Political class has repeatedly failed the world’s largest democracy creating space for upstarts like Kejriwal, observes AIJAZ ZAKA SYED.
In Ridley Scott’s epic, Gladiator, Senator Gracchus says of Emperor Commodus: “He knows what Rome is. Rome is the mob. Conjure magic for them and they’ll be distracted. Take away their freedom and still they will roar. The beating heart of Rome is not the marble of the Senate; it’s the sand of the coliseum. He’ll bring them death – and they will love him for it.”
No matter what Edward Gibbon would have us believe, if the Roman empire eventually collapsed, it was as much for the corruption of its elites as it was for the impetuous zeal of the mob. The kind that Robert Vadra, son-in-law of India’s most powerful politician and Congress chief Sonia Gandhi, so ingenuously describes as “mango people.”
The overzealous, new faithful that corruption crusader Arvind Kejriwal has gathered around himself and goes about breaching red lines and demolishing revered icons left, right and centre has the political class in a tizzy. His self-righteous, holier-than-thou grandstanding against the high and mighty grates on the delicate sensibilities of the elites. Kejriwal is a man in a hurry. Since he parted ways with Anna Hazare, the original spark behind the anti-corruption crusade, to float his own political party, he has been springing up one nasty surprise after another against the UPA coalition.
By going after Vadra and the cloistered, first political family of the country, he has signalled that in this game of big stakes he’s ready to play dirty. And he can be vindictive too. When Salman Khurshid, the soft spoken Oxonian law minister, stuck out his neck to defend Vadra, offering his blood for the Gandhis’ honour, he invited the mob’s wrath on himself and the trust his wife runs in his constituency.
When accused by the Congress of being the ‘B’ team of the BJP, Kejriwal turned his attention in the other direction. The attack on BJP chief Nitin Gadkari, exposing his theft of government land and overnight metamorphosis of his group of companies has set the cat among the pigeons in the so-called party with a difference. Gadkari’s driver and astrologer are named as directors and investors in his group of companies. After initial loud protestations of innocence and solidarity with the party president, the BJP and larger Sangh Parivar seem to have abandoned the skipper.
The BJP spokespersons, who have all these weeks and months been permanent fixtures on national television egging on the media in its nightly inquisitions against the governing party, were nowhere to be seen when their own party is in the dock. Evidently, no one in this Turkish public hammam has a stitch on. The government’s muted response to the damning accusations against Gadkari only proves that it’s a mutually protective club. With its own first family in the spotlight, the Congress is playing it soft, clearly hoping for some quid pro quo from the opposition party.
Corruption isn’t just part of life; it has become our way of life now – an open loot of national resources with everyone helping everyone else. We have lost the count of the number of scams involving hundreds of billions of rupees that have blown up in the nation’s face over the past few months and years. At least two former ministers and several senior civil servants, not to mention their minions are behind the bars. It’s a tiny minority that accidentally exposed itself. Who knows how many are out there who continue to quietly bleed the great republic to death?
Why even Dr Manmohan Singh, the once honest and sincere face of this government and architect of India’s economic revolution, finds himself under a cloud of suspicion. Indeed, the honest Dr Singh now enjoys the distinction of having presided over the largest number of scams in the nation’s history.
Is it any wonder then upstarts like Kejriwal are being feted as the hope and future of the billion-strong nation? The overbearing, moral certitude of the India-Against-Corruption crowd acting as the prosecutor, jury and the judge, delivering swift, instant justice is breathtaking.
The “vision document” that they have unveiled to run the country is even more terrifying. Full of half-baked, ludicrously naive ideas to “save” the country, this “vision” may very well end up making a mobocracy of the world’s largest democracy, little different from Hitler’s idea of a pure nation. But who is to blame for this state of affairs? If people’s trust in the system and political and democratic institutions of the nation stands decimated, the politicians have no one to blame but themselves.
Our politics has long been a rotten, putrid cesspool. But the stench has become unbearable now. Institutions are falling apart all around us. In government offices no file moves without money changing hands. Politics is now the easiest and quickest way to get rich – and stinking rich. In the global corruption index, India has jumped from 87th position to a humiliating 95th rank.
Of course, being the grand old party that has ruled the country for four out of six decades and still does, the responsibility for much of this rests with the Congress. And with the Hazares, Ramdevs and Kejriwals constantly gunning for the governing party over the past year or two, it has suffered the most, effectively losing all the support of the rising middle classes. Sonia Gandhi’s dream of seeing her son succeed PM Singh in the top job may well remain a dream. However, a loss for Congress won’t mean a victory for the BJP. From Yeddyurappa to Gadkari, there are enough skeletons in its own cupboard. In fact, no political party, perhaps with the exception of the Left, can today claim to be above board.
The two main political parties boast of 44 MPs each who have a proven criminal record. It’s the same with other parties. No wonder there’s so much frustration and anger against the political class all across the country. India is craving and pining for change – its own Arab spring, if you will. However, there’s little hope or promise of change from anywhere. And Kejriwal and his followers are looking to occupy this space as they tap into the long years of accumulated, simmering public frustration and rage against a rotten system.
However, the ‘India Against Corruption’ is still a Delhi-based phenomenon and no way represents the complex reality of a complex country. In a country of a billion people, you need more than a small crowd to be the agent of change. What India needs is a nationwide movement for change. A positive, healthy and democratic force for real transformation – and not the kind of witch hunt that we have been witnessing all this while.
You can’t bring about change by subverting the country’s political and democratic institutions. India’s chief strength is its democracy. Let’s use it to build a better nation. And financial corruption isn’t the only demon that we are fighting. Intolerance, ignorance, political and economic dispossession and caste and gender discrimination aren’t any less hazardous for the country.
[AIJAZ ZAKA SYED is a Gulf based writer. Write him at [email protected]]