Nationalism, media and corruption in India. An interview with Arundhati Roy

Syed Hamad Ali, 29 August 2011

 

Arundhati Roy ranges broadly over corruption scandals, Wikileaks' excessive desire for the spotlight, Pakistan/India relations, the twinned perils of nationalism and religious fundamentalism ... and how to deal with negative online comments


Syed Hamad Ali: You don’t support the idea of the nation state. Why is that?

Arundhati Roy: Look at what is happening within India. You are allowed to commit as many atrocities as you like within the borders of your own state, that is alright. If India was doing it to Pakistan and Pakistan was doing it to India, it would become a problem. So it’s like you can batter your wife to death in a domestic situation but you can’t do it outside. Actually these are artificial things and you can colonise your own people and you can have as many Abu Ghraibs as you like, you can have as much torture going on as you want, as much starvation, but as long as you are doing it within the idea of a nation state it is alright provided somebody outside doesn’t want your oil or your minerals. And you are not giving it to them, then it becomes a problem. Here in India you are allowed as much violence as you like because you are open to the market.

I want to talk about the recent nuclear crises that happened in Japan

I was there by the way.

You were in Japan?

I arrived there the day before the earthquake.

I was in Tokyo and Tokyo began to shake. I mean I think it was the Fukushima meltdown which they have somehow managed to get off the news and say that the answer to Fukushima is more nuclear plants.


What kind of reaction has this had in India?

Everywhere else people were questioning nuclear plants but in India they were saying ‘but in India nothing can ever happen. It’s going to be fine.’ But there is a huge protest against this nuclear plant in Jaitapur and everywhere. The protest is not necessarily about people who are against nuclear energy but the fact that their lands are being acquired. But there is a lot of resistance.

Have attitudes changed?

No.

You mentioned Jaitapur where they are building the world’s largest nuclear facility. There have been lot of protests going on over there. Have you been involved?

No I am not directly involved, but a lot of people are. It is a huge protest.

I know it is a mad question to ask, but do you worry about nuclear war between India and Pakistan?

Of course. There are mad people in India and Pakistan. Even recently when this killing of Osama bin Laden happened, if you watched the Indian media, they were all saying why can’t India go and do what America did? And why can’t they go to war? The TV channels are dying for there to be a war. The middle classes, the Hindu right, and equally on the other side. You know crazies on both sides.

That’s war, but nuclear war?

It’s just an escalation.

It’s a mad question to ask

Why is it mad?

Just thinking about nuclear war is mad

Why? If they can drop depleted uranium all over Iraq and if the military industrial complex in the world on which the economies of major countries like Israel, America and England depend. The Indian army is willing to spend 45 billion dollars in the next five years on weapons. Now it is important for these countries also to keep these two countries hostile – to sell weapons to them. So it is a game of brinkmanship. And Pakistan as you know is in dire straits, we don’t know what is going to happen. Afghanistan obviously is going to be handed back to the “good” Taleban, whatever that means.

What is the purpose of having nuclear weapons if there is no intention ever of using them? Obviously at some point in your imagination you have decided that you can use them. However much you say it is about deterrence, the fact is that you have put it into your imagination that you can use them.

It is becoming impossible for countries like America to actually win wars. It cannot win its war in Iraq. It cannot win its war in Afghanistan. So eventually if you want to take over resources in order to keep capitalist economies going you are going to have to think of ways in which to annihilate the people and keep the resources because you can’t keep on putting boots on the ground. These wars have brought America’s economy crashing down.

I know you are not the biggest fan of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, but he said something a few months back which I am going to quote: “If I succeed in normalising relations between India and Pakistan, as they prevail between two normal states, I’ll consider my job well done.” Do you see any chance of peace?

Nobody wants peace. It’s a dhanda you know, the whole thing. But I think that as far as the India Pakistan thing is concerned, the Indian government has reacted with more maturity then it would have had it been a BJP government.

There is a maturity there, but that maturity also comes from being joined at the hip to the United States – doing what you are told you know.

