One day Mullah Nasruddin lost his ring in the basement of his house, where it was very dark. There being no chance of his finding it in that darkness, he went out on the street and started looking for it there. A passer-by stopped to enquire: ‘What are you looking for, Mullah Nasruddin? Have you lost something?’ ‘Yes, I’ve lost my ring in the basement.’ ‘But Mullah Nasruddin, why don’t you look for it in the basement where you have lost it?’ asked the man in surprise. ‘Don’t be silly, man! How do you expect me to find anything in that darkness!’

MY own understanding of the politics of corruption began with conversations with the poor and rural middle class in trains and in chai shops in small towns and villages in Rajasthan. The preoccupation with corruption, however, is not confined to ramshackle tea shops, but extends to power centres in New Delhi. One soon realizes that the word lends itself to a multiple, complex and varied understanding of what it means to different individuals and groups. Corruption is everywhere, and the desire to get rid of it is universal. But the perspectives about what constitutes corruption, and what its remedies might be, are differently understood. In our distress with corruption we are one, but in our preferred solutions we are divided. Understanding the reasons for the differences is perhaps more important than a facade of unity.

Battles against corruption cannot be based on quick and proxy solutions, though the simplicity of one-shot solutions is indeed attractive. The apparent simplicity of the battle papers over the specifics which determine both the solutions and the methods. Looked at closely, inequality and misuse of power constitute the roots of corruption. The manifestations, however, vary. A banner made for one of the many protests against corruption by the National Campaign for the People’s Right to Information (NCPRI) captures the many faces of corruption:

C – Casteism/Communalism

O – Oppression

R – Repression

R – Racism

U – Untouchability/Undemocratic Practice

P – Poverty/Patriarchy

T – Totalitarianism

I – Inequality/Injustice

O – Ostracism

N – Nepotism

With each instance, the oppressors change, come in different permutations and combinations. Sometimes, the oppressor becomes the oppressed. The poor know this. The injustice they face in their lives every day are obvious to them. Any honest intervention that seeks to address these different kinds of injustice, will require the collective empowerment of the people. That is a primary reason that the Right to Information campaign in India has been so effectively shaped, embraced, and used by various collectives of disadvantaged and marginalized groups.

The Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan (MKSS), a poor worker’s and peasant’s organization, saw how the struggle for minimum wages and land being fought in 1991 soon transmuted into a struggle against corruption and for transparency, accountability and democratic governance. Lessons drawn from this struggle are still relevant today.

 

First, we need to understand and acknowledge that there is a lot that the people already know about various forms of corruption. The oppressed certainly know the reasons for their exploitation; it is a part of their daily existence. The information and figures capture the statistical story of their oppression, and the mechanics provide irrefutable clues about the source of affluence of many others.

Wherever working village women and men in Rajasthan have got together, they have brought with them a wealth of information about their work and development. There are detailed accounts of worksites, who worked, how they were cheated, what materials arrived, and to whom they went – usually not to the worksite. These accounts, though sometimes coloured by bias, are nevertheless always minute in detail and interrelated with many other happenings. People’s evening chats in rural Rajasthan are dotted with exchanges of this sort.

 

Working people usually rely on the oral tradition of collecting information, mainly from interaction with modern structures like the panchayats. Allegations of non-payment of minimum wages and the cheating on worksites were, however, difficult to substantiate because officialdom invariably countered by saying, ‘But the papers do not say so.’ Eventually, semi-literate and literate workers began noting down the information in their little diaries – one was flaunted in public view in the dharna in Beawar in 1996, as a parallel in essence and substance to the Jain hawala diaries!

How does one struggle when faced with an edifice of governance built on inequality, deception and indifference? However, once we recognize that the oppressed are aware of the basic architecture and mechanics of corruption, can we honestly sideline them in the struggle for justice? To force reality upon a world practiced in self-deception, we must engage in the specifics. This involves a process of gathering, collating and collectively analyzing the information so that the internal contradictions and barefaced lies of the rulers stand exposed. It requires setting one set of facts against another, one set of statistics with another, and contrasting one stated reality with another. And finally, it needs a framework of governance where the people can engage in a legitimized process of public vigilance, and move from just information seekers to being auditors themselves.

