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Journalism of Courage
We should never forget,even as we criticise the absurdities and dangerous anti-political sentiment that underlie the fasts and agitations of Anna Hazare and yoga guru Ramdev,that there is indeed deep-seated and broad-based anger among Indias citizens about how their daily lives require constant compromises with corrupt aspects of Indias state. In The Sunday
Express,a cross-section of people at Ramdevs Ramlila ground protest were asked when they last encountered corruption,and what their responses were. The answers were instructive: people had to pay to get their pensions cleared,for electricity and gas connections,to try and get their children work,to traffic policemen. It becomes clear that the anger that drew so many to Ramdevs protest was a product of the dysfunctional way the Indian state interacts with its citizens.
The voices reflect a mounting dissatisfaction amongst people with a state they have to supplicate in order to get what they feel is their due; they expect the government to function to support them in securing the citizens contract with the state. This is an anger that the government,indeed the entire political and policy-making class,needs to address. There will,however,be no magic bullet of the sort that Teams Anna and Baba demand. And deep down,the people on the street know that; they expect not that it will end overnight through the passage of some draconian law they want to see their government working hard to reform the institutional structure that enables and supports corruption.
We need more big ideas on how that institutional structure can be reformed. Some states have provided for a right to service delivery to be enacted,and the results of those should be carefully watched. Chief Economic Advisor Kaushik Basu has suggested the giving of bribes be decriminalised so that more prosecution can take place. Its only after people begin to sense,in their daily lives,a reduction of the pressure to bribe and plead,that the anger thats currently directed at the state will recede.
