In politics, welcome little leaps of change

Politics still provides the excitement and openness of Indian society. Other systems like business, education, even sports have moved towards equity and creativity but politics excels them all because of its quarrelsome openness. Politics is one system that is still open to people and debate.

One can condemn its plurality as confusion or disorder but one realises there is no substitute for it. Political activists also provide the best critique of politics. When democracy in India was ossifying around party, state and trade union, the non-party movements provided an alternative conception of democracy. The anti-dam movements, the anti-development struggles added to the imagination of democracy where parties were behaving as extension counters of the state. One is grateful to this imagination, which extended from political scientist Rajni Kothari to activist Medha Patkar, and added a new dimension to civil society as a way of life. The non-party process tried to bypass the party as an institution but failed. The same villager who approached the NGO or the social movement for help at a time of displacement would return to the party politician in other circumstances. The party leader remained relevant within the ecology of everydayness as a fixer and patron. When election time came, the villager voted for the politician. It was a pragmatic, transparent decision and reflected a faith in party politics as a system of service delivery.
The beginning of the century saw a greater return to party politics. Sonia Gandhi and Manmohan Singh had revitalised the Congress. Regional parties were regaining their strength and even becoming national voices. Thirdly, mavericks like Mamata Banerjee could bring down the CPI(M) in West Bengal when the latter was controlling the countryside through a network of party goons.
Yet, liberalisation revealed the deeper crisis of politics. The new generation under 25 was more interested in individual mobility than political community. The parties had returned to their old corrupt ways. The Congress was fetishising dynastic politics to a point where one was unclear whether Rahul Gandhi was 14 or 40. The young battalion of ministers and politicians even if more talented or competent could not upstage him. The BJP had lost its ideological verve. The RSS was desperate to retain control. Party in Karnataka was a family-feudal fiefdom and Narendra Modi treated the party as a dispensable fixture. Regional parties from Jagan Mohan Reddy’s YSR Congress or the Jharkhand politicians set a new high for corruption, which made the old Congress look ascetic. Men like Jagan Mohan Reddy, the Marans, the Reddy bothers and the Yeddyurappa family were increasing family GNP.
The party had become a network of corruption. The wave of scams from 2G to Coalgate revealed three things. Firstly that corruption was an activity that cut across parties. It was seen as normal and a function of political patronage. It was very clear that parties had combined to make sure no reform or legislation could be introduced to reform corruption. In fact, corruption had become the basis of the new political contract. The state, like coal blocks, was available to the highest bidder.
It was at this stage that Anna Hazare led a protest movement against corruption. The Congress was wily enough to stymie him but Anna revealed there was a space to fight corruption in politics. He behaved as a prophet and icon and thus could only be a gadfly in politics. Anna invoked a swadeshi past. He was a prophet invoking an earlier era. He was a moral galvaniser. Prophets have to become priests to form parties. Rhetoric has to become agenda. Masses have to become organisations.
The split between Arvind Kejriwal and Hazare was inevitable. Hazare’s rhetorical campaigns had a limited shelf life. One needed a resistance of a different kind. One needed bureaucrats who could handle the everydayness of politics. Elections and parties demanded a different shell set.
Enter Kejriwal.
Kejriwal represents the new middle class in politics. He is a professional. He thinks like a file and behaves like an audit book. He is bilingual and appeals to the IT professional and the Hindi heartland. If one looks at the core founders, the new party has no dynasties. They smack of competence in competitive services to psephology. They are pragmatic. They prefer data handbooks to rhetoric. None of them has an ounce of charisma yet each is a presence. They are clear that corruption must be fought. Their message is not diffuse. They show that the state and the party has commoditised the commons, that the mine, the city, the land and the forest is open to the auction block. They show how the dynamics of party finance adds to this crooked world. They are ready and confident about cleansing it. They are well behaved, tech-savvy and their competence needs no advertisement. They could be managers in a firm or consultants to a bank. They are at home with Lohia and John Rawls. Sometimes their confidence is irritating but they have faced crisis with aplomb.
They echo a style that is both Bharat and India, mixes engineering and social science. There is something new here which we cannot brush away with elite snobbishness. Kejriwal and company speaks many dialects with one voice. Compared to Karats and the Digvijay Singhs, the Karunanidhis and the Yeddyurappas, they are refreshing. Modern India may not produce the Arab Spring but it has produced a pragmatic summer which has found a focus in a party, an organisation and a banner. We need to welcome it and help it. We may not have a political spring but a bit of spring-cleaning is more than adequate for now. Democracy has to be content with little leaps of change within a bigger scenario of faith.

The writer is a social science nomad