It’s only rare occasions, like VP Singh’s 1990 announcement of the Mandal report’s implementation, the 1999 Kandahar airliner hijacking, or the 2008 terrorist attacks on Mumbai, that impel the elite into street action. Today, the issue of corruption, highlighted by recent scandals, has become a powerful magnet for this class.

Mr Hazare undertook his fast at Jantar Mantar for “India Against Corruption”, a nongovernmental organisation created by former policewoman Kiran Bedi, gurus Baba Ramdev and Sri Sri Ravi Shankar and information activist Arvind Kejriwal in 2009. Whatever their motives, histories and political agendas, it’s a tribute to their organisational skills that they mobilised 4.4 million Twitter messages and thousands of well-heeled citizens.

In some respects, this mobilisation is the closest thing that India has witnessed, albeit in a compressed form, to the Jaya Prakash Narayan movement of the mid-1970s. Common to both is a charismatic personality, known for austerity, renunciation and professed adherence to Gandhian values. Equally common is the middle class’s disdain for politics and its dominant view that all politicians are corrupt. Many placards at Jantar Mantar read in Hindi “All 543 (MPs) are thieves.”

JP preached the utopian ideal of party-less democracy. Mr Hazare seeks to set new standards of probity by hanging the corrupt. Both movements bypassed the normal processes of democracy and based themselves on “direct action”. Both lay claim to a moral authority superior to that of the elected representatives of the people.

That’s why our antennae must go up. The features of the two mobilisations which most attract the middle class are problematic. The JP movement inspired a generation of Bihari youth with idealism. These leaders, now in their prime, include Messrs Nitish Kumar and Laloo Prasad. But nationally, JP ended up facilitating the entry of the sangh parivar into the Janata Party, and legitimising the RSS.

Mr Hazare’s mobilisation is equally vulnerable to infiltration and takeover by Right-wing elements. Indeed, they dominate its leadership. It’s no accident that Baba Ramdev, whose network has logistically sustained “India Against Corruption”, turned up at Jantar Mantar to claim part-ownership, with RSS spokesperson Ram Madhav in tow. So did Ms Uma Bharati, who was politely turned away, but only after Mr Hazare apologised to her. No apologies were offered to other unwanted politicians like Mr Om Prakash Chautala.

Ramdev works closely with lifelong RSS pracharak-ideologue KN Govindacharya on a rabidly communal project called Bharat Swabhiman. The communal Right invokes such reference to national pride to whip up a crude, majoritarian chauvinism, which conflates nationalism with Hindutva. For instance, Savarkar defined Indianness as acceptance of India as both one’s birthplace and as one’s sacred land. No wonder some Jantar Mantar placards read: “Sonia Gandhi, go home.”

Other symbols associated with the campaign also suggested a Hindu-Right bent, including the larger-than-life portrait of Bharat Mata superimposed on India’s map, performance of havans, and purveying of gomutra (cow’s urine). No less significant is Mr Hazare’s appeal to the militant cult of Shivaji, which he uncritically endorses.

He says that it’s not enough that the corrupt are gaoled; they must be “hanged till death”: “You might wonder how a Gandhian like me is talking about violent methods like hanging, but in today’s context, the need is not of Mahatma Gandhi but of Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj.”

This explains why Mr Hazare lavished praise on Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Milosevic Modi for his devotion to “development” without even mentioning his pivotal role in the butchery of Muslims in 2002. Mr Kejriwal “clarified” for Mr Hazare by affirming that their movement is secular. Mr Hazare also said he is against “communal disharmony”. But then, Mr Modi has never explicitly admitted to promoting “communal disharmony”; he only accomplished the complete subjugation of Gujarat’s Muslims and imposed the peace of the graveyard upon them.

However, there is a deeper conservative side to Mr Hazare’s worldview. He sees actually existing democratic politics as corrupt. That’s why he has never contested elections. He says he would lose his deposit if he contests, because ordinary voters “cast their vote under the influence of Rs 100 or a bottle of liquor or a sari ….”

