Who will Mr India catch?
Our understanding of corruption might be deep, but our ideas on what we can do about it are at best clichés.
A few days ago, as I watched the coverage of the protests against corruption that had so intoxicated a certain type of Indian, I saw a telling little interview. The small girl who had the privilege of handing activist Anna Hazare the glass of nimbu paani he sipped to break his fast, was asked if she knew what the protests were about. Did she know what corruption meant? She replied that it was “ghalat kaam”.
This child was from a middle-class family that was swept along, willingly, by the wave of popular sentiment in favour of Hazare and his very popular cause. After all, can anyone say they support corruption?
But here is where the fun begins: When you are the counsel against indefensible evil, your opponent will not simply plead guilty. He will ask you to see the bigger picture. And he will have a point.
The Indian middle class’s understanding of corruption is deep enough. We experience it in almost every interaction we have with the state — I guess I should exclude buying a postage stamp, but who buys those these days? We also understand that there are the corrupt and the very corrupt — an ever-expanding group of people who make the scam lists, but who generally have no direct dealings with us.
The first group is one that we accept, embrace. Like the tout at the railway ticket counter or the passport office. That man offers a genuine service. He knows the system better than us and charges us for this knowledge. If his set-up is well-run and delivers, then he actually builds goodwill.
We may not agree with what he does, but the conveniences weigh the dilemmas down just enough to his side. We are likely to miss him when he’s gone.
The very corrupt are a different story. It is our fate to watch them on the telly, read about them and their wealth with resentment. The picture of them in handcuffs pleases us; but we don’t know them. We applaud the whistle-blower who made that picture possible, sometimes posthumously. For us, any legislation against corruption must ensure one or two of the very corrupt are caught soon after its enactment, and we’d prefer that they be politicians.
Our understanding of corruption might be deep, but our ideas on what we can do about it are at best clichés. We don’t see our ambivalence on the subject, nor do we see who else is in the bigger picture.
The bigger picture goes well beyond a fasting activist. For instance, one of the faces of the current protest is Baba Ramdev, the contortionist TV guru whose Ayurveda franchises sell everything from cough medicine to aphrodisiacs across India. He takes political stands: A campaign against black money that, by definition, cannot be opposed, is one of his issues.
The politicians countered this by saying it might be a good idea to investigate the source of the Baba’s funds, for starters.
And now, they say, let the canvas be larger. Let the institution of ‘Mr India’ that we want to create also have the powers to punish the ‘non-political corrupt’, say in NGOs and the corporate sector. Can ‘civil society’ argue against the nobility of the notion that corruption needs to be rooted out wherever it is?
In taking this stand, the politicians have joined us in our fight against corruption. So now that everybody is with us, whom does our Mr India catch?
The danger of this happening was there from the start. The congregation of groups of people singing a chorus — online and on the streets — makes good television. Gives the ‘revolution’ another spin or two. Politicians understand this and are, therefore, keen to sign up, somehow.
Many years ago, I came across a cartoon about Sanjay Dutt who was prison-bound for his part in a 1993 Mumbai blasts-related case. It depicted the film star’s supporters carrying placards that said “Sanjay, we are with you!” The panel next to it was set in Arthur Road jail and it had inmates holding posters saying “Sanjay, you are with us!”
That is the kind of situation Anna Hazare and the candle-lighters of the Indian middle class find themselves in. And it speaks of a lack of thought beyond the simple answer that they are opposed to “ghalat kaam”.
Published in The Express Tribune, April 15th, 2011.
This child was from a middle-class family that was swept along, willingly, by the wave of popular sentiment in favour of Hazare and his very popular cause. After all, can anyone say they support corruption?
But here is where the fun begins: When you are the counsel against indefensible evil, your opponent will not simply plead guilty. He will ask you to see the bigger picture. And he will have a point.
The Indian middle class’s understanding of corruption is deep enough. We experience it in almost every interaction we have with the state — I guess I should exclude buying a postage stamp, but who buys those these days? We also understand that there are the corrupt and the very corrupt — an ever-expanding group of people who make the scam lists, but who generally have no direct dealings with us.
The first group is one that we accept, embrace. Like the tout at the railway ticket counter or the passport office. That man offers a genuine service. He knows the system better than us and charges us for this knowledge. If his set-up is well-run and delivers, then he actually builds goodwill.
We may not agree with what he does, but the conveniences weigh the dilemmas down just enough to his side. We are likely to miss him when he’s gone.
The very corrupt are a different story. It is our fate to watch them on the telly, read about them and their wealth with resentment. The picture of them in handcuffs pleases us; but we don’t know them. We applaud the whistle-blower who made that picture possible, sometimes posthumously. For us, any legislation against corruption must ensure one or two of the very corrupt are caught soon after its enactment, and we’d prefer that they be politicians.
Our understanding of corruption might be deep, but our ideas on what we can do about it are at best clichés. We don’t see our ambivalence on the subject, nor do we see who else is in the bigger picture.
The bigger picture goes well beyond a fasting activist. For instance, one of the faces of the current protest is Baba Ramdev, the contortionist TV guru whose Ayurveda franchises sell everything from cough medicine to aphrodisiacs across India. He takes political stands: A campaign against black money that, by definition, cannot be opposed, is one of his issues.
The politicians countered this by saying it might be a good idea to investigate the source of the Baba’s funds, for starters.
And now, they say, let the canvas be larger. Let the institution of ‘Mr India’ that we want to create also have the powers to punish the ‘non-political corrupt’, say in NGOs and the corporate sector. Can ‘civil society’ argue against the nobility of the notion that corruption needs to be rooted out wherever it is?
In taking this stand, the politicians have joined us in our fight against corruption. So now that everybody is with us, whom does our Mr India catch?
The danger of this happening was there from the start. The congregation of groups of people singing a chorus — online and on the streets — makes good television. Gives the ‘revolution’ another spin or two. Politicians understand this and are, therefore, keen to sign up, somehow.
Many years ago, I came across a cartoon about Sanjay Dutt who was prison-bound for his part in a 1993 Mumbai blasts-related case. It depicted the film star’s supporters carrying placards that said “Sanjay, we are with you!” The panel next to it was set in Arthur Road jail and it had inmates holding posters saying “Sanjay, you are with us!”
That is the kind of situation Anna Hazare and the candle-lighters of the Indian middle class find themselves in. And it speaks of a lack of thought beyond the simple answer that they are opposed to “ghalat kaam”.
Published in The Express Tribune, April 15th, 2011.