The Sweeper: Hazare, brooms and the culture of corruption

There was a rather shocking newsreport in The Hindu a couple of days ago. The report indicated that the sad story of the widows of Vrindavan often does not end with their death. On the contrary it continues beyond, since there are no provisions, at least in two of the Government sponsored institutions, for the last rites of these destitute women. The result of this gap is that their corpses are carried away by sweepers, cut into pieces, and then disposed of in jute bags.

What was also shocking however was the tone of the first of paragraphs of this report, that, after reporting on the fact, thought fit to mention, that “This, too, is done only after the inmates give money to the sweeper!” In making this statement, the report added one more figure to the list of villains of the piece. There was, the families of these women, who abandoned or forced these women to destitute existence; the proprietors of the homes they live in; the organizations set up to care for these women; and finally, the sweepers who dispose of the bodies. And yet, because they are the final link of this chain of shame, the sweepers appear as the greatest villains of all. The sweepers are villainous here, since they seem to lack the basic humanity of disposing of the body without asking for what, this sentence suggests, is essentially a bribe.

The question that we need to ask however is why is it that the sweeper is being effectively asked to bear the burden of humanity that has been shrugged off by the rest of society? Why was no thought given to the fact that in addition to take on a responsibility that is not a part of the services they offer as part of their contract of employment, by taking on the responsibility to discard the corpse the humanity of the sweeper is in effect compromised by the fact of their having to cut up a human corpse like it were that of an animal? Catering to the dead is often seen as a mark of respect to the dead. However, it can also be thought of as catering to the sentiments of the living. By treating the dead as if they were still alive, we renew in the living the sense of value to life and the human body. By having to dispose of the bodies of the widows in this manner, it is not just the widows, but the sweepers as well who are effectively being dehumanized.

The reason these questions were not asked by the reporter who penned the story, is perhaps because of the space the wielder of the broom holds in our society. The position of the sweeper is not an open category job opportunity. It falls within the reserved category. It is reserved often for those that are deemed untouchable, or nearly untouchable. This fact was strikingly demonstrated in the course of the protests by upper-caste participants against the Mandal Commission’s recommendations, as well as general protests against reservation. The message they sought to transmit, was that thanks to this policy of reservations, they would be unable to gain respectable jobs as engineers and doctors, and have to take up the shameful jobs of being sweepers. The broom then, was a mark of shame, while at the same time indicating that there exists no need for us to necessarily respect, or treat as humans, those who generally wield the broom.

There have been other uses of the broom however, where there is an attempt to use the symbol of the broom as a positive element. Very often though, these uses have not detracted from the generally negative symbolic value of the broom. On the contrary, they rely on the negative connotation that the broom generally holds in our society. An example of this was the use of the broom in a recent art installation by Raj Bhandare, a Goan artist, in favour of Hazare’s movement against corruption. Titled ‘Anna Logue’ the installation referenced the ‘shit’ that the country was in, and incorporated into the work, a number of elements necessary for us to resolve the problem. One of these elements was the broom, incorporated as an ‘an appeal to one and all that we need to take it up upon us to Cleanse the System.’ In this arrangement, the broom gains importance primarily because it is ‘us’ respectable folk, who are taking it up. It is clear from the installation’s phrasing of the broom element, that the citizens do not normally take up the broom, that the taking up of the broom is an extra-ordinary circumstance, and it is for the general benefit of society that we must now debase ourselves to clean up the shit that we may have contributed to. In sum, the power of our action lies because of the negative value that is normally associated with the broom and the everyday, or ordinary, wielder of the broom.

The wielder of the broom then is often not understood to be human. The place of the wielder of the broom is to do their job, and their job is not regarded as the list of duties set out within a contract of employment. No, their job is to serve, without question. If this servant asks for reimbursement for extra services rendered, that is to say, demand their right, the response of the rest of the system is to sit back in shock. This demand is seen as the demand for a bribe, it is seen as corruption.

Since the past few weeks, it appears as if the Hazare saga has come, or will eventually come to an end. However, regardless of the presence of Hazare, the unquestioning attitude as to what comprises corruption continues. At the height of the Hazare mania that overtook the country, asking these questions was tantamount to justifying corruption. Perhaps it would now be a more convenient time to interrogate ourselves on what is our understanding of corruption, and if our notions of corruption, like those of the reporter for TheHindu, are not twined with a morality that stems from our own limited upper-strata of society locations.