The media, after the Mumbai attack [of 2008], wanted India to go to war. After the Osama bin Laden killing the media wanted India to go to war. So on that the media, which is almost becoming like the shadow government now, is driving it.

If another attack like the Mumbai terror attacks of 2008 were to take place, do you think the climate is such it could start a war between India and Pakistan?

No, I don’t think so. Right now anybody who has half of a brain sees that Pakistan is in a state where its being attacked itself. It is having its 26/11 every other week. So for India to try and act like it is the victim of some big Pakistani plot is a bit absurd. You know that whole subcontinent is in disarray now. There are people in India, the right wing and most of the media channels, who will do there best to create that.

Earlier this year The Hindu newspaper ran WikiLeaks revelations exposing corruption in India. As a media critic did you welcome these?

Absolutely. I welcome them. I mean WikiLeaks was big but, I don’t know if you followed that whole 2G scam in India where the telephone conversations of this Niira Radia were published. They exposed a scam of 1.75 lakh crores (billions), and the whole nexus between the media, the corporates, politicians – all of that was exposed in a very precise and direct way. WikiLeaks has lovely things like the BJP basically telling the Americans esay hum theatre kar raha ha (this is how we are doing theatre.) Don’t worry, we are all agreed on these things. It was great.

Sometimes the analysis, the statements, that Julian Assange made about the WikiLeaks and what they meant in India were completely off the mark. But the leaks themselves were fantastic.

In what way were they off the mark?

You know this thing about somehow, I can’t even remember a thing, but you know about WikiLeaks being responsible for the whole anti-corruption thing that is happening. That really wasn’t the case. It was the 2G tapes and the Niira Radia tapes and all of that. Or the kind of taking credit for the Arab spring you know – whatever. I mean it is all part of something but not the whole of anything. But I am completely supportive of what they did.

By the way given your own experiences of being targeted in India, do you relate to Julian Assange in the way he has been attacked? Here in the West he has become a very controversial figure – especially for people in corridors of power.

You see I don’t think we should spend much time discussing the individual because it doesn’t matter eventually whether he is a good guy or a bad guy. Or I am a good guy or I am a bad guy. The issue is what are you saying – let’s talk about that.

This idea of making someone as icon, then demonising them, then putting them on a pedestal, then kicking them off. It doesn’t matter whether I bear good moral character or I am a nice human being or I am not. How does it matter? I am certainly not perfect. I am certainly not somebody who everybody needs to stand-up and applaud and throw petals on every time I walk past. Nor am I someone who needs to be beaten up, you know? It doesn’t matter who I am or what I am or how nice I am or not.

In articles about you online I have seen a lot of negative comments from readers. Who are your supporters?

You see those things are placed in the world of the vested interests and that is what is interesting. No one else gets that place. There are millions of people who think like that, same thing that I think. After those comments, the deeper the embrace from those who are deliberately unheard. You come with me to India, I will go with you to Bhubneswar or Jalandar, thousands come for the meetings.

And these people, they belong to the middle classes?

No. In Bhubaneswar it was like 5000 Adivasis who had come from 31 different places, some of whom were arrested and are still in jail. Two of them died.

How do they hear about you?

Because there are so many organisations working. There is a whole world out there that is beyond this media bull shit of internet comments. The sort of Indian diaspora and the internet is like the Israeli diaspora, you know? Sometimes you see it is the same people who write the letters against everybody. It’s a campaign and you can’t just fall for it and think ‘oh this is what people are feeling.’ It’s not.

The Nobel Laureate V.S.Naipaul recently said at the Royal Geographic Society that no woman writer is his equal. Your comment?

He is a barrel of laughs, no? Like if he goes there, and they want to be provoked, he obliges them.

Is nationalism a bigger evil or is religious fundamentalism?

Why do we have to be hierarchical thinkers? The nationalism is a form of religious fundamentalism. The kind of hyper-nationalism that you have in India is a kind of religion.

