EDITORIALS

From Lokpal to Lokniti

Can the new political party of Arvind Kejriwal and company mature into a popular political force?
he movement for an independent and all-powerful Lokpal that began in April 2011 with much fanfare and public enthusiasm at least in the capital faded away and ended in a whimper, with its main demand not realised. This was due in part to Anna Hazare and his team adopting a maximalist position and in part because they could not sustain the popular support they had initially managed to generate. In such a situation the Hazare group had only two options: either continue with and expand this civil society movement while remaining outside the formal political process or convert it into a formally political one. Anna Hazare himself has continued with the non-political path and the limited set of agitprop measures that were used over the past year. Arvind Kejriwal has led, with support from some erstwhile members of the Hazare group as well as others, the political shift of the anti-corruption movement. Kejriwal and his team have tried to occupy the opposition space by launching sharp attacks on both the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) through a series of allegations over corruption. There seems to be a method in the apparent madness of sequential press conferences carpet-bombing both the Congress and the BJP whether it is against Sonia Gandhis son-in-law, Robert Vadra, or BJP president Nitin Gadkari. The short-term tactic seems to be to capture public attention as well as hit the established parties, particularly the ruling Congress, such that their top leadership is exposed. Using media saturation tactics, the new political outt has sought to convey the message that corruption in high places has become endemic, facilitated by the nexus between the top political parties and the corporate sector, and that the state institutions are incapable of addressing the issue. Kejriwals group seems to be saying that it will not be possible to take on institutionalised corruption without destroying the political capital and power base of the established parties. Can the new political party entrench itself as a political force only by raising the issue of corruption in high places? The agenda and programme of the party, as has been written out and revealed so far, suggests that it wants to shift the terrain of 8

political discourse towards a newer vision for state-market and state-society relations while refusing to base itself on sectional or group interests which has been the method of the newer political forces. This strategy has given the edgling party a fair bit of media coverage, something that is denied to other political parties such as those from the left who also agitate on important socio-economic issues. It remains to be seen if the new party will manage to act as a spoiler to the Congress and the BJPs electoral interests, though upending them electorally seems a far cry at this point. Thus far, the issue of corruption does not seem to have much political currency outside urban centres, and even there its long-term electoral salience is untested. The new party has foregrounded Swaraj in its vision document. To reach somewhere the party needs to transform its limited, populist campaigns against corruption and allegations against individual persons or acts into a more comprehensive, participatory movement on a positive agenda such as Swaraj. For now, the vision document reads very similar to Jayaprakash Narayans vision of a democracy that moves beyond mere representation and formal politics and would involve the people as subjects instead of objects. It is an ambitious and grandiose vision. Do its purveyors have the stamina to sustain the long march that would be necessary to realise it? If the new party is to achieve anything close to its vision, it must involve itself in forming popular coalitions with other like-minded political and social outts. The deepening of democracy in the country in the past decades has owed much to efforts from social movements some of which involved members from this new party itself as also from the struggles carried out by the left. The new party, which strangely has yet to name itself or give itself an organisation, will need to consider working actively with like-minded forces on issues like robber baron capitalism, governance, and on ensuring an efcient and expanded welfare state. Where would the left gure in this scheme of things? At this point it is difcult to see the left joining hands with this unnamed, unformed new party which has a vision document but no clear agenda.
november 17, 2012 vol xlviI no 46
EPW Economic & Political Weekly