ROGUE ELEPHANT
Harnessing the Power of India's Unruly Democracy
Simon Denyer
Bloomsbury, 2014
Rs 599; 440 pages
Mr Denyer arrived in India in 2004, at a time when the politicians declared India was "shining" and the tourism department had dubbed it "incredible". He watched such hyperbole shatter with the Commonwealth Games scam, 2G telecom scam, Coalgate and more. Unlike India's many naysayers, however, he writes that he has always seen the glass as half-full - these scams have forced a younger Indian populace, bolstered by the information revolution, to emerge from its self-imposed exile and ask for transparency and efficiency in governance.
The Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan (MKSS), which was founded in 1990, sparked off the initial demand for cleaner governance. Started by Aruna Roy, Nikhil Dey and Shankar Singh, the MKSS pioneered the concept of "public audits" of different aspects of government functioning and was eventually instrumental in the ratification of the RTI Act in 2005. Mr Denyer quotes a study of the 2008 general elections by a group of academics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard and Yale, which found that "report cards" on contestants prepared by RTI activists made even urban slum dwellers more aware of the power of their vote. For Mr Denyer, RTI empowered the Indian populace in a fundamental way, giving it the teeth to combat corruption.
The other reason he has hope for Indian democracy is the vibrant, TRP-chasing but relatively free press in India. Unsurprisingly, being a member of the same fraternity, Mr Denyer's observations on the double-edged sword of India's free media are most interesting. He adroitly paints the picture of Arnab Goswami, a journalist who is "addicted to outrage" as an opinion builder par excellence who, knowingly or unknowingly, fuelled the India Against Corruption movement. Although his "headline hustling" was not enough to sustain the movement - which lost steam after leaders Kisan Baburao Hazare and Arvind Kejriwal parted ways - Mr Goswami and the free press he embodies, avers Denyer, were instrumental in drawing the usually apolitical middle class out on the streets in support.
Yet, Mr Denyer also critiques the media insightfully in the chapter entitled "Headline hustler", pointing out that the Indian media is too Delhi-centric to report accurately on the grassroots-level issues in distant states.
The same criticism can be levelled against Rogue Elephant. In some ways, Mr Denyer has committed the same error that Mr Kejriwal made in naming his party - he has scraped the surface of India's vast middle class and assumed that it represents India's aam aadmi. In his latest book, An Uncertain Glory: India, Nobel laureate Amartya Sen has pointed out that one reason India lags even countries like Bangladesh on some social indicators is that the intelligentsia, the media and the opinion makers equate the middle class with the aam aadmi. The real poor have fallen out of social, political and, in this case, even Mr Denyer's analysis. If the Delhi rape case compelled academics, students and urban housewives to come out on the streets in protest, does it necessarily indicate that a nationwide change is under way? Or if some intellectuals, retired bureaucrats and activists demand transparent government functioning or exercise their right to information, does it have much significance to a landless labourer in rural Bihar? It could, but India's unruly rogue elephant has a long way to go until one can say that.
Clearly, the author has tried to identify most major flashpoints in Indian politics. However, this approach has disrupted the flow of the book considerably as it skips (often too lightly) over issues as varied as the drug epidemic in Punjab, Irom Sharmila's hunger strike in Manipur and the rising aspirations of the Indian youth. For instance, the chapter on the Delhi gang rape is, rather inexplicably, followed by one on the "silent" fall of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. And the chapter on the Indian media is succeeded by a discourse on Tata Nano, Singur, Nandigram and the vexed issue of land acquisition.
All in all, Rogue Elephant makes for an interesting and thought-provoking read on modern Indian politics. As for Mr Denyer's glass-half-full brand of optimism about the fate of our unruly nation, well, one can only hope time proves him right.
