Image via Wikipedia2010 was the year of scams in India - the 2G telecom swindle, Commonwealth Games, Adarsh and plenty of others.
2011 has emerged as the year of the fight against corruption - with Anna Hazare's fast for anti-corruption legislation known as the Jan Lokpal Bill and yoga guru Baba Ramdev's fast to bring back black-money stashed away in foreign banks.
The police crackdown on Baba Ramdev's popular protest was yet another signal of the undemocratic tendency of the government to crush social movements and social protests. At the same time when Ramdev's Satyagraha or soul force protest was attacked in New Delhi, 20 battalions of police were being used to crush the anti-POSCO [Pohang Iron and Steel Company] movement in Orissa, as well as to destroy the betel and vine gardens which are the basis of people's prosperous living economy that brings the small farmers Rs. 400,000 ($8,900 US) per acre.
Violence and the use of force has become the norm for the government's dealing with people's protests.
In a democracy, which is supposed to be by the people, of the people, and for the people, protests and movements are supposed to act as signals of what people want or do not want. Listening to people is the democratic duty of governments.
Corporate power
When governments fail to listen and use force against peoples' peaceful movements, they become undemocratic, they become dictatorships. In addition, when governments, who are supposed to represent the peoples' will and interest in a representative democracy, start to represent the will and interest of corporations and big business, government mutates from being of the people, by the people and for the people to becoming of the corporations, by the corporations and for the corporations.
The state is becoming a corporate state. And this mutation transforms democracy into fascism. Neo-liberal economic policies have political fallout in terms of inducing this mutation of government from being a democratic representative of peoples' interests to being an undemocratic representative of corporate interests. Not only is neo-liberalism leading to the privatisation of seeds, land, water and biodiversity, health and education, power and transport, it is leading to the privatisation of government itself. And a privatised corporate state starts to see people fighting for the public good and economic democracy as a threat.
It is in this context that we need to read the repeated statements of government ministers that peoples' protests and social movements are a threat to democracy. Social movements are raising issues about economic justice and economic democracy. Corruption is a symptom of the deepening trends of economic injustice and the undermining of economic democracy. We need to connect the dots between the diverse social movements of tribals and farmers fighting to defend their land and natural resources, the movements of workers fighting to defend jobs and livelihoods, and the new anti-corruption movements whose faces are Anna Hazare and Baba Ramdev.
Corruption is the unjust, illegal and private appropriation of public resources and public wealth, be it natural wealth, public goods and services, or financial wealth. The ecology movements, and the tribal and farmers' movements, are fighting against the corruption involved in the massive resource and land grabs taking place across the country for the mining of bauxite, coal and iron ore. The ore is to be used for mega steel plants and power plants, for super highways and luxury townships.
Farmers fighting the land grab along the Yamuna Expressway were killed on May 7. While they received a mere Rs. 300 ($7) per square meter for their land, the developers who grab the land in partnership with the government by using the 1894 colonial land acquisition law sell it for Rs. 600,000 ($13,300) per square meter.
This is corporate corruption. {Read on Al Jazeera}