 Source:

http://www.opendemocracy.net/openindia/syed-hamad-ali/nationalism-media-and-corruption-in-india-interview-with-arundhati-roy?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Feed:+opendemocracy+%28openDemocracy%29

Nationalism, media and corruption in India. An interview with Arundhati Roy

 Syed Hamad Ali , 29 August 2011 

Arundhati Roy ranges broadly over corruption scandals, Wikileaks' excessive desire for the spotlight, Pakistan/India relations, the twinned perils of nationalism and religious fundamentalism ... and how to deal with negative online comments.
-----------------------------------------------------------------

Syed Hamad Ali: You don’t support the idea of the nation state. Why is that?

Arundhati Roy: Look at what is happening within India. You are allowed to commit as many atrocities as you like within the borders of your own state, that is alright. If India was doing it to Pakistan and Pakistan was doing it to India, it would become a problem. So it’s like you can batter your wife to death in a domestic situation but you can’t do it outside. Actually these are artificial things and you can colonise your own people and you can have as many Abu Ghraibs as you like, you can have as much torture going on as you want, as much starvation, but as long as you are doing it within the idea of a nation state it is alright provided somebody outside doesn’t want your oil or your minerals. And you are not giving it to them, then it becomes a problem. Here in India you are allowed as much violence as you like because you are open to the market.

I want to talk about the recent nuclear crises that happened in Japan

I was there by the way.

You were in Japan?

I arrived there the day before the earthquake.

I was in Tokyo and Tokyo began to shake. I mean I think it was the Fukushima meltdown which they have somehow managed to get off the news and say that the answer to Fukushima is more nuclear plants.

What kind of reaction has this had in India?

Everywhere else people were questioning nuclear plants but in India they were saying ‘but in India nothing can ever happen. It’s going to be fine.’ But there is a huge protest against this nuclear plant in Jaitapur and everywhere. The protest is not necessarily about people who are against nuclear energy but the fact that their lands are being acquired. But there is a lot of resistanc

Have attitudes changed?

No.

You mentioned Jaitapur where they are building the world’s largest nuclear facility. There have been lot of protests going on over there. Have you been involved?

No I am not directly involved, but a lot of people are. It is a huge protest.

I know it is a mad question to ask, but do you worry about nuclear war between India and Pakistan?

Of course. There are mad people in India and Pakistan. Even recently when this killing of Osama bin Laden happened, if you watched the Indian media, they were all saying why can’t India go and do what America did? And why can’t they go to war? The TV channels are dying for there to be a war. The middle classes, the Hindu right, and equally on the other side. You know crazies on both sides.
That’s war, but nuclear war?

It’s just an escalation.

It’s a mad question to ask

Why is it mad?

Just thinking about nuclear war is mad

Why? If they can drop depleted uranium all over Iraq and if the military industrial complex in the world on which the economies of major countries like Israel, America and England depend. The Indian army is willing to spend 45 billion dollars in the next five years on weapons. Now it is important for these countries also to keep these two countries hostile – to sell weapons to them. So it is a game of brinkmanship. And Pakistan as you know is in dire straits, we don’t know what is going to happen. Afghanistan obviously is going to be handed back to the “good” Taleban, whatever that means.

What is the purpose of having nuclear weapons if there is no intention ever of using them? Obviously at some point in your imagination you have decided that you can use them. However much you say it is about deterrence, the fact is that you have put it into your imagination that you can use them.

It is becoming impossible for countries like America to actually win wars. It cannot win its war in Iraq. It cannot win its war in Afghanistan. So eventually if you want to take over resources in order to keep capitalist economies going you are going to have to think of ways in which to annihilate the people and keep the resources because you can’t keep on putting boots on the ground. These wars have brought America’s economy crashing down.

I know you are not the biggest fan of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, but he said something a few months back which I am going to quote: “If I succeed in normalising relations between India and Pakistan, as they prevail between two normal states, I’ll consider my job well done.” Do you see any chance of peace?
you see any chance of peace?

Nobody wants peace. It’s a dhanda you know, the whole thing. But I think that as far as the India Pakistan thing is concerned, the Indian government has reacted with more maturity then it would have had it been a BJP government.

There is a maturity there, but that maturity also comes from being joined at the hip to the United States – doing what you are told you know.