(A version of this post was first published in the Gomantak Times 12 Jan 2012)

Playing with the Past: Reparations, Positive discrimination and Democracy

A couple of days ago I had the opportunity to listen in on a discussion on the issue of reparations demanded by African-Americans for the sufferings endured by that social-group in the USA. The presenter was rather emphatic that while one could morally sympathize with the demand, it was a political non-starter. Rather than look at the issue from the issue of success or failure however, it would perhaps make sense to explore the implications of the political demand for reparations. Such a discussion of reparations makes sense for us in Goa, for a couple of reasons. First, because the idea of reparations requires the identification of a definite group that would then receive presumably regular installments of money, it is similar to the Indian system of reservations. True, reservations is not about the provision of an income but it does involve similar bureaucratic processes of identification and subsequent support of entitled populations. A discussion on reparations could thus twine with a larger debate on the much-loathed reservation system. Secondly, it could also respond to the suggestion that was cursorily made, a couple of years ago, of reparations to be made to those who suffered the brunt of the early misadventures of Portuguese colonialism in the territory.

A useful entry point into this contemplation of the idea of reparations would be to try and locate it within a broader context. Can reparations be seen as a part of positive discrimination? Reparations seems like it could be a part of positive discrimination, since it seeks to redress the wrongs of people who we see (for the Afro-Americans in the US context, and the Dalits in the Indian) as having suffered historical wrongs, and hence are at the lower end of the socio-economic ladder today. But to see positive discrimination in this light would be quite a mistake, since it pushes positive discrimination into the trap of humanitarian aid; rather than an exercise in egalitarianism that it ought to be.

In a discussion that inspired this column, political scientist Neera Chandhoke makes a crystal-clear distinction between the two. She points out that humanitarianism is concerned not with closing the gap that perpetuates inequalities, but with transferring some of the benefits from the well-off to those in dire straits. Egalitarianism, on the other hand, is a relational concept that focuses on lessening the gap. When incorporated into law or a justice system, humanitarianism endorses the handing out of favours that flow from good intentions. Egalitarianism on the other hand would result in a justice system that prevents the systemic production of the inequalities that it encounters, that may or may not be a result of historical wrongs.

Reparations therefore, cannot be a part of a system of positive discrimination. A system of egalitarian justice is not going to dole out money to you, merely because your ancestors arguably suffered some terrible injustice in the past. If your present socio-economic condition is seriously hampered as opposed to other groups alone, can one think of a system of incentives through which the gap of inequality is bridged.

The argument for reparations however, achieves another, perhaps more pernicious goal. It mobilizes people under the banner of a single community, erasing the class (and other) differences that may exist among them. The goal of this group is to continue receiving what are now perceived as benefits, rather than rights to enjoy equality. Within India we know of such groups as ‘vote banks’. These vote banks emerge however not because those who are seeking reparations, or reservations for that matter, are sly comfort-seekers. On the contrary, that they operate in this way is an outcome of the manner in which democracy is understood. Thus Chandhoke observes that in the Indian context, ‘social justice as a component of egalitarianism, which ideally should include land reform, income generation policies, redressal of inequality and securing the well being of the disprivileged, has been collapsed into reservations in educational institutions and in government jobs. Reservations, which should have formed one component of social justice, have come to substitute for social justice'.

Once cast in this manner, those who are at the receiving end of the stick, have little option but to work within the rules of the game. As she observes ‘reservations in effect have proved a soft option for political elites, who are reluctant to carry out deep-rooted changes in society’. The failure to carry out deep-rooted changes means that while superficially a person may benefit from reservation, in a good number of cases, the stigma of being a Scheduled caste continues to stick. Similarly for the Africa-American person in America, who may be successful, but often-time may have to deal with a social stigma that is hard to erase.

Indeed, by virtue of making reservations the only option for the Indian dalit, reservations have ritualized caste humiliation in the public sphere, and also ensured that caste will never go away. Anti-reservationists may see reservations as a free lunch ticket, but in fact the process through which one has to identify oneself as Scheduled Caste, and then carry that label through one’s educational life, is a terribly humiliating experience. Speaking as it does to a humanitarian justice system, reparations reinforce the roles of the elite and the subaltern, the eternally damned and the eternally superior. The demand for reparations therefore indicates a deeper malaise with the kind of political systems we have. While democratic in form, they are not dynamic polities that move forward, but are polities caught within a vicious cycle that repeat the past in differing forms.

The demand for reparations then is not the sign of a healthy democracy. In some contexts it could be the ploy of social elites attempting to create political capital by creating a community that has allegedly been harmed in the past. This lays a wonderful foundation for fascism. In other cases, it is a revelation of the manner in which democracy rather than fulfilling a egalitarian function, serves merely a humanitarian one.

Positive discrimination is a good idea, and one that involves a wide variety of measures, that also takes into consideration the baggage of the past. Reparations on the other hand are just a bad, bad idea!

(A version of this essay was first published in the Gomantak Times, 31 March 2010)