While their motives may be well-intentioned, the methods and solutions of the Hazare Brigade are unconstitutional, unacceptable and dangerous.
Who or what is this “civil society” that has occupied so much airtime and newsprint, and what gives it the right to speak for everyone? Let’s be clear: “civil society” means half a dozen people who, by their own admission, refuse to face citizens at an election. These people have assumed the moral, legal and Constitutional authority to govern us. They say that “just because” a party won an election a few years ago does not mean it can “sit on our chests”.
There’s a small problem with this argument. It’s called the Constitution. Which demands periodic elections, and says that the people’s voice is to be heard at the hustings. That is the correct method of change; the way to combat corruption. And that is what recent State elections have shown can be done. It is one thing to protest and demand change. Everyone has the right to do this, perhaps even a duty. It is another thing altogether to demand involvement in actual government. That’s an usurpation of authority, and a hijacking of the Constitution. Nothing in our system of governance permits people like this to get involved in drafting legislation. Allowing them onto a drafting committee was a catastrophic blunder by the clod-hopping UPA government (and it doesn’t help that that government now has about as much credibility as bread pudding). Imagine the chaos if everyone with a wasp in his beard decided to participate in the running of the country.
References to Martin Luther King and other leaders of civil disobedience movements miss the point. Those leaders demanded change. They did not demand the right to eject democratically elected Governments. What the Hazare Brigade is saying is that the last Parliamentary election was a fraud and everyone in Parliament must be thrown out because, according to the “civil society” they claim to represent, everyone is corrupt; and that includes even the Election Commission, against which no case has ever been made out.
This is the second problem — the nature of the debate itself. On television and in print, these “civil society” leaders tell us that if we are not with them then we are against them and are, by definition, in favour of corruption. This insults their own self-adopted constituency. This is not debate. It is not even discourse. It is bullying.
Contrast this with Constituent Assembly, the level of dialogue it engaged in, and its composition. It had 217 members from 30 states. Working for over three years, it covered every possible issue, from broad policy objectives to minute detailing. It worked for nearly three years, and its eleven sessions took 165 days, 114 of them spent considering the draft Constitution which itself took the Drafting Committee 141 days to put together. The assembly tabled over seven thousand amendments to the draft and about 2400 were actually moved. Imagine the effort, thought and industry this took, and these are reflected in the speeches and address, all measured, intelligent and perceptive. Dr Ambedkar, the chief architect of the Constitution, is often heard defending a position and, too, accepting points made by others and withdrawing his proposals. And corruption itself was one of the many issues the Assembly discussed — at least 60 times through the debates. What, according to the Assembly, was the correct approach in dealing with corrupt governments? Here is Dr Rajendra Prasad, the president of the Assembly on 26 November 1949:
One of the dangers which we have to face arises out of any corruption which parties, candidates or the Government in power may practise. We have had no experience of democratic elections for a long time except during the last few years and now that we have got real power, the danger of corruption is not only imaginary. It is therefore as well that our Constitution guards against this danger and makes provision for an honest and straightforward election by the voters.
Nobody in the Hazare team is even capable of this level of discourse. What it proposes instead is a legislation that sits outside the Constitution in many key ways, one that is not even made as other laws are. Its sweep and ambit must, according to these people, be far wider than anything we have ever seen and the power it confers is in the hands of individuals who are not subject to Constitutional disciplines. For instance, bringing the judiciary under the Lokpal is the worst possible idea. It will not eradicate corruption. It will however paralyse the entire judiciary. No High Court or Supreme Court judge will ever be able to function for if one thing is certain it is that every disgruntled litigant will, given the easy option of filing a complaint before the Lokpal, assail every adverse order as having been obtained by corrupt means. Similarly, including the Prime Minister will make governance impossible. If every decision and action of the leader of the government is going to be subjected to minute scrutiny by a body that is not elected and wields extraordinary judicial and quasi-judicial power, government will simply cease to function. So this is the formula: paralyse the judiciary; paralyse government; follow the diktat of a Lokpal cherry-picked by the unelected (and whose “qualification” appears to be having won a Magsaysay Award in a completely unrelated field). Is this the road to salvation or perdition? Brash television anchors may think such ideas sound intelligent, but they have no place in our democracy.
Everyone agrees that corruption is pervasive, systemic needs to be combated, perhaps even that people enter politics and join the civil services to make money. But, as the PM says, there is no magic remedy to this. The answer is not a potentially tyrannical extra-Constitutional system hobbling the working of every institution. What is needed is something more subtle, a law that compels swift and severe action against corruption and yet sits within a Constitutional framework: rapid investigations, for instance, with severe penalties. In fact, looking at what the Supreme Court has done in the last year, this is already happening. Instead of seeing this as an opportunity, Hazare’s supporters shout about corruption in the judiciary. This is not a movement, let alone a debate or a discourse. This is a bunch of bratty children throwing tantrums because they’re not given the toys they want. There is nothing very civil about this “society”; and their cause was not furthered by their recent association with bellicose hirsute yogis given to dishing out quack prescriptions for everything from homosexuality to monetary policy. Hazare & Co got at least one legal principle right: noscitur a sociis — you are known by your associates.
Leaving aside hairy swamis, the group’s motives are perhaps well-intentioned. Their methods, however, are questionable; and the solution they suggest, implying a jettisoning of our Constitution, is both unacceptable and dangerous.
Who or what is this "civil society" that has occupied so much airtime and newsprint, and what gives it the right to speak for everyone? Let's be clear: "civil society" means half a dozen people who, by their own admission, refuse to face citizens at an election. These people have assumed the moral, legal and Constitutional authority to govern us. They say that "just because" a party won an election a few years ago does not mean it can "sit on our chests".