The media, after the Mumbai attack [of 2008], wanted India to go to war. After the Osama bin Laden killing the media wanted India to go to war. So on that the media, which is almost becoming like the shadow government now, is driving it.

If another attack like the Mumbai terror attacks of 2008 were to take place, do you think the climate is such it could start a war between India and Pakistan?

No, I don’t think so. Right now anybody who has half of a brain sees that Pakistan is in a state where its being attacked itself. It is having its 26/11 every other week. So for India to try and act like it is the victim of some big Pakistani plot is a bit absurd. You know that whole subcontinent is in disarray now. There are people in India, the right wing and most of the media channels, who will do there best to create that.

Earlier this year The Hindu newspaper ran WikiLeaks revelations exposing corruption in India. As a media critic did you welcome these?

Absolutely. I welcome them. I mean WikiLeaks was big but, I don’t know if you followed that whole 2G scam in India where the telephone conversations of this Niira Radia were published. They exposed a scam of 1.75 lakh crores (billions), and the whole nexus between the media, the corporates, politicians – all of that was exposed in a very precise and direct way. WikiLeaks has lovely things like the BJP basically telling the Americans esay hum theatre kar raha ha (this is how we are doing theatre.) Don’t worry, we are all agreed on these things. It was great.

Sometimes the analysis, the statements, that Julian Assange made about the WikiLeaks and what they meant in India were completely off the mark. But the leaks themselves were fantastic.

In what way were they off the mark?

You know this thing about somehow, I can’t even remember a thing, but you know about WikiLeaks being responsible for the whole anti-corruption thing that is happening. That really wasn’t the case. It was the 2G tapes and the Niira Radia tapes and all of that. Or the kind of taking credit for the Arab spring you know – whatever. I mean it is all part of something but not the whole of anything. But I am completely supportive of what they did.

By the way given your own experiences of being targeted in India, do you relate to Julian Assange in the way he has been attacked? Here in the West he has become a very controversial figure – especially for people in corridors of power.

You see I don’t think we should spend much time discussing the individual because it doesn’t matter eventually whether he is a good guy or a bad guy. Or I am a good guy or I am a bad guy. The issue is what are you saying – let’s talk about that.

This idea of making someone as icon, then demonising them, then putting them on a pedestal, then kicking them off. It doesn’t matter whether I bear good moral character or I am a nice human being or I am not. How does it matter? I am certainly not perfect. I am certainly not somebody who everybody needs to stand-up and applaud and throw petals on every time I walk past. Nor am I someone who needs to be beaten up, you know? It doesn’t matter who I am or what I am or how nice I am or not.

In articles about you online I have seen a lot of negative comments from readers. Who are your supporters?

You see those things are placed in the world of the vested interests and that is what is interesting. No one else gets that place. There are millions of people who think like that, same thing that I think. After those comments, the deeper the embrace from those who are deliberately unheard. You come with me to India, I will go with you to Bhubneswar or Jalandar, thousands come for the meetings.

And these people, they belong to the middle classes?

No. In Bhubaneswar it was like 5000 Adivasis who had come from 31 different places, some of whom were arrested and are still in jail. Two of them died.

How do they hear about you?

Because there are so many organisations working. There is a whole world out there that is beyond this media bull shit of internet comments. The sort of Indian diaspora and the internet is like the Israeli diaspora, you know? Sometimes you see it is the same people who write the letters against everybody. It’s a campaign and you can’t just fall for it and think ‘oh this is what people are feeling.’ It’s not.

The Nobel Laureate V.S.Naipaul recently said at the Royal Geographic Society that no woman writer is his equal. Your comment?

He is a barrel of laughs, no? Like if he goes there, and they want to be provoked, he obliges them.

Is nationalism a bigger evil or is religious fundamentalism?

Why do we have to be hierarchical thinkers? The nationalism is a form of religious fundamentalism. The kind of hyper-nationalism that you have in India is a kind of religion.