In the summer of 1991, the MKSS was on a dharna and hunger strike demanding the payment of minimum wages to workers on government run drought relief works. The dharna was a lively, energetic affair. We mixed speeches with chanting of slogans and the singing of songs all day through and well into the night. There were impromptu skits, satirical plays, and innovative sloganeering.

The tehsil office, in front of which we had pitched our tents, also housed the Sub Division Magistrate (SDM) and the Deputy Superintendent of Police (DySP). The young children of the SDM learnt the slogans and were soon chanting them at home. The SDM told us later that this coupled with the distress of his wife that the curse of the poor would affect them personally, brought the adversary home, and drove him quite mad.

 

The DySP’s father was a truly religious man who would not even eat food from his son’s earnings, lest it be tainted with the graft that is the staple of many police officials in this country! He brought foodgrain from his own farm. After a couple of days, the DySP requested us to tone down the volume as his father meditated for several hours every day. Even though our slogans continued unabated, and in a sense disturbed his meditation, we later learnt from the family that he followed all the developments keenly and became one of our strongest supporters. He told his son, and the others in the police, that ours was a battle for truth and justice, and that he had no doubt that we would eventually win. In fact, he informed his son that even if the protesters outside did not achieve their demands, he would change the title of the book he was writing. The book was called Satyameva Jayate.

Such were the stories that sustained us through our worst periods, confirming the good in human beings, the capacity to transcend the boundaries and stereotypes of oppression. This was in feudal Rajasthan where centuries of well-entrenched hierarchies had never been challenged, but there was also the unshakeable popular faith that the truth would eventually prevail. Equally, goonda politics and state terrorism had not yet taken the shape and proportion common in some other parts of India, and battles for justice were respected even by those who were on the other side.

True, the stakes are higher now, the games dirtier and vested interests more entrenched. Despite the paradigm shift brought about by the Right to Information Act, we continue to face a firmly established culture of secrecy, and silence. Western patenting appears a crude method of appropriating knowledge when compared with the culture of mystification, seclusion and exclusion moulded into bureaucratic and caste hierarchies in India. It has reached a point where it has now become self-defeating. A culture of silence is also deeply entrenched. We are sullen, unhappy, comprehending, suffering, but silent. Such is our collective ethos, developed by others but shared by most of us, above all by the affluent society and its aspirants.

 

What can we as ordinary citizens do in this situation? Can we learn from the struggles of people, far less powerful than ourselves who refuse to be subjugated by oppression, corruption, and deceit? Can we keep alive the faith that the truth will always prevail? There are some lessons to be drawn from the national campaign for the people’s right to information. Efforts to uncover the contradictions, and put before the people the dual and split personality of the state has the immense potential of mobilizing public opinion and rousing the people from the apathy that they are victims of, and thereby causing great discomfort to ruling power structures. But this will only happen if we also have a commitment to values of equity, democracy and justice.

The poor Rajasthani speaks fluently and long about, ‘ya to jack hona chahiye ya cheque.’ The fact that bribes and nepotism are two sides of the same coin is a common perception. For the poor, the only way to overcome this kind of power, which by definition circumvents the law, is through collective action. The tools, the objectives, and the results of specific strugglers together determine its vision.

 

The RTI has helped arm people with vital information about these contradictions and open up opportunities for specific battles. That several individuals, including many RTI users, have been murdered is indicator of the potent power of information – Ghulam Rasool, Satyendra Dubey, Lalit Mehta, Amit Jethwa, Niyamat Ansari, now Shehla Masood to name a few – and the list goes on. These were all good, courageous people killed only because they pursued the truth and resolutely fought against injustice.

The combination of placing information in the public domain, and making its connections with injustice obvious, often divides us, depending on our personal interests. When serious and factual data is to be placed in front of the citizenry, the decision about our choice of tools will depend largely on our perception of the causality of corruption. It is at this point that differences will emerge in the struggle, depending on the interests of different segments. Some may bemoan this as breaking the sense of ‘unity’ that an anti-corruption battle allows, but change invariably reorders existing balances, and one must question who is using whom behind the facade of a deceptive unity.

