Opinion A movement derailed
Jayaprakash Narayan was a rare hero. His ideological trajectory took him from Marxism and socialism to Gandhism
Jayaprakash Narayan was a rare hero. His ideological trajectory took him from Marxism and socialism to Gandhism. His lifetime programme was to do constructive work on Gandhian themes-bhoodan,shramdan,gramdan. I doubt if all that amounted to much. Yet what he was a genius at was agitation. He could rouse and lead multitudes. He did this in 1942 against British Rule and again in 1974 against Indira Gandhi. He was effective in both instances. His struggle against Indira Gandhi mobilised students and then a larger public. He was the censor on behalf of the citizens. He did not succeed at first as Emergency intervened. But in 1977,his movement succeeded in displacing Indira Gandhi. Of course,once again the constructive part of his movement failed as the Janata government was a miserable flop. His legacy lives on in Mulayam Singh,Lalu Yadav,Ram Vilas Paswan and Nitish Kumar.
Anna Hazare has obviously followed JP in the way he launched his movement last year. He is a Gandhian and his constructive work has been similarly modest but his mass agitation against corruption gained much support in April last year. Then thanks to some help from the UPA,his movement gained traction and by August 2011,he was global news. He was the Peoples tribune. Much hope resided in him. Parliament paid due respect to his demands though without conceding its own supremacy.
Unfortunately for Anna Hazare,his movement made some crucial but in my view,mistaken choices. He should have spearheaded an Anti-Corruption Party and fought elections at state level. Or at least begun preparations for fighting in 2014 on a platform of clean politics. Yet he chose not to do so. The agitational mode has continued with occasional propaganda against candidates thought to be corrupt. As it was the movement made little impact on the outcome of elections.
Now in some desperation,the movement has begun to disgrace itself. It clearly lacks coherence and different leaders within the movement have their own agenda. They are basically honest people but even so their agenda are narrowly motivated with no discernible purpose than to stay in the news. The latest flurry of accusations against the PM and 14 other Cabinet ministers is a classic example of over the top reaction. Even Anna Hazare is not sure what is being done in his name nor is Justice Hegde. There is a basic confusion about what corruption consists in. Not every CAG report is usable for that purpose.
Take the 2G case. It seems the NDA made the right decisions that if the mobile telephone spectrum could be given away for free on a first-come-first-serve basis (on which all queues are based),it would benefit consumers because they will get their mobiles cheap. The purpose was to maximise mobile telephone use. It is probably the most powerful and cheap way of ending isolation and enhancing social mobility. In this,the policy succeeded. A Raja may or may not have let his friends jump the queue but what is true is that 900 million mobiles are in use. Indeed in economics it has been known that the best way to maximise public welfare is to price public facilities at marginal costs. A bridge once built has negligible marginal cost of maintenance. The user should be charged the marginal cost rather than be asked to pay to recover the full cost. The monetary loss of not recovering the cost is small compared to the gain to the users.
No one in the UPA has had the sense to argue this. Instead we have been mired in some imaginary number of Rs 1.76 lakh crore of loss. Those who won the licences made profits and their shares rose in value. But that is because they offered a product which was in large demand. Had they charged the full cost (as TRAI seems to be suggesting now),the mobile telephone would have been the privilege of the rich. If mobile phones became too expensive,that would be the real misuse of power as well as genuine corruption as that would hurt the public. Worry about the public,Anna,not the Cabinet.
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