India Journal: Writing India’s Anti-Corruption Movement
Searching Amazon.com for books on the Occupy Wall Street movement
brings up more than 500 entries. Searching the site for books on Anna
Hazare brings up just 15 relevant entries, while there are only six on
the Lokpal bill, and a solitary one if you enter “anti-corruption
movement India.” Perhaps this is indicative of a Western-oriented
company.
But even searching Flipkart.com for books on Anna Hazare brings up only 30 entries (several in regional languages), and again just six on the Lokpal bill and one on the anti-corruption movement. That’s quite a discrepancy for two similar movements that took place in the same year.
The Occupy Wall Street movement happened in the fall of 2011. It was centered in New York but spread to other major cities in the U.S. and Europe. At its height, there was a group of some 15,000 protestors in Lower Manhattan. India’s anti-corruption movement crested several times during 2011. It was centered in New Delhi, with other demonstrations in hundreds of cities throughout India. At its peak, there were also crowds of around 15,000 protestors at Jantar Mantar.
While both offered a stage to express discontent, neither has yet produced any concrete results. The media spotlight has shifted and so has public attention. But the problems remain. In the U.S., Wall Street has rebounded and its high flyers are racking in fat bonuses once again while the rest of the country still struggles. Here in India, corruption is no less and the Lokpal bill is yet to be passed. America still has its 1% vs. 99%. We too have that – however of our 99%, some 30-40% (depending on what numbers we wish to believe) live below the poverty line.
At the time of both events, there was ample short-term documentation:
thousands of newspaper and magazine articles, interviews, blogs,
sound-bites, tweets, and of course non-stop analysis to feed those
voracious monsters – the 24-hour news channels. Now several months on,
there seems to be extensive long-term documentation on the Occupy
movement (some 500 books and even two films) but comparatively nothing
on India’s anti-corruption movement.
Unesco’s documentation expert John A. Joseph writes: “Proper documentation of events is essential for providing the contemporary professionals and future generations the opportunities to know, learn, and benefit from the past knowledge and experience.”
If Valmiki hadn’t bothered to write down the Ramayana, or Ganesha the Mahabharata, we might not have these epic stories as part of our culture today to refer to, to learn from, and to inspire us.
Sure, the moving hand having writ moves on. But we don’t want to forget what has happened, and we want an indelible account. It used to be that history was written by the victors, but that’s no longer the case today thanks to mass communication. Most of us – winners, losers, or just participants – have the resources to tell a story and get it out in the public domain. Furthermore, despite the warnings of our fathers not to believe everything we read, we usually do. The word has the power to move us; the image perhaps even more so. It’s not for nothing that Facebook recently paid $1 billion to buy the photo-sharing program Instagram. And last week, 100 years after the sinking of the Titanic, people were remembering, commemorating, and in fact re-creating that voyage, due largely to James Cameron’s movie of the event.
Of course, the documentation process allows us to re-organize, amplify, and revise some aspects to form a better, more interesting, or at least more coherent story than what may have actually happened. In the post-facto objective calm, we can analyze successes and failures, realize the relevance of key turning points, and highlight lessons learnt. All this makes the information more accessible and usable in the future.
Years from now, most of us will not go through hundreds of news clippings or days of TV coverage of an event. But we may watch a two hour documentary or read a 250-page book of what happened in 2011, when people got upset at the state of corruption in India and came together to protest.
Here are just a few of many ideas. We could have books written by historians summarizing the movement. We could have sociologists explain its temporary social effects, like increased feelings of community, respect for women, and safety. We could have biographies of the key figures of the movement. We could have collections of stories of people who removed themselves from their daily lives to participate, either by helping with organization or by fasting alongside Anna Hazare. We could have several books on lessons learnt and how to do it better next time. Remembering that iconic photo of a little girl holding up a glass for Anna Hazare to drink from when he ended his fast, we could have coffee table books with photos capturing the heartwarming, ironic, and telling moments of the event. We could have crisp and incisive documentaries on the movement. Director Ekta Kapoor could do a TV serial titled “The Year of Living Dangerously,” about two journalists (romantically involved but opposed by their families, of course) tracking the protests. And Aamir Khan could do an innovative movie, with a plot along the line of “Rang de Basanti” but with a happy ending and at least one catchy song.
