Padma Prakash: Manufactured consensus

MOOT POINT

Over the last two decades civil society movements, including those of the ubiquitous non-government organisations, have emerged as a platform for a new kind of politics mobilising ordinary people to seek redress for injuries meted out by the government's programmes; initiating and supporting civil society actions to protest against injustice, promoting pressure groups and advocacy campaigns demanding services or legislative change, and have defined new pathways for "meaningful" dialogue with the state and its agencies. They have been largely autonomous, deliberately keeping out of parliamentary politics. They are also providing employment to talented and sensitive young people seeking a cause and wanting creative career opportunities outside the corporate world or the state bureaucracy, offering a sort of alternative to radical political action in the form of popular movements that they often help to mobilise or support. Not surprisingly, in the course of liaising with the government on behalf of the people, some have sailed too close to the wind and have become spokespersons of the government instead.

There is a stream of literature on the voluntary sector, much of which looks askance at it. In the early years of the movement the Left and radical people's organisations kept voluntary sector organisations at a distance and there was a lively debate on whether the colour of the money that they received in support affected their work and their loyalties; whether they were not merely puppets of "imperialist" agencies; whether their leadership in people's movements was not a ploy by these agencies to destroy the vibrancy of such mobilisations; and whether, by drawing young people into their relatively comfortable fold they were not weaning away those with revolutionary potential.

Notwithstanding the criticism, the voluntary sector has grown, providing services at one end of the spectrum and, at the other, adopting a rights framework on a range of issues, taking to the streets when necessary. Today, through various new structures civil society organisations and movements have found a legitimate place on the edge of formal government.

So, how come two of the oldest protest movements post-independence camped across each other on New Delhi's main street are being subject to such neglect, uncivil actions, rights violations and even violence?

In late March, survivors of the Bhopal disaster on a hunger fast in New Delhi, demanding a clean-up of the poisons spewed at the time of the disaster, were beaten up. A week later, the police made a midnight swoop on activists of the Narmada Bachao Andolan who were on an indefinite fast, forcibly admitting two to hospital. Both incidents took place within a few kilometres of the seat of government in New Delhi. In neither case had the activists used violent forms of protest. The NBA, in fact, has given a new meaning to Gandhian forms of protest. Both are movements seeking justice and redress, and securing the legitimate rights of huge numbers of people. Both have been pivotal in turning around the focus of the development debate to those who lose in the unrolling of plans for progress and modernisation in poor countries. In different ways they are exposing the underside of iniquitous, ill-planned development. A government that has invited civil society organisations to a seat in one of its policy-making circles should surely be keen to acknowledge this and act upon it? Why has that not happened?

The answer may lie in a fact that the trajectories of both movements have drawn attention to: the ease with which political consensus has been manufactured on two developments that have adversely affected hundreds of thousands of ordinary people. The issue of the Narmada project rehabilitation and resettlement has touched three states and the Centre, through a 20-year period, under numerous governments. The incremental increases in the height of the dam epitomise the slow and insidious ways in which the just demand for rights to land and livelihood has been manoeuvred into juxtaposition with the critical need for water and power and infrastructure growth. In Bhopal, over the 20 years the entire population that suffered has been systematically wiped out from government memory. In consequence, the movement's demand that the 20-year-old contamination needs to be cleaned up and the position that the dwindling survivors living around the plant site are being poisoned systematically simply fall on deaf years. Neither the Narmada project nor the Bhopal disaster is of political consequence any more. Here are the lessons on how the political establishment can close out civil society movements when it chooses.

Without wrecking this consensus no political party can afford to be seen to support such movements and no government can do anything constructive and effective to deal with issues such as resettlement and rehabilitation in the Narmada Valley. The only way the government can respond is by offering a structural solution. It is the easiest of actions for the government to now set up new bodies to deal with these urgent issues. But will this really be able to address the gross inequities that have been perpetrated by the project? Will the political class allow for the inevitable delays that will occur if such structures are to be viable and effective?

Equity is not negotiable. And civil society movements and groups as well as the educated middle class have to be wary of being caught up, inadvertently perhaps, in this grand consensus being structured that will make equity a non-issue.