Hyderabad: "When people fight against corruption, it is important to understand what corruption is. Is corruption just an accounting problem, a financial irregularity? Or, is it a currency of social inequality or concentration of power?" asked noted author and social activists Arundhati Roy while commenting on people's support for Anna Hazare's movement against corruption.
Addressing mediapersons here on Sunday, the Booker prize winner answered several questions pertaining to the spurt of rebellions across the country and the current political scenario. When asked about Anna Hazare's protest, she said she was not wearing the 'I am Anna' cap.
"A woman who sells samosas on a cart has to bribe the local policeman for permission to sell it in that place. My worry is that with the Lokpal creating a bureaucracy to monitor hundreds of officials from the prime minister to the lower-rung employees, people will have to bribe two systems. The Lokpal might just create two oligarchies."
An increasing number of corporate players are taking up the government's role by taking up road-laying, electricity supply, etc and hence corporates, media and NGOs, who play a pivotal role in opinion formation, must also come under the scanner of Lokpal, the author of God of Small Things said.
"The events of last week - Hazare's arrest and eruption of protests across the country need to be examined closely. The government is, in fact, helping Hazare stage his protest by letting him dispatch video messages from the prison. The Delhi municipality cleans up the Ramlila Maidan ahead of Anna's protest there while staying overnight in the Jantar Mantar area to protest is impossible if you are a Bhopal gas tragedy victim," Roy said.
She, however, opposed the arrest of Hazare as he had not committed any crime. The author had a dig at the media, saying it was being unfair by showcasing the protests of the influential and ignoring the voices of the poor. "Right now, 10,000 people are protesting at Koodankulam.
They will not get even five minutes on our news channels. Maoists and Gandhi followers are protesting against the same injustice of the government. While the Anna protests are coming from the top layer of the society, the Maoist protests are from the grass roots."
When asked about her opinion on the issue, Roy said the movement had a long history of radical trouble and the protests involved women. She hoped it would not turn out to be just another political movement for a smaller state such as those of Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh.
She found it disturbing that students were taking their lives for the movement. "Arundhati Roy is not a voice of the voiceless. There are no voiceless people. There are deliberately-silenced people. People losing lands and livelihood to corporate people will not protest with slogans such as 'Vande Mataram' and 'Bharat Mata Ki Jai' she remarked.
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