Hindu-corporatist-something-something state and the state is selling people out via MoUs with big companies, she isn't interested in details - she's offering us the slogans. If Arundhati Roy were to analyse the new mining bill - she's smart, she doubtless can - she won't be half a radical star as she's now.
Similarly, those who organise movements against GM crops or industrial projects are chary of a debate on the minutiae. Many of them are perfectly capable of debating details, but they don't organise their movements around that theme.
But could Team Anna have done things differently? Probably not, and that's the other problem it had. Once its first mission - getting the political class to take up the Lokpal issue - succeeded, it could have only agitated on details, especially since the slogan of poll reforms didn't get anyone excited.
If that's the explanation for what happened this week, what are the implications? They are not bad at all, from general welfare point of view.
Team Anna deserved to be pegged down. There were plenty of odd things about the team from the beginning, and there was no question ever, even in the minds of those sensible people who felt the political class needed a bit of a scare, that Kejriwal and Co. could run a permanent Occupy Governance campaign.
Now, Anna can possibly only find meaning via poll campaigns. There, he and his strategists get into a business that's far rougher and tougher than anything any of them has probably encountered. If they can influence elections, they are due the influence that comes from it. If they can't, they are due the relative irrelevance that will come. Either way, the "we can run things from the pulpit" moment is probably over, for a while at least. And that's good.
The political class has had to debate the details of Lokpal, which is good, and now has a somewhat narrower escape route than before on abandoning new institutional responses to corruption. Let's not underestimate the creative non-compliance of the political class.
But it would be very surprising if politicians soon start acting as if corruption, except when haranguing a rival party, is a non-issue again. This doesn't sound like much. But given the infernally complex calculus of Indian politics, this is a non-trivial improvement, and one that probably has a bigger potential.
For governments, at the Centre or in the states, there's a useful lesson as well. Engage those who are blocking projects in the name of the people with details in the name of the people. Protest leaders won't mostly be interested, but keep at it. Try to change the public conversation - from slogans to details. Just recall Anna's Mumbai show - details did that to him.
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