Team Anna and the New Style of Political Activism

by NIRMALYA

Political activism is not new in India. India has had a long tradition of political activists, usually Leftists or Gandhians. Yet when we look at the way the Anna Camp has done things, it is clearly different from the usual cases of activism. It has not been only more popular than perhaps any other movement, it has also been better managed, better marketed, more ambitious, more impatient, more populist, less concerned with ideology and more practical than any other example of activist movement in India.

Now different styles of activism meet in team Anna. There are old-fashioned activists, there are law-and-order guardians. There is Hazare himself, a ‘Gandhian’ agitator with an authori-tarian streak and disdain for politics. His style certainly influences the movement, he being the most visible symbol of the movement. But the dominant style of the movement is the style of social entrepreneurship, and it very probably comes from the man who planned it all—Arvind Kejriwal.

The Asoka Foundation defines social entrepreneurship thus:

Social entrepreneurs are individuals with innovative solutions to society’s most pressing social problems. They are ambitious and persistent, tackling major social issues and offering new ideas for wide-scale change.

Rather than leaving societal needs to the government or business sectors, social entrepreneurs find what is not working and solve the problem by changing the system, spreading the solution, and persuading entire societies to take new leaps.
Social entrepreneurs often seem to be possessed by their ideas, committing their lives to changing the direction of their field. They are both visionaries and ultimate realists, concerned with the practical implementation of their vision above all else.
Each social entrepreneur presents ideas that are user-friendly, understandable, ethical, and engage widespread support in order to maximise the number of local people that will stand up, seize their idea, and implement with it. In other words, every leading social entrepreneur is a mass recruiter of local changemakers—a role model proving that citizens who channel their passion into action can do almost anything.

This is close to what we are seeing here: except that it has been transposed to the arena of politics. The Lokpal idea may not be an innovative solution, although corruption can be called a pressing problem. Certainly the implementation of the idea has been very much in the entrepreneurial tradition.

And if you look at Arvind Kejriwal (this profile here gives something of a picture), it’s clear that he is the quintessential social entrepreneur: Possessed by his ideas, concerned with practical implementation and certainly a proof that ‘citizens who channel their passion into action can do almost anything’. He is the one who thought of the whole idea, assembled the team, met with Anna, convinced him of the cause and told him that from the Gandhi of Maharashtra they’d make him the Gandhi of India. It appears to be his entrepreneurial style that propels the movement.

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THIS goes some way in explaining the nature of the movement, and why other activists may be baffled by it. The entrepreneurial way is to look to get things done as quickly as possible. Whereas the traditional activist would defer to the democratic tradition and let the Parliament decide, the entrepreneur-activist is more focused on getting the Bill passed. For the entrepreneur, the agitations and the public support are seen more as means of getting the job done. Which is why they would be unfazed by questions of whether these are methods resembling black-mailing or bullying at times. Why they’re so focused on whipping up public enthusiasm through slogans and dialogues. They would use any symbols (or people) that could draw the masses, dissociate themselves from [and then disassociate from] anything that could be controversial. This would be unheard of in case of traditional political activists, they’d not leave their allies or their symbols. But for those for whom these are mere tools to get to where they want, who are more practical rather than ideologically motivated, these things come easily.

Traditionally, the work of social entrepreneurs (with a few exceptions) is not focused towards improving social justice. They may have changed many lives for the better, but they do so by looking at the existing system and working out how its functioning can be improved. The anti-corruption drive too is largely of this sort. For all the politics around it, it’s surprisingly apolitical. Team Anna seems unconcerned about any question of social or economic justice, of the massive wrongs that an anti-corruption Bill doesn’t begin to address. They just want to get this Bill passed. That’s how entrepreneurs work.

The politics of Anna Camp has been described by different observers as fascism, messianism, anarchism. It is none of these things: for the most part, it is just entrepreneurship. Their politics comes with all the strengths and limitations to it.