Author: Swapan Dasgupta
Publication: The Pioneer
Date: February 10, 2008
Viewers of English-language TV news channels
will have noticed the frequency with which a mysterious community called "activists"
has begun popping up. On subjects as diverse as education, health, industrialisation
and religion, the utterances of politicians, officials, corporates and the
man in the street are invariably countered with views of "activists"
presumed to have profound expertise on all subjects. There is also an implicit
suggestion that the "activists" are detached, selfless and not burdened
by the baggage of interest groups. In short, they are a superior and pious
voice in the rabble.
It may be unfair to lump "activists"
into the umbrella category of NGOs. There are many non-profit organisations
that perceive themselves as philanthropic bodies, charities, religious trusts
and even social organisations which occasionally dabble in "social work".
They raise their own resources, have nothing to do with the Government but
hate being clubbed with "activist" NGOs. What distinguishes normal
NGOs from "activist" groups is funding, political involvement and
what the Americans call attitude. The "activists" tend to be globally
funded, politically Left-liberal or worse, and blessed with the conviction
that they know best and everyone else is garbage.
At the 1999 Seattle summit of the World Trade
Organisation, The Economist estimated some two million NGOs in the world;
of these, about a million were in India. The numbers have increased over the
past nine years, more so because a growing number of entrepreneurs have discovered
business potential in NGOs. To be fair, most activists are not racketeers,
though they have an insatiable appetite for publicity, business class travel
and endless conferences in exotic places. Activists from the so-called Third
World which, tragically, still includes India, have also developed considerable
skills in guilt-tripping angst-ridden Western liberals and UN-sponsored bodies
into doling out lavish grants. The grants are ostensibly aimed at facilitating
"people's empowerment", a euphemism for good salaries, many conferences,
media lollipops and sponsorship of agitations that impede national progress.
The activists ostensibly want to "help
people help themselves". Some genuinely try to help the informal sector
get legal protection and end up getting thrashed by goons. Others, rope in
starry-eyed TV reporters from privileged backgrounds and gap-year radical
tourists to give legitimacy to movements that seek to prevent steel plants
in Orissa and dams in Gujarat.
"Activists" have different priorities
but what binds them together is a passionate desire to keep alive the problems
that justify their existence. In recent years, for example, activist bodies
have been accused of grossly exaggerating the incidence of AIDS in India.
The unstated reason: The massive availability of international funds to fight
AIDS. In Gujarat, the "activists" have also been accused of keeping
riot victims in a state of permanent dislocation because it helps score political
points.
In the old days, the "activists"
were derided as harmless but over-zealous jholawalas and relegated to the
margins of civil society -- despite their bogus claims of actually representing
civil society. In recent times, thanks to lavish global patronage, some deft
"advocacy" and strategic political interventions against the former
NDA regime, the activists have inveigled themselves into the decision-making
making process. The inclusion of "activist" icons in the once all-powerful
National Advisory Council chaired by Sonia Gandhi was a signal to the UPA
Government to accommodate seemingly radical concerns in the development process.
The results have been catastrophic.
Take the case of urban planning in Delhi.
The sudden collapse of all systems of traffic management in areas outside
Lutyens' Delhi is widely blamed on the construction of the High Speed Bus
Corridor. Billed as a system favouring cyclists and bus commuters and flaunted
as the success story of Bogota (Columbia), it is likely to be a major factor
behind the Congress' near-certain electoral defeat in Delhi later this year.
Yet, as is now apparent, this hare-brained, regressive scheme was sold as
a progressive pro-poor measure by activists who have no stake in the future
of India.
The National Rural Employment Guarantee Act
was the greatest triumph of the "activists". Now operational in
330 districts at a cost of Rs 12,000 crore, it was supposed to do for the
Congress what Operation Barga did for the CPM in rural Bengal: Make it electorally
invincible. The interim results point to a monumental disaster and CAG's draft
report speaks of a 97% under-performance.
In normal parlance this means unmitigated
disaster but "activists", egged on by a mindless section of the
political class, now want Rs 30,000 crore from this year's Budget to make
this profligate, corrupt and unproductive scheme national. They want a dedicated
bureaucracy and membership of a so-called Employment Guarantee Council to
run NREGA as a form of parallel Government. They want to turn disaster into
calamity. A distraught Government, afraid of admitting its Italian blunder,
may well oblige.
Finally, "activists" have poured
into sensitive bodies like the Minorities Commission. Established as a well-meaning
talking shop for those who couldn't be accommodated in Parliament, it has
become a malignant influence on society. From giving predictable template
reports on "attacks on minorities" by a despicable majority, it
has moved into tampering with national security. The interference of Minorities
Commission activists in the arrest and interrogation of terror suspects in
Andhra Pradesh is a warning. If you give them an inch, they will take a mile.
Democratic societies operate on the principle
of indulgence. However, when minuscule unaccountable "activists"
start holding the nation to ransom on the strength of misplaced certitudes,
it is time for correctives. An urgent rehabilitation programme for "activists"
is overdue.
