Thinking Civil Society with reason

India is witnessing a debate on the role of civil society in what is being termed by many as the country’s “fight against corruption”. More than anything else, Anna Hazare’s movement has succeeded in bringing back the issue of corruption in India, especially at the top, as a national talking point. I have no qualms in admitting that the public reaction to the movement launched by the 74-year old activist came as a pleasant surprise to me. My understanding was that a large section of the Indians have started to live with corruption, accepting it as a fact of life. This emanated from my perception that now for a large number of Indians, ‘end justifies the means’. I consider this an outcome of ‘competitive capitalism’ and one could link it with ‘neo-liberalism’ – the dominant politico-economic discourse influencing much of the Indian society.

‘Competitive Capitalism ’ and its relationship to neo-liberalism is not the contention of this post. However, I thought it would be useful to explain the backdrop before linking it to the reasons behind the advent of the civil society, which is broadly a global phenomenon. (By 'competitive capitalism' I mean capitalism as a socio-political and economic doctrine which promotes competition in each and every sphere of human life.)

The possible relationship between Arvind Kejriwal, a guiding force behind Hazare’s movement, and the Ford Foundation, has raised a hue and cry in India, so much so that Arundhati Roy, who can very well be described as part of the civil society, where Kejriwal also belongs, went to the extent of drawing a conclusion that ‘foreign money’ ‘is being used to drum up popular support in favour of the so called drive against corruption in the country'. An influential English news weekly has also carried stories on the subject, although I am not totally sure about the exact nature of such a relationship, if any.

Even if such a relationship exists, nobody would disagree that corruption is a vice and needs to be stamped out. It has been part of the post-independent Indian society for the past over six decades and nothing much has changed, despite calls to combat it from various quarters and promises made by successive governments to take the issue head on. I see no problem in using foreign funds to stamp out corruption as part of the ‘good governance agenda’. After all, India has now grown much bigger and its sovereign influence transcends much beyond the national boundaries. Secondly, notwithstanding the background of organisations like the Ford Foundation (they or their parent organisations are exploitative on the one hand and philanthropic on the other), resources and expertise at their disposal have been used in many developing countries to ensure ‘democratic governance’ and hence it is not unique of sorts.

Civil society, being the intermediary between an individual and the state, has been part of the broad intellectual discourse for a very long time. Even before western modernity, civil society existed. One can be tempted to draw an analogy between the advisors of the kings and emperors of ancient and medieval India as being representatives of what we now call the ‘civil society’. Can’t we consider the Navaratna in Akbar’s court, including people like Birbal, as being the intermediaries between the state and the individual? However, it took a different form in the bourgeoisie society, in the aftermath of the western modernity and their role got diminished during the post world war period with the advent of statism, when nation-states had an overarching role in almost every sphere of human life.

With the rise of neo-liberalism, the influence of the nation states has been much diminished both in terms of reach and the roles they performed during much of the second half of the last century. Dominance of the private sector and attaching a monetised value to each and every function the state had performed for decades became a guiding principle of the neo-liberals, till such time when thinkers like Joseph Stiglitz realised that the private sector could not fully make up for the state. It was possibly during the later part of the last century that the World Bank (note Stiglitz was the Chief Economist of the World Bank during the period 1997 to 2000) situated the civil society in the mainstream discourse as an alternative to carry out some roles which were earlier done by the state.

I think it is extremely important to see and analyse the role of the civil society in the backdrop of its re-emergence in the mainstream discourse as an alternative to the state, not in its entirety as a fundamental institution in society but in a functional form holding the service providers to account. Whether the civil society can match up to the state is a different debate altogether but it would be naïve if one overlooks the pretext within which neo-liberalism situates the civil society. The pre-eminence of organisations like the Ford Foundation or civil society representatives like Kejriwal and Roy and their fight against corruption or movement in support of the Right to Information (RTI) are outcomes emanating from such an outlook.(Who would have imagined civil society performing such a role when the state had an overarching presence.) Seeing what Kejriwal and the Ford Foundation are doing as something out of the blue implies missing out the larger context within which civil society is situated in the wider discourse of neo-liberalism. Such a myopic vision could only lead to acrimony, hindering any healthy debate on working out the parameters within which the civil society could function in the Indian society.

*Much of my thinking on Civil Society is influenced by Subir Sinha of the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London.