Source:

http://www.opendemocracy.net/openindia/syed-hamad-ali/nationalism-media-and-corruption-in-india-interview-with-arundhati-roy?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+opendemocracy+%28openDemocracy%29

I'm against Capital Punishment

CHENNAI: Eminent personalities from across the spectrum, including writers, human rights activists, film makers and a Nobel laureate, have voiced their opposition to the death penalty to Rajiv assassination case accused Perarivalan, Murugan and Santhan. They also took part in a signature campaign against the very concept of capital punishment.

Speaking to Express, Booker award winner Arundathi Roy said: “I am unequivocally against capital punishment. The three accused, who have been convicted for having colluded with the LTTE in the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi, have already spent 20 years in prison. In the meantime, in the name of the sins of the LTTE at least 40,000 people - civilians as well as LTTE cadre - have been annihilated in Sri Lanka’s brutal ethnic war, in which the Government of India played an unforgivable part.... Now at a time when India is in the grip of a supposedly Gandhian revolution, perhaps people should prevail upon the government to step back from this public display of medieval barbarism.”

In his appeal to the Centre, Archbishop of Capetown and Nobel laureate Desmond Tutu said: “The death penalty legitimises killing and diminishes the humanity of societies that continue to practice it. It is inhuman, and should be scrapped.”

Filmmaker Mahesh Dattani noted that the power over someone else’s life puts one in a position of extreme responsibility. “Justice in a civilised society is a punishment that gives the punished a second chance at life. Capital punishment does not allow that second chance.”

In his appeal on August 14 to the Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa, former Supreme Court judge V R Krishna Iyer stated, “god will bless you for saving three young lives by commutation.”

A campaign ‘End Death Penalty’, launched 10 days ago by a group of seven young activists, has collected 4,503 signatures though their Facebook page and a petition on www.change.org. The signatories include Noam Chomsky, American intellectual and professor; Paul Murphy, member of European Parliament; Arundhati Roy; Binayak Sen, activist; Anand Patwardhan, filmmaker; Ari Sitas, South African poet and anti-apartheid activist; Varavara Rao, activist and poet; and writers Mahashweta Devi and Paul Zachariah.


Source: 
http://www.indiaeveryday.in/tamilnadu/fullnews-im-against-capital-punishment-arundhati-roy-1136-2975103.htm

Arundhati Roy in Hyderabad speaking about her book Broken Republic, Anna Hazare and Telangana

I'd rather not be an Anna

While his means maybe Gandhian, his demands are certainly not.

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. For now, whatever questions you may have about the Jan Lokpal Bill, here are the answers you're likely to get: tick the box — (a) Vande Mataram (b) Bharat Mata ki Jai (c) India is Anna, Anna is India (d) Jai Hind.

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. (In this one, the Government collaborates by doing everything it possibly can to overthrow itself.)

In April 2011, a few days into Anna Hazare's first “fast unto death,” searching for some way of distracting attention from the massive corruption scams which had battered its credibility, the Government invited Team Anna, the brand name chosen by this “civil society” group, to be part of a joint drafting committee for a new anti-corruption law. A few months down the line it abandoned that effort and tabled its own bill in Parliament, a bill so flawed that it was impossible to take seriously.

Then, on August 16th, the morning of his second “fast unto death,” before he had begun his fast or committed any legal offence, Anna Hazare was arrested and jailed. The struggle for the implementation of the Jan Lokpal Bill now coalesced into a struggle for the right to protest, the struggle for democracy itself. Within hours of this ‘Second Freedom Struggle,' Anna was released. Cannily, he refused to leave prison, but remained in Tihar jail as an honoured guest, where he began a fast, demanding the right to fast in a public place. For three days, while crowds and television vans gathered outside, members of Team Anna whizzed in and out of the high security prison, carrying out his video messages, to be broadcast on national TV on all channels. (Which other person would be granted this luxury?) Meanwhile 250 employees of the Municipal Commission of Delhi, 15 trucks, and six earth movers worked around the clock to ready the slushy Ramlila grounds for the grand weekend spectacle. Now, waited upon hand and foot, watched over by chanting crowds and crane-mounted cameras, attended to by India's most expensive doctors, the third phase of Anna's fast to the death has begun. “From Kashmir to Kanyakumari, India is One,” the TV anchors tell us.