 

When corruption enters the relationship between an individual and governance, it is akin to the betrayal of a social contract. The denial of accountability by a democratic government, which owes its power to people, is as much a betrayal. Governments who draw their authority from legal and constitutional sources, do so on the premise that they protect the rule of law. That is the social contract. Unfortunately, while we have been slow to wake up to this commitment, our governments have gone much further. They are busy making and reviewing existing laws in a manner that denies rights rather than accede to their implications.

The rule of law will prevail, but more as a tool to deny rights, leaving the average citizen to vent his angst about corruption and target ventriloquist dummies even as real decision-makers like the financiers and money controllers continue to hide behind laws meant exclusively for encouraging international ventures. The misfortune is that these paper tigers and red herrings are being seen as the main criminals, only because they are more visible than others. In addition, an ‘apolitical’ middle class prefers an easy target in ‘the politician’. The solutions are then sought in qualified technocracies. It is ironic that despite the wholehearted participation of such technocrats in the plunder of state resources, they continue to be extolled as a class.

This as the lampooning and critiquing of the political class, even as it dispirits the better among them, makes little difference to the ones who do not care. Rarely do we realize that this derisive dismissal of politicians and politics is part of a larger design that undermines democracy and democratic institutions. It is undeniable that money has come to dominate politics so comprehensively that it affects the basic democratic structure of the requirement of winning votes to establish one’s mandate. It is also true that the political class is itself getting less politicized, which is perhaps an even bigger concern. In such circumstances, even much needed electoral reform will by itself not solve the problem of corruption or the misuse of public office.

 

In a democracy, sovereignty vested in the citizen is transferred to the elected representative for a period of time, with an understanding that this sovereignty will be used for implementing a mandate and promoting the greater common good. In the absence of a ‘political process’ based on competing ideologies, money is bound to play a dominant role. Thus, even if the electoral process is reformed, and money plays a smaller role during elections, it is possible that the political executive can be bought off even after they are elected.

The absence of a commitment to a set of ideas, or to a manifesto that has emerged from working with people, leaves us with a political class which is as ambivalent to people’s needs as the bureaucracy has been. And therefore, it is important for citizen’s groups to look at and examine each act of government, and define their own struggles through specifics, so that the emerging centres of power in ‘civil society’ do not fall prey to the same rudderless energy that often gets used by the more organized, the more powerful, and the more moneyed.

The RTI movement in India has transformed the discourse of the concept of the right to information around the globe. As the Delhi High Court acknowledged in its judgment on the Supreme Court Judges Asset Declaration Case, it has expanded the notion beyond the Right to Freedom of Expression (Article 19 (1) (a)) to establish its connections with the Right to Life (Article 21) as well as the Right to Equality (Article 14).

Remembering these other roots of the RTI in India is essential if we are to ‘uproot’ corruption. The RTI campaign too saw the same kind of coming together of disparate interest groups because everyone wanted transparency. Fortunately, the leadership and ideological moorings of the movement were shaped by ordinary people who, through their specific questions, were able to filter who eventually would come together in the search for a better world.

 

An exploration into the right to speak and express dissent will lead us to the understanding that it must be accompanied by the explicit right to ask questions, demand answers and follow up with action to hold the guilty accountable. As the questions move more decisively from transparency to accountability, there is a challenge before the leaders of the anti-corruption movement to define themselves through specifics. Not just through a law, but through the reasoned application of how it would work, to understand who it will benefit and how.

But most important is that the leaders of this ‘people’s movement’ must define whose side they stand on. The rest of us also need to understand that if this is indeed ‘people’s politics’, it cannot be separated from the larger question of a ‘people’s manifesto’ on accountability. The Anna Hazare movement has already established itself as an extraordinary popular mobilization. There is now a need to carefully think of the specific demands and their consequences, as they will determine future implications and their impact on our democratic polity.