This extremely cynical view of democracy shows utter contempt for the Indian people who have repeatedly punished corrupt or underperforming politicians. India’s democracy has numerous flaws. But the voter’s lack of awareness isn’t one of them.

Suspicion of democratic politics is central to Mr Hazare’s work in his own “model” village, Ralegaon Siddhi in Maharashtra’s Ahmednagar district. He has banned everyone there from contesting elections on a party platform. His word is final. Nobody dares defy him.

Mr Hazare’s own local conduct is hardly unblemished. He was indicted by the Justice PB Sawant Commission for transferring Rs 2.2 lakhs from the Hind Swaraj Trust to finance his own birthday party. The Trust earmarked 11 acres of land for the zilla parishad without the charity commissioner’s permission. The Trust also diverted Rs 46,374, originally meant for promoting secular education, to renovating a temple.

According to journalist Mukul Sharma, who has observed Ralegaon since 1991, the village is run on authoritarian lines dictated by Mr Hazare: no alcohol, no tobacco, no film music: “it spoils children”. Mr Hazare did some very good work on water-related issues in the mid-1970s and made the drought-prone village agriculturally prosperous through water conservation and equitable sharing. But since then, he has imposed an order that is socially intolerant, insensitive to caste discrimination—his followers would chide and taunt Dalits as dirty, and force them to change their lifestyles—and promotive of economic inequalities.

This authoritarianism and obsession with discipline is also reflected in the Jan Lokpal Bill drafted by Mr Hazare and his colleagues. It vests enormous powers in the Lokpal, including investigation and prosecution, without checks and balances. The Lokpal’s writ would run over all offices, including the Prime Minister, who ought to be primarily responsible to Parliament. All this violates the principle of the separation of powers at the heart of Constitutional democracy.

The Jan Lokpal Bill also recommends intrusive surveillance. For instance, the Lokpal would have the power to “approve interception and monitoring of messages of data or voice transmitted through telephones, internet or any other medium …”. They also demand that the Lokpal fund would be given 10 percent of the money to be confiscated under his/her orders. This is wholly self-serving.

The Hazare group speaks stridently in the name of civil society, but doesn’t pause to ask questions about its own representative character or accountability. Civil society organisations are essential as democracy’s watchdogs and as generators of informed public opinion. But they are voluntary and lack a mandate based on representation—unlike elected lawmakers.

The composition of the joint drafting committee, with 50 percent NGO representation, is open to question. The five civil society members are all men, with no representation for Dalits, religious minorities or different regions. Two are a father-and-son duo. Mr Shanti Bhushan, co-chair of the drafting committee, has received a court notice for undervaluing his property. Unlike his son Prashant, he has often appeared for ill-reputed corporations.

All this raises questions. But the Congress party has insidiously launched a smear campaign against the Bhushans. A compact disk has mysteriously appeared alleging an embarrassing conversation between Messrs Bhushan, Amar Singh and Mulayam Singh Yadav to “fix” a judge. The CD may well be doctored, although the Central Forensic Science Laboratory says it’s not. But the Congress should know that it will only earn public discredit if it’s seen to be scuttling the drafting committee by maligning Mr Bhushan.

The Hazare group should of course be subjected to scrutiny. Its principal premise—that the Lokpal Bill is a silver bullet to tackle corruption—is weak. Corruption has many causes. The Lokpal can only address a few, after the event. There are more effective ways of preventing and reducing corruption—by eliminating rent-seeking and privileged access to decision-makers, reducing discretionary powers, strict tendering of contracts, multi-stage transparency, etc. But Mr Hazare seems to be missing the trees for the woods.

“India Against Corruption”-style mobilisations will erupt yet again, possibly with excessive demands, and with a dangerous potential for vigilantism and for creating power centres without accountability. So long as India’s political system seriously malfunctions, and so long as political parties don’t mobilise the public on issues of gut-level importance to them, such movements will find fertile soil. The political class must imbibe this lesson. Or its relevance and legitimacy will erode rapidly. (IPA Service)