Hindustan Times
Activism we can do without
It was activism of a different sort when some eminent citizens such as actor Aamir Khan, Magsaysay award winners Sandeep Pande and Arvind Kejriwal, social activist Anna Hazare and journalist-author Madhu Trehan wrote to the prime minister last week that former IPS officer Kiran Bedi should be made the chief information commissioner (CIC) of India.
The efforts of these well-meaning activists raise some fundamental questions about the role of civil society.
In the last two decades or so, prompted by a neo-liberal intellectual climate, the role of the government in a democracy has been under constant scrutiny. There is a broad agreement across political opinions now that governance is not ONLY what the government does. Governance is the cumulative product of the efforts of the institutions of market, state and civil society. Civil society is expected to articulate opinions that the market, the state and political parties may find risky.
The big leap in the evolution of Indian civil society came with the setting up of the National Advisory Council (NAC) in 2004, when the first UPA government came to power. Congress president Sonia Gandhi, whose personality transcends the boundary between a politician and an activist, headed the NAC. The NAC was a culmination of the activism directed against several measures of NDA rule between 1999 and 2004, particularly in matters relating to education policy and communal harmony. The NAC played a key role in legislations such as the RTI and Right to Education. Sonia’s exit from the NAC made it defunct.
While the NAC was a structured mode of civil society participation, ‘activists’ in India in general tend to be anarchists. One of our celebrated civil society activists occasionally even cedes from the Indian republic!!!! And many are still in the mode of ‘civil disobedience,’ unaware of the fact that it was designed against a government that was not participatory.
I find the intervention of Aamir and Co, of telling which particular INDIVIDUAL should be CIC, useless and counterproductive. A panel comprising of the prime minister, the leader of opposition and another cabinet minister nominated by the prime minister selects the CIC. There is a system in place.
If Khan and his friends found the system of selection inadequate or unfair they should have built a case against the process. By insisting on one name, they have equated activism to lobbying.
(3 votes, average: 3.33 out of 5)
Loading ...Posted by Varghese K George on Saturday, November 7, 2009 at 6:42 pm
Filed under India · Tagged chief information commissioner, Kiran Bedi
I find nothing wrong in recommendig Mrs Bedi for the job.I’m certain she’ll acquit herself with distinction.Recommending someone whom you and the country know to be fair and competent with a flair for public service is certainly no lobbying for private gain! I too recommend her.
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While i have no comment on few people recommending a perticular person for a perticular post, i differ with the writer on equating this activism with lobbying. Although activism and lobbying, more or less, mean the same kind of act, lobbying perticularly is taken as bad word with reference to money bags following the act. I would like to term this perticular act of few individuals as ‘activism’, because although it may influence the decison making, this perticular task, if accomplished, does not have the potential to be followed by…….
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