While his means may be Gandhian, Anna Hazare's demands are certainly not. Contrary to Gandhiji's ideas about the decentralisation of power, 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.

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? Imagine, for example, a city of shopping malls, on whose streets hawking has been banned. A hawker pays the local beat cop and the man from the municipality a small bribe to break the law and sell her wares to those who cannot afford the prices in the malls. Is that such a terrible thing? In future will she have to pay the Lokpal representative too? 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?

Meanwhile the props and the choreography, the aggressive nationalism and flag waving of Anna's Revolution are all borrowed, from the anti-reservation protests, the world-cup victory parade, and the celebration of the nuclear tests. They signal to us that if we do not support The Fast, we are not ‘true Indians.' The 24-hour channels have decided that there is no other news in the country worth reporting.

‘The Fast' of course doesn't mean Irom Sharmila's fast that has lasted for more than ten years (she's being force fed now) against the AFSPA, which allows soldiers in Manipur to kill merely on suspicion. It does not mean the relay hunger fast that is going on right now by ten thousand villagers in Koodankulam protesting against the nuclear power plant. ‘The People' does not mean the Manipuris who support Irom Sharmila's fast. Nor does it mean the thousands who are facing down armed policemen and mining mafias in Jagatsinghpur, or Kalinganagar, or Niyamgiri, or Bastar, or Jaitapur. Nor do we mean the victims of the Bhopal gas leak, or the people displaced by dams in the Narmada Valley. Nor do we mean the farmers in NOIDA, or Pune or Haryana or elsewhere in the country, resisting the takeover of the land.

‘The People' only means the audience that has gathered to watch the spectacle of a 74-year-old man threatening to starve himself to death if his Jan Lokpal Bill is not tabled and passed by Parliament. ‘The People' are the tens of thousands who have been miraculously multiplied into millions by our TV channels, like Christ multiplied the fishes and loaves to feed the hungry. “A billion voices have spoken,” we're told. “India is Anna.”

Who is he really, this new saint, this Voice of the People? Oddly enough we've heard him say nothing about things of urgent concern. Nothing about the farmer's suicides in his neighbourhood, or about Operation Green Hunt further away. Nothing about Singur, Nandigram, Lalgarh, nothing about Posco, about farmer's agitations or the blight of SEZs. He doesn't seem to have a view about the Government's plans to deploy the Indian Army in the forests of Central India.

He does however support Raj Thackeray's Marathi Manoos xenophobia and has praised the ‘development model' of Gujarat's Chief Minister who oversaw the 2002 pogrom against Muslims. (Anna withdrew that statement after a public outcry, but presumably not his admiration.)

Despite the din, sober journalists have gone about doing what journalists do. We now have the back-story about Anna's old relationship with the RSS. We have heard from Mukul Sharma who has studied Anna's village community in Ralegan Siddhi, where there have been no Gram Panchayat or Co-operative society elections in the last 25 years. We know about Anna's attitude to ‘harijans': “It was Mahatma Gandhi's vision that every village should have one chamar, one sunar, one kumhar and so on. They should all do their work according to their role and occupation, and in this way, a village will be self-dependant. This is what we are practicing in Ralegan Siddhi.” Is it surprising that members of Team Anna have also been associated with Youth for Equality, the anti-reservation (pro-“merit”) movement? The campaign is being handled by people who run a clutch of generously funded NGOs whose donors include Coca-Cola and the Lehman Brothers. Kabir, run by Arvind Kejriwal and Manish Sisodia, key figures in Team Anna, has received $400,000 from the Ford Foundation in the last three years. Among contributors to the India Against Corruption campaign there are Indian companies and foundations that own aluminum plants, build ports and SEZs, and run Real Estate businesses and are closely connected to politicians who run financial empires that run into thousands of crores of rupees. Some of them are currently being investigated for corruption and other crimes. Why are they all so enthusiastic?

