 |
 |
 |
| UP IN ARMS: (From top) Roshan Seth, Mahesh Bhatt and Subhas Datta |
Rabble-rousing street-fighter Mamata Banerjee has an unlikely sympathiser in the Doon School old-boy. But actor Roshan Seth sees a kindred soul in the Trinamul Congress leader, lately in the news for chucking papers at the Speaker’s chair in Parliament. “I know how she must have felt ? I feel sorry for her,” says Seth, sitting at his friend’s house in a tony neighbourhood in south Delhi.
Seth would like to do some things like that. For one, he wants to increase what he calls his abusive vocabulary ? he says he doesn’t have enough words in his arsenal to endorse his darkest thoughts. Second, he wants to push some people out of power. The first is easily done; for the second, Seth has an army of like-minded people ? old boxwallahs, retired bureaucrats, professors, technocrats and so on ? out to help him.
Across the country, a growing number of people who had carefully kept themselves out of a murky world called politics are now marching on the streets. In Delhi, Seth and his group of friends ? led by old corporate-man Promod Chawla and former techie Anant Trivedi ? are agitating against a power tariff hike. In Mumbai, director Mahesh Bhatt is taking on the Maharashtra government for letting the July 26 deluge paralyse the city. Bangalore has its Ramesh Ramanathan, a former Citibank employee in London who is now rooting for his southern Indian hometown. And in Calcutta, chartered accountant Subhas Datta has been fighting an ongoing environmental battle with the administration.
Increasingly, men and women ? whose political involvement was restricted to the occasional living-room discussion ? are getting involved in civic and electoral matters. Taxes are high, and the quality of life is not what it used to be. Take something like power ? Seth holds forth with barely-suppressed anger on the problems posed by power cuts in Delhi, grossly inflated bills and a 10 per cent tariff hike. Clearly, India’s hitherto insular cr?me de la cr?me can take it no more. “You are sitting on money, resources, manpower ? and delivering zero,” says Seth, of the government of Delhi. “If you can’t perform, go.”
The movement in Delhi started some four years ago, when a group of eight men from the corporate world thought it was time they did something about the “state of affairs” in the country. “The High Court had then ruled that anybody who wanted to be elected to a legislative body had to declare his or her assets and liabilities,” says Promod Chawla. “We thought that was a good cause.”
The National Network of India was thus formed. It worked with the Association for Democratic Reforms, set up with the support of professors at the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, and the People’s Union for Civil Liberties, and sought to bring about a change in apathetic India. “In India, the intellectual community has never come together,” says Chawla. “Now, we are getting together ? and we are doing so because of necessity,” he says.
The reasons, clearly, vary from group to group. For Ramesh Ramanathan, it all started in 1998 with a conversation with a US-based friend, who had been to India to visit her parents, both of whom had been diagnosed with cancer. “That was the last straw. I realised I didn’t want to live away from home and family,” says the BITS Pilani alumnus.
Ramanathan runs Janaagrah ? an organisation that seeks to involve Bangalore’s citizens in governance. “Bangalore’s 50 lakh citizens cannot sit back and act as customers to the government,” says Ramanathan. “A government cannot be efficient unless there is citizen participation at every level,” he says.
The issues vary. For some, like Mahesh Bhatt, most causes are good causes. He has been speaking up for the rights of Mumbai’s dance bar girls, against censorship and for Muslims hit by communal riots. “I am a lost man looking for a cause,” he says.
Subhas Datta, on the other hand, has found his. Ecology is his passion, and Datta has filed 55 petitions since 1995 ? all for cleaning up the city of Calcutta, its neighbourhood and its environs. “I will fight for civic rights as long as I can,” he says.
These are not your Arundhati Roys ? for they are not politically-passionate beings taking on a system. They are not the Mungeri Rams either, happy with their pipe-dreams. Instead, they are all well-established parts of the system ? some of them even public faces ? who seek to raise ? and resolve ? issues.
On the face of it, it’s not an easy task. But one of the advantages of being a public figure, or an erstwhile member of the system, is the clout that you enjoy. Chawla, for instance, doesn’t have to worry about getting airtime ? he was NDTV head honcho Prannoy Roy’s class monitor in Doon School. “We network with people everyday. We keep in touch with several thousand people over email,” says Chawla.
The movement leaders make it a point to discuss issues ? and win over other members of the mostly silent upper class ? to their side. Issues such as electoral reforms or the power tariff come up when they are playing golf in the morning, or over a business lunch. One of the first platforms for discussions, for instance, was a New Year’s Eve party. “We have on our one-lakh strong email list alumni of IITs and IIMs, generals, golfers, bureaucrats, lawyers,” says Chawla. “We interact with people from CII, FICCI, leading corporate houses ? everybody.”
Anant Trivedi, an IT expert who returned to India from the United States, believes that their organisation can, at one level, strengthen instruments of government ? by promoting the right to information, pushing the whistle-blowers’ act and supporting norms for electoral reforms. “And we also have to go to the people and raise these issues with them,” he says.
There are some other ways of hitting out, too. The forum ? which is also part of an organisation called the Campaign Against Power Tariff Hike ? has decided not to pay 10 per cent of their electricity bills to protest the hike.
For the government, it’s not going to be easy to take them on, for they are worthy opponents ? with friends in all the right circles, from the bureaucracy and the police force, to the courts, media and Parliament. “We are pretty well-entrenched,” says Chawla modestly.
Not surprisingly, Seth is busy penning an epitaph for the Delhi government. “Here’s your headline,” he says. “ ‘On your bike, Sunshine. Ride into the sunset.’ ”
