Ghotala.in

Indians should learn a lesson from unsung protests

The obligatory 2012 predictions have been made and the commentariat are unanimously forecasting doom and gloom. Pessimism, when rife, becomes contagious but these lamentations should be reserved in the case of India, where the greatest political movement since its independence is underway.

India’s anti-corruption protests have gone largely unreported and John Pilger’s recent article is an example. He gravely predicts that India will experience its own Arab spring and yet not once cites the anti-corruption protests rippling across the country.

With pervasive official corruption, sclerotic parliamentary opposition, an inept Prime Minister and an increasingly menacing financial class, the anti-graft movement faces a near Herculean struggle. But the new year marks new beginnings and now is a chance to reflect on the pertinence of India’s anti-corruption movement.

Anna Hazare, the movement’s elderly figurehead, and the anti-graft movement have returned to the political fore after the Rajya Sabha, the upper house of India’s parliament, failed to pass an anti-corruption law. Parliament is now in recess and the bill will not be reconsidered until March. Hazare, who threatened to resume his fast in response, has fallen ill and amid claims of changing tack the India Against Corruption (IAC) movement has begun to stagnate. Yet the movement is, for several reasons, a strategic success.

Foremost, the IAC movement is a vindication of organised peaceful protest as an effective political tool. The movement has served as a lens through which focus on corruption has intensified and the pressure on parliament increased. Passing a LokPal (public ombudsman) bill has been tried seven times already since 1968. In the long and old fight to combat graft, the anti-corruption movement now dominates India’s political and popular discourse like never before. In a society so divided by capitalism, caste and creed the movement has become a rallying point.