Remember the campaign for the Jan Lokpal Bill gathered steam around the same time as embarrassing revelations by Wikileaks and a series of scams, including the 2G spectrum scam, broke, in which major corporations, senior journalists, and government ministers and politicians from the Congress as well as the BJP seem to have colluded in various ways as hundreds of thousands of crores of rupees were being siphoned off from the public exchequer. For the first time in years, journalist-lobbyists were disgraced and it seemed as if some major Captains of Corporate India could actually end up in prison. Perfect timing for a people's anti-corruption agitation. Or was it?

At a time when the State is withdrawing from its traditional duties and Corporations and NGOs are taking over government functions (water supply, electricity, transport, telecommunication, mining, health, education); at a time when the terrifying power and reach of the corporate owned media is trying to control the public imagination, one would think that these institutions — the corporations, the media, and NGOs — would be included in the jurisdiction of a Lokpal bill. Instead, the proposed bill leaves them out completely.

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. It may not be long before Corporate Corruption is made legal and renamed a Lobbying Fee.

Will the 830 million people living on Rs.20 a day really benefit from the strengthening of a set of policies that is impoverishing them and driving this country to civil war?

This awful crisis has been forged out of 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. Do not be fooled by the flag waving. We're watching India being carved up in war for suzerainty that is as deadly as any battle being waged by the warlords of Afghanistan, only with much, much more at stake.

Source: 

http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/article2379704.ece?homepage=true#.TlFiyG9GLek.facebook

Arundhati Roy on Jan LOkpal Bill ~ Brilliant and pertinent questions!

 Can the hungry go on a hunger strike?
by Arundhati Roy


Our country is poised at a dangerous place right now for many reasons. There are all kinds of battles for supremacy. There are real resistances, there are theatrical and false resistances, revolutions from the top, revolutions from the bottom. And sometimes all of this is interpreted by an increasingly hysterical media which doesn't allow space for reflection, for thought, that will only bombard, control the public imagination.


At times like this, activists and writers have the job to try and understand what is going on, not just what appears to be going on. That is what I think about a lot and try to play my part.


Right now, while we are watching 24 hours, seven-day week coverage of one particular kind of movement, what is not being told to us is that the Indian Army and the Indian Air Force are preparing to be deployed to be used against the poorest of the poor in the forests of central India.


I am not on the streets and I am not wearing the cap that says `I am Anna'. I am rather uncomfortable with what is going on. I find it difficult to understand how you can even have a conversation when the only answers you can receive are `Vande Mataram' and `Bharat Mata Ki Jai'.


I think when people are fighting corruption, the fundamental thing is to understand what we mean by corruption. Is it just an accounting problem, is it just financial irregularity or bribery? Or is corruption the currency of social transaction in a very unequal society, in which power is concentrated in fewer and fewer hands and so we address that.


Let us say, we are living in a city of shopping malls, where hawkers are illegal. If there is a woman on the road who sells samosas in a cart and pays the municipal officer and the police, is that a crime? Will she have to pay the Lokpal too? Are we creating two oligarchies that she has to deal with? If the Lokpal is meant to oversee from Prime Minister to the lowest government functionary, may be at the top you will have 11 morally upright people, carefully chosen, but you are creating an entire bureaucracy that is a second oligarchy.

The other big problem, I have with this is that this agitation began when the country was dealing with a series of scams that implicated the government, opposition, media, corporations, NGOs, judiciary. Those 2G conversations laid bare the entire nexus of corruption in which all these people were involved. Obviously, the people who were making all the money were the corporations but in this agitation which is now being sponsored by some corporates, the NGOs, the corporates, the media have been left out. This at a time when the corporates and NGOs are taking over the traditional functions of the government. They are taking over electricity supply, water supply, phones, roads, education, health. Then I would have imagined the Lokpal Bill would bring these people also in its jurisdiction. But instead they have been left out and by continuously hammering away only at the corruption of the government, it is creating a platform where they are asking for less government, more reforms, more privatisation, more liberalisation. All these things have led to huge amounts of corruption.