It may be a long time before an anti-corruption bill is passed in India and even longer before politicians and other elite are held to account, but we need not forget. Even if there are no solid results from last year’s protests, at least we can have some solid memories. In the present, books and films can help us celebrate what was attempted. In the future, others can take this long-term documentation, learn from it, be inspired by it, and try yet again.
But even searching Flipkart.com for books on Anna Hazare brings up only 30 entries (several in regional languages), and again just six on the Lokpal bill and one on the anti-corruption movement. That’s quite a discrepancy for two similar movements that took place in the same year.
The Occupy Wall Street movement happened in the fall of 2011. It was centered in New York but spread to other major cities in the U.S. and Europe. At its height, there was a group of some 15,000 protestors in Lower Manhattan. India’s anti-corruption movement crested several times during 2011. It was centered in New Delhi, with other demonstrations in hundreds of cities throughout India. At its peak, there were also crowds of around 15,000 protestors at Jantar Mantar.
While both offered a stage to express discontent, neither has yet produced any concrete results. The media spotlight has shifted and so has public attention. But the problems remain. In the U.S., Wall Street has rebounded and its high flyers are racking in fat bonuses once again while the rest of the country still struggles. Here in India, corruption is no less and the Lokpal bill is yet to be passed. America still has its 1% vs. 99%. We too have that – however of our 99%, some 30-40% (depending on what numbers we wish to believe) live below the poverty line.
- Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
- An ‘Occupy Wall Street’ protest in New York.
Unesco’s documentation expert John A. Joseph writes: “Proper documentation of events is essential for providing the contemporary professionals and future generations the opportunities to know, learn, and benefit from the past knowledge and experience.”
If Valmiki hadn’t bothered to write down the Ramayana, or Ganesha the Mahabharata, we might not have these epic stories as part of our culture today to refer to, to learn from, and to inspire us.
Sure, the moving hand having writ moves on. But we don’t want to forget what has happened, and we want an indelible account. It used to be that history was written by the victors, but that’s no longer the case today thanks to mass communication. Most of us – winners, losers, or just participants – have the resources to tell a story and get it out in the public domain. Furthermore, despite the warnings of our fathers not to believe everything we read, we usually do. The word has the power to move us; the image perhaps even more so. It’s not for nothing that Facebook recently paid $1 billion to buy the photo-sharing program Instagram. And last week, 100 years after the sinking of the Titanic, people were remembering, commemorating, and in fact re-creating that voyage, due largely to James Cameron’s movie of the event.
Of course, the documentation process allows us to re-organize, amplify, and revise some aspects to form a better, more interesting, or at least more coherent story than what may have actually happened. In the post-facto objective calm, we can analyze successes and failures, realize the relevance of key turning points, and highlight lessons learnt. All this makes the information more accessible and usable in the future.
Years from now, most of us will not go through hundreds of news clippings or days of TV coverage of an event. But we may watch a two hour documentary or read a 250-page book of what happened in 2011, when people got upset at the state of corruption in India and came together to protest.
Here are just a few of many ideas. We could have books written by historians summarizing the movement. We could have sociologists explain its temporary social effects, like increased feelings of community, respect for women, and safety. We could have biographies of the key figures of the movement. We could have collections of stories of people who removed themselves from their daily lives to participate, either by helping with organization or by fasting alongside Anna Hazare. We could have several books on lessons learnt and how to do it better next time. Remembering that iconic photo of a little girl holding up a glass for Anna Hazare to drink from when he ended his fast, we could have coffee table books with photos capturing the heartwarming, ironic, and telling moments of the event. We could have crisp and incisive documentaries on the movement. Director Ekta Kapoor could do a TV serial titled “The Year of Living Dangerously,” about two journalists (romantically involved but opposed by their families, of course) tracking the protests. And Aamir Khan could do an innovative movie, with a plot along the line of “Rang de Basanti” but with a happy ending and at least one catchy song.
It may be a long time before an anti-corruption bill is passed in India and even longer before politicians and other elite are held to account, but we need not forget. Even if there are no solid results from last year’s protests, at least we can have some solid memories. In the present, books and films can help us celebrate what was attempted. In the future, others can take this long-term documentation, learn from it, be inspired by it, and try yet again.
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