For a country where democratic institutions have for thousands of years dominated body politic and civic life, 2013 is likely to present the most serious challenge yet to its political and social processes. India is no stranger to agitations, borne as it was out of agitational politics and public ferment. Post-1947, there have been disquiets of various magnitudes, shapes and sizes. Bhoodan, anti-Congress upheavals like the JP movement and anti- Bofors stir and similar examples have dotted the country’s landscape. For the last four decades or so, India has been in the midst of Maoist violence in its heartland, a never-ending spiral of violence egged on by `peoples’ activists. There have been innumerable agitations on a smaller scale in little towns and villages, unknown to the rest of the world, but significant struggles in their own right. So India does not need a Tehrir Square or martyr’s square to prove its political credentials.
What does this new agitational mode of politics dominated by youngsters squatting on Raj Path represent? Is this the combined effect of corruption, crime, nepotism, cronyism combined with seething frustrations on the inability of the system to provide basic essential services; interminably long court cases, graft in government and police services, hospitals etc?
The basic difference between the earlier modes of protest and the current turmoil is that the latter has the backing of a media which is not just technically sophisticated but has the propensity to go viral. Youngsters fed up with a rotting political system and its inexplicable delays give full vent to their feelings on prime time live TV, internet space is occupied by a generation of Indians who apparently spend more time on the web than they do on ground and the atmosphere is jiving with breaking news. With SMSs providing the ultimate fillip to what was once done with the help of wall papers, organising a mass of angry young people to converge at a place is apparently no problem at all. Predictably, TV vans follow to ensure that a troubled atmosphere is created immediately. Not unnaturally, most of the `big national’ stories happen in central Delhi within vantage point of the Parliament and other VIP installations.
Where does this brand of high-decibel chest thumping by the civil society take India and critically, what impact does it have on decision-making, till now thought to be the private preserve of those sitting behind well-ensconced official desks in South and North Block?
As the recent outcry against the rape and killing of a 23-year-old in trendy south Delhi has shown, there are some positives – the feeling that the country lacks adequate deterrence against crime has come to dominate public space.
The suggestions have ranged from hanging, castration to be being stoned to death. But the point is this: when you have relevant sections in the Indian Penal Code (IPC) designed to deal with such infringements, then greater will has to be shown not just by law enforcing agencies but the courts as well to fast track cases of such heinous crime. Justice, after all, has to be seen to be done; merely registering a case or charge sheeting suspects are no longer going to be enough because a generation brought up on global values is demanding much more from the system than its predecessors.
That presents a challenge of epic proportions for a country with incredible diversity and innumerable civilisational fault lines. How we tackle this is going to determine the country’s course. Which brings us to a connected question: what will be the role of civil society, indeed does such a society actually exist outside of TV frames? As the blood curling accounts of the man who survived the rapists’ assault and was thrown out of the bus along with his lady companion on a cold Delhi night indicates, there were no do-gooders in sight when they needed it the most. People stopped and speculated as to what could have happened to the two naked bodies lying half-dead - without lifting a little finger to help. Once the issue became big, it were the same set lighting candles and waxing eloquent about the horrors of rape. It is this challenge that India will have to be alive to.
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