Arundhati on Anna: Losing her moral compass

Arundhati Roy is many things to many people: shrill, disloyal, ethical, paranoid, righteous, or naïve. Her greatest strength is also her fatal flaw: an ideological clarity that brooks no contradiction. Roy is rarely confused. Her latest outing in The Hindu then marks an uncharacteristic moment of befuddlement. “If what we’re watching on TV is indeed a revolution, then it has to be one of the more embarrassing and unintelligible ones of recent times,” writes Roy in the opening line of her op-ed. The same, unfortunately, can be said of her essay. Her arguments against the Hazare movement are “unintelligible” not because they are leftist or extreme, but because – for once – they contradict her own dearly held political principles. In a signature use of shock-rhetoric, Roy starts out by comparing Anna to the Maoists: For completely different reasons, and in completely different ways, you could say that the Maoists and the Jan Lokpal Bill have one thing in common — they both seek the overthrow of the Indian state. One working from the bottom up, by means of an armed struggle, waged by a largely adivasi army, made up of the poorest of the poor. The other, from the top down, by means of a bloodless Gandhian coup, led by a freshly minted saint, and an army of largely urban, and certainly better off people. But here’s a more apt – and ironic – parallel. [caption id=“attachment_67451” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“Reuters”]  [/caption] For completely different reasons and in completely different ways, you could say that Anna and Arundhati have one thing in common: They’re both attacked for being “unreasonable” and “dangerous to democracy”, for calling attention “to the utter failure of India’s representative democracy, in which the legislatures are made up of criminals and millionaire politicians who have ceased to represent its people. In which not a single democratic institution is accessible to ordinary people.” Perhaps this is why Roy’s critique is muddled and scattershot. It is difficult to attack your own avatar, albeit of the mainstream, bourgeois variety. And the attempt to do so leads her down the garden path to intellectual contradictions and self-defeating arguments. It’s the protesters For starters, take the Anna-Maoist comparison. Now why exactly is “a bloodless Gandhian coup” worse than an “armed struggle” if they both seek to overthrow the government? Because one involves tribals and the other tailors, shopkeepers, autowalas, and farmers? Roy knows the elitism charge is a bit suspect – given the absence of the usual suspects like politicians or an elite leadership – hence the weak line about “an army of largely urban, and certainly better off people.” Better off, perhaps, but not by much. So now, Roy is in the business of rejecting movements not based on their goals but their membership: the absence of the poorest of the poor makes the Hazare protest suspect. And she is sliding down the slippery slope of defining down elitism. Even those much-beloved farmers are too rich for her taste. This isn’t, however, an egregious flaw in terms of the Roy style of argumentation; she has always been an ideological purist. But what is more damning is her amnesia. This is Roy defending herself back in the Narmada Bachao days: “In many ways, people try to delegitimise the involvement of the middle class, saying, how can you speak on behalf of these people? No one is speaking on behalf of anyone.” If Roy’s own middle class credentials weren’t a problem then, why should the class profile of the protesters be an issue now? To reiterate the Roy position, it’s not about who is protesting, it’s what they are protesting about. No, wait, it’s what they oppose Having run into this first dead-end, Roy attempts to extricate herself by attacking the goals of the protest: corruption, and by extension, the Jan Lokpal bill: Whether it works or not depends on how we view corruption. Is corruption just a matter of legality, of financial irregularity and bribery, or is it the currency of a social transaction in an egregiously unequal society, in which power continues to be concentrated in the hands of a smaller and smaller minority?  Does the solution to the problems faced by ordinary people lie in addressing the structural inequality, or in creating yet another power structure that people will have to defer to? Now we’re in a chicken-and-egg situation. How does one address structural inequality except by passing laws and implementing policies? And would it matter what these laws or policies were, if their execution is defeated by corruption. Take, for example, the failure of the NREGA to provide employment to the “poorest of the poor”. It is the effect of rampant corruption, with officials routinely gouging bribes  from rural workers. In fact, corruption is often used as an easy excuse to oppose any legislation aimed at helping the poor on the grounds of inefficacy. An excuse Roy herself offered for her tepid support for NREGA, saying, “It’s important, it’s effectiveness is debatable. It is also working as a honeypot around which corrupt people have flocked and have tried their best to prevent it.” Perhaps Ms Roy is holding out for a revolution to bring down the