Tuesday, August 7, 2012

Why I choose Team Anna By Yogendra Yadav - The Indian Express

http://www.indianexpress.com/news/why-i-choose-team-anna/984727/0

The Indian Express

Why I choose Team Anna

YOGENDRA YADAV : Tue Aug 07 2012,
 
In choice between two less than pure sides, I prefer protesters’ infirmities to rulers’ intransigence

Feel disappointed with your decision to join this movement which has mediocrity and righteousness at its core...” This was an SMS from an old friend whose opinion matters to me. The context was the “Anna movement” and its decision to “embrace politics”. I was one of the signatories to the statement that called upon the fasting leaders to give up on their expectations from the political establishment and instead work towards creating an alternative political force, not necessarily a political party. Hence the message.

I could have ducked it, and pointed out that at the time of writing this I have not “joined” Team Anna. Those of us who signed the statement requesting Anna and his associates to call off the fast did so precisely because we were outsiders. I spoke from the podium as a friend and well-wisher, but not as a member. I could have also pointed out that every time I spoke from the stage, at Ramlila Maidan in August and December last year and at Jantar Mantar, I underlined a friendly disagreement with the movement. Yet the fact remained that I did extend moral support to the movement. This is what she questioned and I could not duck behind a formality.

I could have simply overlooked the message, as one odd response among many. Of the many responses that I have received in the last few days, the dominant voice has been positive, if not enthusiastic. I dare not speak of the aam aadmi, but the subset that I get to hear in my everyday life — ordinary TV viewers, middle class persons with casual interest in politics, lower middle class men who engaged me at Jantar Mantar and on the streets and ordinary activists in the movement circles who cared to call — had on balance supported this move. They had questions about its success but not about its rationale.

At the same time, the more intellectual, discerning and politically more astute responses have been more critical. Many of the finer minds and committed spirits have cautioned me against extending support to the movement. They may be in a minority. But this small voice is often the shell that protects one’s conscience. This SMS lay in that domain where brute majority must not prevail.

I could have, of course, disagreed with my friend. The Anna movement may have been anything, but mediocre it is not. The group of young activists involved in this movement has been amazingly innovative in its approach and strategy. They dared to make established political wisdom stand on its head. And the meticulous planning that went into the movement is anything but mediocre. Or, I could have retorted by asking how could she complain about the “righteousness” of a bunch of activists on the street in the face of shameless wrongdoings by those who wield unlimited and unaccountable power. How could we notice imagination deficits of the protesters, when compared to the heaps of lies that the government has dished out to protect its ministers and allies?

At least, the protesters have learnt a thing or two over the last one year. They have tried to distance themselves from blatant anti-politics and institution-bashing and from the ideological stream represented by Ramdev. The political establishment, on the other hand, is as coarse and smug, if not more, as it was last year.

That may have been a smart response but not fully honest. Faced with a real-life choice between two less than pure sides, one cannot but prefer the infirmities of the protesters to the insensitivity and intransigence of the rulers. Yet that does not justify the failures of Team Anna. Over the last 16 months, I have, more than once, felt uneasy about the stridency and hyperbole deployed from the podium. I wished Team Anna were more attentive to the constructive criticism and alternative proposals offered by their erstwhile colleagues in the NCPRI. I felt, and said so from the podium in Ramlila Maidan, that politicians’ corruption must not be used to cover our own. And yes, I could not disagree with her: monotonous righteousness that refused to look within often made me cringe.

I wanted to tell her something else. Anna movement was not my first real-life encounter with social and political movements. Over the last three decades, I have worked closely with a number of non-party political formations and non-mainstream parties. I have sat through a number of painful discussions and negotiations about transiting from “non-political” to “political”. And I know how lack of viability and visibility has finished some of the best political alternatives of our times before they could take off.

I wanted to tell her about my political guru, Kishen Pattnayak. For a full-time politician and former member of Lok Sabha, he was unbelievably self-effacing; you felt embarrassed talking about him in his presence. He did not draw any attention to himself; the media paid virtually no attention to him. He was as close to a fusion of morality and politics as I have seen in my life. He did not compromise on his principles, but he kept losing colleagues and followers to mainstream parties. He was the opposite of mediocrity: I think of him as one of the original minds of our time. His own followers did not quite understand him and the academia did not glance at someone who did not write in English. He was not frustrated or dejected. But the kind of alternative politics he spent his life building never ever took off.

I know what I do not wish to say to her. I am not saying that politics is not for the intelligent or the thin-skinned. I am not saying that palitiks mein sab chalta hai. I guess I wish to draw her attention to a deeper paradox of modern politics: politics opens at once the possibility of ethics in public life and also becomes the source of its routine negation. 

In our times, the pursuit of goodness draws you to politics, at the same time immersion in politics has a built-in drag away from goodness. For those who keep their eyes, ears and soul open, political choices are always very delicate, very complex, very painful.
I could not have said all this in an SMS. So I wrote this article.

The writer is senior fellow, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi.
express@expressindia.com