TWO Thousand Eleven was assuredly the year of civil society reverberating across the world, from Tunisia and Egypt to New York and London, and on to New Delhi, Beijing and Kuala Lumpur. Many of these movements describe their goal as revolution, inviting grand comparisons with another Spring that was witnessed on the streets of Europe in 1848. Do these assertions of popular power have anything in common beyond their youthfulness, their use of social networking media, and the fact that they are enacted in open spaces like squares, parks and tented encampments?

What is common to the very disparate set of occurrences of 2011 is arguably the agency of civil society rather than the substantive demands of the protesters. Of course, a pattern of obvious subsets can be discerned, in which the countries that have experienced the Arab Spring have a shared history of authoritarianism, while those that have witnessed Occupy movements are fellow sufferers of the excesses of what Edward Lattwak evocatively called ‘turbo-capitalism’.

Even as the Arab Spring and the Occupy movements explicitly acknowledge and express solidarity with each other, there are important differences between them, as well as between each of these and the India Against Corruption campaign, better known as the Anna Hazare movement. In Tunisia and Egypt, pro-democracy civil society mobilizations caused the overthrow of autocratic governments, though experts caution us that the underlying social and economic triggers in Egypt, Tunisia and Libya were quite different.¹ 

The Occupations across the US and the UK (in 85 countries, on one count) point fingers at the robber barons of Wall Street and the City of London who rewarded themselves with huge bonuses and extraordinary salaries in a period of widespread recession and joblessness, and the failure of the regulatory state to prevent this. These are mobilizations against the obscene prosperity of one per cent of the people, and the deepening social and economic inequalities experienced by the remaining ninety-nine per cent. In Israel, the social justice movement, whose members occupied Tel Aviv’s posh Boulevard Rothschild, was protesting against the shortage of housing and the high cost of living. In India, the India Against Corruption (IAC) has targeted official corruption and the political class.

In this essay, I seek first to highlight some important differences between the IAC campaign and some of the other movements of 2011, and second, to offer an interpretation of these events as a tectonic shift that has occurred across the world, including in India, which the label of civil society cannot adequately comprehend or explain.

Possibly the most audacious of all the claims articulated in 2011 is the IAC’s claim that it is leading India’s second freedom movement. This is, in turn, sought to be validated by its representative claim as the authentic voice of The People of India. The People, we are told, have decided that this is a sham democracy and the IAC is the medium through which, to borrow from Nehru’s Tryst with Destiny speech, ‘the soul of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance.’ The Indian people, we are informed, are disillusioned with representative democracy and have decided to reclaim the power that they delegated to their MPs. Since the people are the ultimate source of legislative power, it is entirely appropriate that they should now exercise this power to dictate the laws – in particular, the Lokpal Bill – which they believe to be necessary but obstructed by the self-interested venality of their phony representatives.

 

The anti-politics orientation of the Anna Hazare campaign finds few echoes in the other movements around the globe. Indeed, the institutions of representative democracy that the IAC mocks, caricatures and systematically delegitimizes, are the very institutions coveted by the participants of the Arab Spring. This is what explains the civic excitement of November 2011 as Egyptians celebrate the first free election they have had in years. Democracy is the burden of their song, and a voice in politics is precisely the object of their struggle. Tahrir Square is not about the people making the laws themselves, but about upholding the legitimacy of elected representatives, rather than military dictators, legislating for them. The Chinese protests likewise are inspired by the democratic ideal. For the Occupy movements, the struggle is to make democracy more participatory and more receptive to the voices of citizens.

It is only in India, the celebrated beacon of democracy in the South, that such a preposterous dichotomization of civil society and democracy occurs, with the one pitted in relentless opposition to the other. There is no acknowledgment here of the simple but profound argument of political theorists that civil society and the democratic state are political projects bound together by the mutuality of their fates. As Michael Walzer argued a quarter of a century back, a robust civil society is necessary to sustain a democratic state but equally that only a democratic state can guarantee such a civil society.

 

Even the apparent similarity between the IAC and its fellow-civil societies of 2011, in terms of the prominence of the middle class, is misleading. The left wing orientation of the Occupy movements has made it easy to equate them with the middle class and its experience of joblessness in contexts where welfare entitlements have been drastically whittled down. Two quite different responses are discernible in India. First, as the Indian blogosphere shows, the experience of rubbing shoulders with autorickshaw drivers at the Ramlila Maidan offers the soothing balm of class unity to the guilt-ridden souls of the intelligentsia, acutely uncomfortable in their own middle class skins. By contrast, the protesting middle classes in the other movements worldwide are unashamed of representing themselves and do not require that the burden of authentic representation be carried by others.