international capitalist order, but until then the poor will surely be better served by a clean – or at least, cleaner – political system that delivers what modest benefits it can offer? Or would she prefer they starve while they wait for redemption? Continues on next page Actually, it’s what they want Team Anna’s diagnosis of the disease is wrong-headed, Roy claims, but its cure is nothing short of monstrous: The Jan Lokpal Bill is a draconian, anti-corruption law, in which a panel of carefully chosen people will administer a giant bureaucracy, with thousands of employees, with the power to police everybody from the Prime Minister, the judiciary, members of Parliament, and all of the bureaucracy, down to the lowest government official. The Lokpal will have the powers of investigation, surveillance, and prosecution. Except for the fact that it won’t have its own prisons, it will function as an independent administration, meant to counter the bloated, unaccountable, corrupt one that we already have. Two oligarchies, instead of just one. Now, this is a valid worry about the Jan Lokpal bill, one voiced by critics across the political spectrum, including the government itself. Uncomfortable perhaps at keeping such dubious company, Roy tries to differentiate herself — and to bizarre effect. By the end of her essay, she is arguing for the inclusion of  “corporations, the media, and NGOs… in the jurisdiction of a Lokpal bill.” A recommendation that will surely make any Lokpal even more bloated and all-powerful. In any case, if the Lokpal will indeed be a dangerous oligarchy, it certainly can’t be accused of undermining the powers of the state. Yet Roy’s final conclusion is that the Lokpal will lay the grounds for free-market free-for-all: Now, by shouting louder than everyone else, by pushing a campaign that is hammering away at the theme of evil politicians and government corruption, they have very cleverly let themselves off the hook. Worse, by demonising only the government they have built themselves a pulpit from which to call for the further withdrawal of the state from the public sphere and for a second round of reforms — more privatisation, more access to public infrastructure and India’s natural resources. Now it is a bit amusing to witness Roy complaining about “demonising” government or warning against the withdrawal of the state she has accused of hunting down its poor “with guns, with helicopter gunships”. But such cheap shots aside, isn’t the Lokpal an institution of the state? It is a watchdog agency that is part of the state apparatus. How does its creation make the state any weaker or force it to “withdraw”? In the case of Bellary mining, two state institutions, the Lokayukta and the Supreme Court, have instead forced corporations to shut down illegal mining. Even if the Lokpal were to turn corrupt, as Roy predicts, it would reinforce the power of the state, not weaken it. No, no, it’s who they follow Roy’s problems are the same as a number of her fellow Anna critics on the Left. Attacking the state has always been the time-honoured preserve of Leftists. What in the world does a good Lefty do when the same middle class – who you routinely condemn for its shallow materialism and self-interested apathy – takes up cudgels against that very same loathed government and state? And is now making a number of arguments that you’ve long upheld – oh, the horror – with the full attention of the corporate media. This is a genuine political and ideological conundrum, and there have been a number of thoughtful responses from other Lefty critics, irrespective of where they come down in the end. (Read this  or this) The Anna moment is especially tricky for Roy who famously declared: “The role of being a member of civil society does not mean making the journey from citizen to a politician holding office. It’s about how do you keep power on a short leash, how do you refuse to relinquish your freedoms.” A woman who has also said: “Real public power has to come from outside, from a dissenting public that says, I am sorry but I don’t accept this choice.” Given such pronouncements, surely the Hazare movement – for all its flaws – ought to provoke some soul-searching. Not quite. Determined to stick to her blinkered anti-establishment guns, Roy instead finds herself in the shoddy position of accusing various members of Team Anna – with the exclusion of her friends Prashant Bhushan and Medha Patkar – of being corporate stooges running NGOs funded by US corporations like Coca Cola, Lehman Brothers, and (god forbid!) the Ford Foundation. And in doing so, she sounds like every other paranoid right-wing blogger who sees an international conspiracy any time an NGO works on human rights or climate change. The ‘foreign hand’ is now an equal opportunity bogeyman. There are two possible tacks open to Roy if she wants to maintain her anti-establishment stance against a mainstream movement. She can attack the Lokpal and its advocates either as the enemy of the state or as its Frankenstein-like creation. Either course forces her to invert the traditional leftist position —i.e. to uphold the ruling order or demonise those who would challenge it. Roy in her infinite wisdom has chosen to do both. Written with inputs and research by Sandip Roy