Harnessing the Power of India's Unruly Democracy
Simon Denyer
Bloomsbury, 2014
Rs 599; 440 pages
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Rogue Elephant tells the story of the chaos better known as Indian democracy today. Simon Denyer, the former India bureau chief of The Washington Post, gets to the heart of India's prickliest issues to paint a compelling picture of modern Indian society, bogged down by corruption, inequality and the utter breakdown of trust between its leading political parties - yet still somehow being held together by democratic forces. Through a series of interviews with the nation's most influential political leaders such as Manmohan Singh, Narendra Modi and Arvind Kejriwal, as well as thought leaders such as Arnab Goswami, the world's longest hunger striker, Irom Sharmila, and lawyer-crusader Bhuwan Ribhu, Mr Denyer says that underneath all the chaos, he sees glimmers of hope. The growing significance of the TRP-chasing, yet independent, media and the Right to Information (RTI) movement's demands for greater transparency and accountability in governance offer signs of a new, vigorous way forward. In that sense, Rogue Elephant is a fascinating read for those who are frustrated with the depths to which Indian democracy has plunged.
Mr Denyer arrived in India in 2004, at a time when the politicians declared India was "shining" and the tourism department had dubbed it "incredible". He watched such hyperbole shatter with the Commonwealth Games scam, 2G telecom scam, Coalgate and more. Unlike India's many naysayers, however, he writes that he has always seen the glass as half-full - these scams have forced a younger Indian populace, bolstered by the information revolution, to emerge from its self-imposed exile and ask for transparency and efficiency in governance.
The Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan (MKSS), which was founded in 1990, sparked off the initial demand for cleaner governance. Started by Aruna Roy, Nikhil Dey and Shankar Singh, the MKSS pioneered the concept of "public audits" of different aspects of government functioning and was eventually instrumental in the ratification of the RTI Act in 2005. Mr Denyer quotes a study of the 2008 general elections by a group of academics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard and Yale, which found that "report cards" on contestants prepared by RTI activists made even urban slum dwellers more aware of the power of their vote. For Mr Denyer, RTI empowered the Indian populace in a fundamental way, giving it the teeth to combat corruption.
The other reason he has hope for Indian democracy is the vibrant, TRP-chasing but relatively free press in India. Unsurprisingly, being a member of the same fraternity, Mr Denyer's observations on the double-edged sword of India's free media are most interesting. He adroitly paints the picture of Arnab Goswami, a journalist who is "addicted to outrage" as an opinion builder par excellence who, knowingly or unknowingly, fuelled the India Against Corruption movement. Although his "headline hustling" was not enough to sustain the movement - which lost steam after leaders Kisan Baburao Hazare and Arvind Kejriwal parted ways - Mr Goswami and the free press he embodies, avers Denyer, were instrumental in drawing the usually apolitical middle class out on the streets in support.
Yet, Mr Denyer also critiques the media insightfully in the chapter entitled "Headline hustler", pointing out that the Indian media is too Delhi-centric to report accurately on the grassroots-level issues in distant states.
The same criticism can be levelled against Rogue Elephant. In some ways, Mr Denyer has committed the same error that Mr Kejriwal made in naming his party - he has scraped the surface of India's vast middle class and assumed that it represents India's aam aadmi. In his latest book, An Uncertain Glory: India, Nobel laureate Amartya Sen has pointed out that one reason India lags even countries like Bangladesh on some social indicators is that the intelligentsia, the media and the opinion makers equate the middle class with the aam aadmi. The real poor have fallen out of social, political and, in this case, even Mr Denyer's analysis. If the Delhi rape case compelled academics, students and urban housewives to come out on the streets in protest, does it necessarily indicate that a nationwide change is under way? Or if some intellectuals, retired bureaucrats and activists demand transparent government functioning or exercise their right to information, does it have much significance to a landless labourer in rural Bihar? It could, but India's unruly rogue elephant has a long way to go until one can say that.
Clearly, the author has tried to identify most major flashpoints in Indian politics. However, this approach has disrupted the flow of the book considerably as it skips (often too lightly) over issues as varied as the drug epidemic in Punjab, Irom Sharmila's hunger strike in Manipur and the rising aspirations of the Indian youth. For instance, the chapter on the Delhi gang rape is, rather inexplicably, followed by one on the "silent" fall of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. And the chapter on the Indian media is succeeded by a discourse on Tata Nano, Singur, Nandigram and the vexed issue of land acquisition.
All in all, Rogue Elephant makes for an interesting and thought-provoking read on modern Indian politics. As for Mr Denyer's glass-half-full brand of optimism about the fate of our unruly nation, well, one can only hope time proves him right.