Second, India’s middle class is still drunk on the heady brew of liberalization. This movement is no ‘youthquake’; indeed, it is more youth than quake, for this is a class that has benefited from economic reform and, despite an antipathy to corruption, it does not seek to upset the apple cart of market reform. Its discontent is limited to political and bureaucratic corruption without the recognition that this cannot thrive without corporate complicity. Above all, this is a class that is manifestly unbothered by the vast disparities and visible injustices that mark Indian society. Unlike the Occupy movements which are agitating for greater regulation over markets run amok, and even for exploring alternative forms of economic organization, the Indian protesters would like to reduce the role of the state in the lives of citizens to the absolute minimum, whatever the implications of such a withdrawal on the lives of their underprivileged compatriots.

 

So who or what does this civil society mobilization represent? What is the worth or validity of its representative claim? Is civil society accountable to anyone at all, or does the virtuous glow of its very existence accord it exemption in perpetuity? These have always been important and legitimate questions addressed to civil society anywhere. The Hazare movement, unlike many of the other movements of the year past, does not offer convincing answers. It is led by the eponymous Team Anna that has a nice sporting ring to it, suggesting a group of people who are bonded together in solidarity and commitment to a common purpose. There is of course a moral hierarchy in the arrangement of the members of the core team in relation to Anna, with moral authority belonging decisively and deservedly to him who makes the ultimate sacrifice of putting his life on the line.

That the decision-making within the team is opaque and the internal dynamics of the team unstable became clear when, in the aftermath of the August fast, the team members began making comments mildly critical of each other, so whetting the unfailingly voracious public appetite for such titbits. Anna’s relationship with his team also became the subject of speculation, as Raju Parulekar, the authorized blogger of Anna’s blogsite, claimed that Anna was distressed that Bedi, Bhushan and Kejriwal were ‘so undemocratic, fascist and disrespect (sic) Annaji’s thought.’

The site carried a letter written by Anna Hazare himself saying that people close to him often made ‘statements that do not collaborate (sic) with my thinking. Henceforth, through the medium of internet, I will personally make sure that my thoughts and views reach over to the people.’ We are left wondering whether Anna is the Oracle and the team members merely interpreters of his profound thoughts to us; whether there are deliberative and consultative processes amongst the core team or even an extended group that inform the making of decisions; and, above all, whether there are principled and reasoned arguments that underlie the final decisions that are offered as the considered views of The People.

 

Compare this with the decision-making process evolved by the Occupy movements in the US and the UK. To begin with, there is no single leader, not even a governing body. There is instead a General Assembly which meets every evening, and in which any and every individual is free to propose an idea, offering justifications for it and indicating how it might be carried out. Each proposal is debated, including in sub-groups of ten people; the proposer may be asked to revise the proposal in light of the objections articulated by the others; and it is accepted only when there is sufficient positive consensus on it.

The slogan of the Occupy movements, as is well-known, is ‘We are the 99 per cent.’ It is not a little ironical that the slogan of the Anna Hazare movement which claims to represent the 99 per cent, is the peculiarly individualistic slogan ‘I am Anna’, invoking a leader-deity. The movement has capitalized on social media, drawing huge support from a professionally qualified and technologically smart generation which is strangely happy to infantilize itself and worship one all-knowing and all-comprehending leader, refusing to articulate any doubts or entertain any criticism.

 

The limited anti-corruption agenda of the Hazare movement thus does not convey a principled commitment to a democratic ethic. Nor are its processes of decision-making transparent or remotely accountable. For all the sloganeering about how the people should, can and will make the laws, there is a remarkable lack of respect for dissent, let alone a willingness to discuss alternatives. Consider the leap of faith demanded of its followers when a leadership insists that only a particular draft of the bill is acceptable, and all those who are against this version are impliedly in favour of corruption. Such intolerance should set the warning bells ringing; it is a timely reminder of how easily we are willing to forget the value of debate and argument in a parliamentary democracy.

Giving civil society the legitimate prerogative of formulating the law is not just procedurally dubious, it is a slippery slope, for there are no principled arguments that can be used to deter others, whether less well-intentioned leaders or industry bodies, from demanding the same privilege. On what basis can we arbitrate the representational claims of one segment of civil society as against another, or say that one is legitimate and the other is not? How do we determine that X can dictate the law to Parliament and Y cannot, and what happens when X is genuinely not self-interested and Y is nothing but? So, for instance, both corporates and civil society can, with equal felicity, claim to speak in the national interest: the first, in the name of the prosperity of the nation, and the second, for the welfare of citizens? Who will decide what tests of representativeness and authenticity can possibly be applied to either?

Let me move now to the second part of my argument, which claims that the efflorescence of movements across the world in 2011 does manifest a shared pattern, insofar as it signifies a shift away from the politics of recognition to, in many cases, a politics of redistribution. Across the world, the one message being sent out is not so much that of civil society triumphalism, but that of a decisive move away from the issues of cultural identity and difference that have been the dominant political motif everywhere for the last two decades. India’s caste-based parties and quota policies, and its struggle with communalism, have been the dominant themes of Indian democracy and electoral politics. The Middle East has witnessed the heightened political influence of Islam. In Europe and the United States, policies of multiculturalism and the recognition of cultural diversity emerged as a response to the social strains induced by immigration. One way or another, the pervasiveness of identity politics in the last two decades is unquestionable.

