How to be an activist

The Anarchist Cookbook serves as a primer for anyone who wants to engage in activism. Focusing on securing smaller, more manageable goals is the key

The Anarchist Cookbook

Author: Aakar Patel

Illustrator:   PenPencilDraw

Publisher:   HarperCollins

Price: Rs 399

Activism is a good word. The elite and prosperous in India, who have the privilege and influence, must act. Aakar Patel makes this case and shows why and how to protest in his new book, The Anarchist Cookbook.

Rules for India and rules for Bharat are not the same. Sharad Joshi, the leader of several successful movements pointed this out in his lifelong activism. Proof that this is true even today comes from this book. The Indian state was not created but inherited after independence from the British Empire. This state serves the elite and protects their rights. The elite merely need to ask, or draw a connection to get their job done. Dalits, Adivasis, Muslims, and citizens living in Kashmir and all of northeast India, are treated as outsiders. Their rights are snatched and services for them are absent. This is a contrast that the book brings out well.

To protest and be an activist is a right and a freedom. With strength and engagement civil society can move democracy. The book’s narration is powered by facts to show that India’s democracy is weak and freedom is a glass three-quarters empty. Multiple findings, and their description raise the reader’s awareness. One such fact is from CIVICUS, a global alliance of civil societies. It downgraded India from being an obstructed society to a repressed society. Conditions of surveillance, detention, de-registration of civic organisations, and how mainstream media reflects the position of the state all put India on the same level as Pakistan, Russia and Myanmar. The book is an effort to convince the reader that freedom is not an outcome but continuous action.

To act, the author asks the reader to dwell on the principle of incrementalism — all large goals are achieved by securing smaller, more manageable goals. He breaks activism into a process and helps to put it into a plan. This is the recipe, time-honoured and consistent, that Gandhi used in India’s freedom struggle. Two concrete processes go into the design of this plan: Theory of change and power mapping. The book instructs any citizen who wants to engage in activism to start by identifying the problem and finding its effect. Then trace back smaller outcomes that can fix it. Now, plan actions that can influence these outcomes. Write this down, you’ve arrived at the theory of change.

The next course is to make a map of institutions and organisations. On the map, use the vertical axis to measure how much power each institution has. And the horizontal axis measures how likely it is to support your cause. Low on power, and high on support, are potential allies. High on power and low on support are institutions to persuade. The book hands out these principles and more so that a reader can reproduce them for any level of ambition.

The author uses the cookbook analogy to show that smaller outcomes that can help with a protest are the coming together of four key ingredients. Research and facts put together will make the base. Advocacy, which is the spreading of awareness and winning over organisations to put pressure, gives it substance. To mobilise by organising and coordinating is next. The final ingredient to combine for a campaign is nonviolent action.

The book chronicles recent protests to identify what made them succeed. They are not case studies; along the way, Mr Patel offers his commentary and views too. Together, these successful protests in our times bring hope. Examples include how Priya Ramani found justice by sparking the #MeToo movement in India, how women of Shaheen Bagh staged a protest against the Citizenship Amendment Act, and farmers of Punjab stood against farm laws. Protests less known over social media, such as the Pathalgadi movement by Adivasis in Jharkhand, to retain their land protections, guaranteed under various tenancy Acts, and Dalits in Gujarat, claiming back the land entitled to them, are examples that show David can defeat Goliath. Global movements such as Black Lives Matter and Fridays for Future, feature to show how to make protests reproducible. The book uses these examples to drive the lesson that sustaining protests is the main challenge against bringing change in India. It also draws attention to the protests made by ASHA workers during the pandemic to improve their working conditions, which failed because they couldn’t be sustained.

Mr Patel is a prolific writer whose experience and direct writing style are possible attributions for how the book is composed. Fun illustrations by PenPencilDraw and a quiz baked into its form, make the book easy to engage with. For more, Srdja Popovic and Matthew Miller’s Blueprint for Revolution is another wonderful book to read on how to bring change in society. Pages in The Anarchist Cookbook,  which draws its title from a 2013 book by William Powell, turn fast, and the belief that change is possible, drives home faster.

(Aakar Patel is a Business Standard columnist)

The reviewer is a Mumbai-based public policy researcher