Anna Hazare's crusade against graft is only the first of many battles India must fight.
Will there be a national life after Anna? The Gandhian's satyagraha against rampant corruption has evoked a countrywide response unmatched by anything in the history of independent India, not even perhaps by Jayaprakash Narayan's 1974 movement against the increasing authoritarianism of Indira Gandhi's government.
JP's 'swarajist' campaign - initially spearheaded by students in Bihar but later spreading to include citizens from all walks of life, across the nation - caused the biggest political earthquake the country has ever witnessed when Indira Gandhi, backed into a corner, declared her infamous Emergency and overnight turned democratic India into a totalitarian dictatorship.
But though shrouded, the torch of freedom was not extinguished. And it burned brighter and fiercer than ever when in the general elections following the lifting of the Emergency, the collective wrath of the people voted Indira Gandhi out of office and brought in the Janata government.
The new dispensation, which got into internal wrangles almost from day one, was to pose its own challenges of cohesion. But the 'spirit of '77' made one thing clear: no one would again dare to try and stifle India's irrepressible democracy. The powers-that-be today will attempt to derail Anna's runaway movement at their own peril. Some critics have tried to put a verbal spoke in the wheels of the anti-corruption juggernaut by suggesting, among other things, that such extra-parliamentary forms of legislative activity would eventually derail democracy by encouraging irresponsible copycat movements which could be wilfully subversive of the rule of law.
Such sceptics, however, have been swiftly silenced by the overwhelming support that Anna's cause has generated, targeting as it does what is universally seen to be the nation's single most baneful affliction. Public disgust with all-pervasive graft has reached a pitch where corruption is perceived to be the root cause of all our myriad social, political and economic ills. The groundswell of opinion seems to be that if we can somehow exorcise the demon of corruption we will be freed of all the other evils that daily bedevil us.
Such a single-point agenda would be dangerously short-sighted. Corruption, in all its many manifestations, is without any question one of the most harmful of the toxins poisoning our body politic. But it is by no means the only one. Anna himself has already identified electoral reform as the next banner around which to rally his growing legions of followers. The criminalisation of politics, and the open use of muscle-and money-power to capture votes has made such reform a vital necessity which has been far too long delayed. Some of the electoral changes debated have been the right of recall and the voter's right to cancel their ballots in case they find all the candidates unsuitable in a particular constituency.
Such much-needed political reform, however, presupposes that the voter is free to make a truly informed choice. Illiteracy and the deep-rooted patriarchal system by which women voters are no more than rubber-stamp extensions of the male head of the household are only two of the major obstacles in the path to making the electoral process more truly representative.
Indeed not a few would say that to the extent - and it is a very large extent - that gender discrimination in effect disenfranchises the female half of the population India is at best a shambolic democracy. The progressive disempowerment of women is revealed by studies of sex-selective abortions which indicate that in 20 years' time India will have 20% more men than women. A clear case not of genocide, perhaps, but certainly of gendercide. And perpetrated, largely, by the urban middle class which is the most visible in championing Anna's cause.
Let's get rid of corruption by all means. But let's not forget the other - and far worse - monsters which lurk within us.
Will there be a national life after Anna? The Gandhian's satyagraha against rampant corruption has evoked a countrywide response unmatched by anything in the history of independent India, not even perhaps by Jayaprakash Narayan's 1974 movement against the increasing authoritarianism of Indira Gandhi's government.
JP's 'swarajist' campaign - initially spearheaded by students in Bihar but later spreading to include citizens from all walks of life, across the nation - caused the biggest political earthquake the country has ever witnessed when Indira Gandhi, backed into a corner, declared her infamous Emergency and overnight turned democratic India into a totalitarian dictatorship.
But though shrouded, the torch of freedom was not extinguished. And it burned brighter and fiercer than ever when in the general elections following the lifting of the Emergency, the collective wrath of the people voted Indira Gandhi out of office and brought in the Janata government.
The new dispensation, which got into internal wrangles almost from day one, was to pose its own challenges of cohesion. But the 'spirit of '77' made one thing clear: no one would again dare to try and stifle India's irrepressible democracy. The powers-that-be today will attempt to derail Anna's runaway movement at their own peril. Some critics have tried to put a verbal spoke in the wheels of the anti-corruption juggernaut by suggesting, among other things, that such extra-parliamentary forms of legislative activity would eventually derail democracy by encouraging irresponsible copycat movements which could be wilfully subversive of the rule of law.
Such sceptics, however, have been swiftly silenced by the overwhelming support that Anna's cause has generated, targeting as it does what is universally seen to be the nation's single most baneful affliction. Public disgust with all-pervasive graft has reached a pitch where corruption is perceived to be the root cause of all our myriad social, political and economic ills. The groundswell of opinion seems to be that if we can somehow exorcise the demon of corruption we will be freed of all the other evils that daily bedevil us.
Such a single-point agenda would be dangerously short-sighted. Corruption, in all its many manifestations, is without any question one of the most harmful of the toxins poisoning our body politic. But it is by no means the only one. Anna himself has already identified electoral reform as the next banner around which to rally his growing legions of followers. The criminalisation of politics, and the open use of muscle-and money-power to capture votes has made such reform a vital necessity which has been far too long delayed. Some of the electoral changes debated have been the right of recall and the voter's right to cancel their ballots in case they find all the candidates unsuitable in a particular constituency.
Such much-needed political reform, however, presupposes that the voter is free to make a truly informed choice. Illiteracy and the deep-rooted patriarchal system by which women voters are no more than rubber-stamp extensions of the male head of the household are only two of the major obstacles in the path to making the electoral process more truly representative.
Indeed not a few would say that to the extent - and it is a very large extent - that gender discrimination in effect disenfranchises the female half of the population India is at best a shambolic democracy. The progressive disempowerment of women is revealed by studies of sex-selective abortions which indicate that in 20 years' time India will have 20% more men than women. A clear case not of genocide, perhaps, but certainly of gendercide. And perpetrated, largely, by the urban middle class which is the most visible in championing Anna's cause.
Let's get rid of corruption by all means. But let's not forget the other - and far worse - monsters which lurk within us.
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