 

If the dark side of identity politics became apparent in India, the European project of multiculturalism too lost its shine as it confronted the challenge of constructing a common citizenship in societies marked by ethnic and racial diversity. The compromises entailed by inclusive policies such as the state funding of religion-based schools and institution of sharia courts and, of course, the headscarf controversy in France took their toll.

2011 signals a decisive move away from the politics of identity. This is a shift that has occurred everywhere, even in India where the anti-corruption movement has drawn our attention away from the fractured politics of caste and community. This may seem a curious assertion given the visibility, in the Anna movement, of religious leaders like Baba Ramdev and Sri Sri Ravi Shankar. But the Indian middle class cheerfully accepts this sanctification of politics by its religious gurus. The majority religious community in this country is, after all, used to worshipping a pantheon; so a congruence of divinities, encompassing both the secular and spiritual domains, is quite welcome. Nevertheless, it is important to remember that the movement’s demands are not in themselves particularistic, and the only time it capitulated to the politics of identity was when Anna Hazare declared that his reconstituted team would consist of one member each from the Muslims, dalits and adivasis.

 

Indeed, India is not unique in this. Religion has played an intriguing role in shaping the agenda of protest in many countries. In the Middle East, entrenched aspects of identity such as religion, have been accommodated and assimilated to the democratic project but not allowed to hold it hostage, as democracy occupies the driver’s seat. Democracy and Islam, it is argued, can coexist much like Christian Democratic politics in Europe. In London, the Occupiers have been camping in front of St. Paul’s Cathedral, a symbol of the official church. It is ironic that it was a think-tank of the Church of England that published a report on the excessive greed of bankers, though the report was suppressed because the Church was uncertain about the political consequences of making it public. As the occupiers living in cold tented accommodation outside St. Paul’s question the morality of greed, at least one senior cleric, Canon Chancellor Giles Fraser, has already resigned in protest against the Church’s hands-off stand on the matter. The religious establishment as a whole is now divided on the issue of social justice.

 

As they express their disquietude about materialistic values and a culture of excessive consumption, and privilege ideas of fairness and justice, British citizens are questioning the fundamental inequality of their society. They ask the Church to offer a moral rather than a religious response to the crisis. At the ‘Tent City University’ outside St Paul’s Cathedral, professors have been giving lectures on subjects like ‘why more equal societies almost always do better.’ Fundamental questions are being asked about the unsustainability of the present model of capitalism, and about whether there is a need to think about alternative forms of capitalism, or alternatives to capitalism itself.

It is acknowledged that these questions would be properly and most effectively addressed through dialogue and debate with both state and market actors. There are also questions being raised about the ethical imperative to improving the quality of life of the 99 per cent through a restoration of social services, instead of holding it ransom to the greed of the one per cent. In at least the Occupy movements, if not the others, there is a discernible move towards a politics of redistribution.

The year gone by suggests that we are no longer on the cusp of a major change; we appear to have made the transition to a qualitatively different phase. The civil-military equation in Egypt may take a while to stabilize, and the Lokpal Bill may be passed in the next session of Parliament, if not this one. What is important is that governments are no longer being petitioned for cultural rights and the recognition of identities; they are now being held to account for material well-being.

The central question today is: how fairly or justly are the resources of society distributed, and is this process transparent and free of distortions like corruption? In this sense, the Indian campaign targets the symptom rather than its underlying structural causes. Since it is not motivated by a desire for a more just or equitable reorganization of society, it stops short of asking the really important question: what is the design of society that we want, and what is the fairest way of distributing what John Rawls famously described as the benefits and burdens of social cooperation? With all its limitations, however, it is a qualitatively different question than was being asked thus far.

 

It is tempting to argue that these assertions signify variously that the legitimacy of democracy and capitalism are in danger. But there appears to be a wide divergence across movements. IAC certainly signals a crisis of legitimacy for parliamentary democracy, but it entails no questioning of crony capitalism. The Occupy movements, on the other hand, indicate a legitimacy crisis of capitalism, but no fundamental questioning of democracy, only of the absence of a regulatory regime for markets and corporations.

It is said that Occupy was the most used word in the English-language media in the year 2011. Anna Hazare was very likely the most used noun in the Indian media (in all languages) in 2011. The power of words is, in these different contexts, yet to be fully demonstrated or realized.

 

Footnote:

1. Lisa Anderson, ‘Demystifying the Arab Spring: Parsing the Differences Between Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya’, Foreign Affairs, May/June 2011, p. 2.