So you have a situation where there is a collapse of representative democracy. There is not a single institution in the country where the poor can go for justice. We have a legislature full of millionaires and what is sought to be created is another side of oligarchy. Power is concentrated once again in fewer hands. In some ways, oddly enough, in totally different ways, what the Maoists are fighting for and what this Jan Lokpal Bill is about, both in some ways seek to overthrow the Indian state in different ways. One through armed struggle and the other in a bloodless, Gandhian coup. But both seek to do that. One from the bottom, one from the top.


I would say we need to look at what is going on quite closely to understand it more deeply than the clamour with slogans. There is no doubt we are in a crisis but is this the solution to that crisis is something to think about. When the Jan Lokpal movement started, the government, the Opposition, the corporation, the media needed cover because they were disgraced and in an unprecedented move, a joint drafting committee was agreed to. But the government then forgot all about it and tabled its own Bill. A Bill that is so flawed and ridiculous that you can't take it seriously. It is a Bill that protects the accused and punishes the person complaining.


On August 16, by arresting Anna Hazare, they allowed the movement to spin in a new direction. It was outrageous to arrest him when he had not even begun to break the law. By doing that, they allowed it to coalesce into the right to protest and what people started to call the second Independence struggle. Within 12 hours, he was released but was allowed to stay on in a high-security prison, was allowed to send out video messages that were broadcast nationally again and again. The movement was built over those three days of fasting for the right to fast.


The Municipal Corporation of Delhi's 250 employees, six bulldozers and 15 trucks were working day and night to prepare Ram Lila ground for the fast. Now the fast is happening, with the most expensive doctors, with 24-hour TV coverage and there is no other news except that. The irony is the government is collaborating in the effort to overthrow itself in this movement and we have to wonder why.


During the reforms in the 90s, the government spoke about how it was corrupt and there was systemic corruption and so privatisation was needed. Corruption was used as a reason for systemic change. When privatisation happened and corruption increased hugely, it suddenly became a moral problem and the solution is more privatisation. So the Prime Minister says more privatisation, the newspapers and TV channels campaigning say we must do second round of reforms, take away government's discretionary powers. It is a situation that is not easy to decode, when so much noise is around.


And then they talk of the right to protest. The right to protest of the people in Posco, Kalinganagar, Dandakaranya were taken away a long time ago. Even in Delhi, at the Jantar Mantar, people from Bhopal or the Narmada Valley cannot stay overnight. The Right to Protest is only for the middleclass.


People running this campaign, many of them have generously funded NGOs. But the NGOs. corporates, media have been left out of Lokpal whereas they are forming public opinion in this country.


People are shutting their brain and shouting slogans. Many people who feel genuinely humiliated by corruption, may be the gun is being fired from their shoulder. It is not true that people have suddenly woken up. All over, there are people who know exactly what is happening and will explain to you what salinisation is, what waterlogging is, because they experience it, in places like Dandakaranya, Posco, Kalinga Nagar.


When you talk of the `Fast', you only mean Anna Hazare's fast. Right now, 10,000 villagers in Koodankulam are on a relay hunger-fast against a nuclear plant. Sharmila Irom has been on a fast for 10 years against an Act that allows soldiers to kill on mere suspicion. But we are not talking about these fasts.


It is wrong to assume that people are all asleep and suddenly someone has woken them up. People have been awake. They know about their issues. They are not voiceless, they are deliberately silenced.


Deep inside the forest in a tribal village, when 500 policemen surround and burn your village and there is no TV camera, you can't go on a hunger-strike. You can only fight back. In any case, can the hungry go on a hunger-strike? What does a hunger strike mean in a country where 49 per cent children are malnourished and perennially hungry?

Our county is poised at a dangerous place right now.

Source:
http://www.tsr.net.co/profiles/blogs/can-the-hungry-go-on-a-hunger-strike

Why leave corporates out of Lokpal: Arundhati Roy

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=54bsza7mvNQ&

Arundhati Roy said that we need to look at the Jan Lokpal Bill issue more closely beyond the clamour.

Arundhati Roy’s latest book “Broken Republic” and its Telugu translation

Noted writer and activist Arundhati Roy’s latest book “Broken Republic” and its Telugu translation “ధ్వంసమైన స్వప్నం” will be launched on 20th August in Hyderabad. Here is the invitation of this program