We Indians take a salacious interest in non-standard behaviour because in our regimented, hierarchical society, difference looks like wilful deviance. So, from the moment when it became clear that the students’ agitation had tapped an unstoppable force and the ruling party was no longer an immovable object, pompous questions arose. Why aren’t the cockroaches forming an actual political party? Why do they want to remain a pressure group? Aren’t their intentions honourable?
Received wisdom holds that legitimacy in representational democracy flows solely from electoral victory. Political actors outside of the electoral system are deemed to be useless, and up to no good—Naxals and cockroaches messing up a beautiful democracy.
This democracy is portrayed as a neat system of checks and balances created by counterpoising its three main Estates—the Executive and the Legislature, which are descended from the royalty and nobility of pre-modern times, and the Judiciary, which has taken on one of the roles of the clergy. But the checks and balances have crumbled like termite-infested timber and part of the Fourth Estate, the press, has also fallen in a heap.
The future belongs to the Fifth Estate, which consists of restless resistance groups in Brownian motion, drawn together by gravity—trade unions, farmers’ unions, advocacy collectives, lone warrior academics and creative artists, nonprofits, fact-checkers, peacemongers, whistleblowers and much-transferred honest administrators, social media publics, independent journalists and analysts who challenge State narratives with facts. Individually, each component looks like a minority. Together, they form a cohort. Fittingly, the word originally described a military unit.
India’s Fifth Estate is buzzing. Seventeen years after it was enacted, the Right to Education Act could finally mean something for schoolchildren. Mafias which have toiled since the 1970s to reduce higher education to paid-for certification are threatened. To widen the scope of the question, was the grand edifice of Indian democracy ever for real? And does legitimacy flow only from multiparty politics?
The Fifth Estate is always pooh-poohed as undignified and ineffectual, even an impediment. But it is to institutional politics what street theatre is to playing Shakespeare. It bypasses formalities and is more alive. It turned Jantar Mantar into a village square for public discussion—an echo of republicanism in ancient India, in the time of the Buddha. Its cascading effects are now influencing all of Indian politics.
Looking back, so many of India’s great transformations—and transformative legislations—owe to cockroaches past. Environmental movements have changed how we think of the commons, and given it a central place in policymaking.
Sunderlal Bahuguna and Chandi Prasad Bhatt’s Chipko movement led to a 15-year ban on felling trees in the Himalayas. Medha Patkar, Baba Amte and others who opposed big dams highlighted the crisis of mass displacement. The Supreme Court advocate M C Mehta sued the government repeatedly to contain industrial pollution. Anil Agarwal and Sunita Narain launched dedicated media for the environment. Together, such people have done more for public health—the eventual goal of environmental action—than the 20 environment ministers so far. Stories about tree-felling make banner headlines today because of their work.
In 2005, a cluster of movements led to the Right to Information Act and the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act. The Right to Food campaign secured the National Food Security Act in 2013. These movements featured stellar talent: Aruna Roy, Nikhil Dey, H D Shourie, Jean Drèze, Jayati Ghosh, Prabhat Patnaik, Reetika Khera, Harsh Mander, Colin Gonsalves and many more.
Also in 2005, the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act flowed from the groundwork done since 1981 by the Lawyers Collective. Launched at a time when sexual violence was heavily underreported, pioneers Indira Jaising and Anand Grover fostered an enabling legal environment to support women at home and in the workplace. After decades of combat in court, homosexuality was decriminalised by the initiative of individuals like Navtej Singh Johar and NGOs like Naz Foundation. In 1993, manual scavenging became illegal largely due to the tireless efforts of one man: Bezwada Wilson.
In 2006, following decades of campaigning by Adivasis and allied groups, the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers Act recognised traditional community claims to forest resources. Six decades after independence, the colonial view of seeing forests as ownerless wildernesses fit for extractive commerce was challenged.
Also in 2006, former Director General of the Border Security Force Prakash Singh, who had sued the Union of India in the Supreme Court, won a writ of mandamus outlining steps to professionalise the police and free it of political control. Had they been taken in the last two decades, the government would not have been able to unleash maximum violence on students in Jantar Mantar. The Supreme Court has now formed a committee to probe the excesses. If meaningful change results, it will again be thanks to the Fifth Estate—in this case, the disciplined students who took a savage beating without striking back.
Despite the magnitude of their contributions, isn’t it strange that members of the Fifth Estate—who are too numerous to name here—have always been rhetorically dismissed as ‘jholawallahs’ and ‘andolanjeevis’? Is it because the other estates of democracy uncomfortably know that they have surrendered their functions to the Fifth Estate, out of crass indolence?
Pratik Kanjilal | SPEAKEASY | For years, the author has been speaking easy to a surprisingly tolerant public
(Views are personal)
