(A detailed version of this chapter in notes #301.016 on http://facebook.com/mehtarahulc )
Download this chapter 16 : http://www.righttorecall.info/301.pdf
16.1 Purpose of this chapter
The purpose of this chapter is to convince junior activists that if your activist leader is not disclosing law-drafts to reduce MNC domination, reduce poverty, reduce corruption, expel Bangladeshies etc, then your activist leader is intentionally or unintentionally wasting away your time.
Such an activist group will fail to save India. Now my goal is not ask activist to quit their activist leaders. My goal is to ask junior activists to force their activist leaders to provide the law-drafts to reduce corruption and poverty. Hopefully, I will be able to convince junior activists to force activist leaders to disclose the law-drafts, I will be to see whether the law-drafts they have proposed to reduce corruption etc will do better job or worse job compared to drafts I have proposed. If they are more efficient, I would like to adopt whole or parts of their law-drafts into my agenda. And if their law-drafts are worse, then my next step will be to ask the activist to ask their activist leaders to accept the better points in my drafts into their drafts.
Also, moment an activist leader discloses his law-drafts, I will ask him two things
· objection-1 : why does he oppose Right to Recall the authority in-charge in the draft
· objection-2 : why is he opposing the addition of following section which I call as Section-CV (CV = Citizen’s voice) with following two clauses :
| . | Section-CV : Citizens’ voice | |
| CV.1 | District Collector | If any poor, dalit, woman, senior citizen or any citizen wants a change in this law-draft, he may submit an affidavit at DC’s office and DC or his clerk will post the affidavit on the website of Prime Minister for a fee of Rs 20/- per page. |
| CV.2 | Talati (or Patwari) | If poor, dalit, woman, senior citizen or any citizen want to register his opposition to this law-draft or any section or wants to register YES-NO to any affidavit submitted in above clause, and he comes to Talati’s office with voter-ID and pays Rs 3 fee, Talati will enter YES/NO and give him a receipt. The YES-NO will be posted on the website of the Prime Minister. |
The Section-CV described above only enable to citizens to notice the voice against the proposed law-draft if there is such a voice. And the section will also enable citizens to change any law-draft in India or create any new law-draft in India. The Right to Recall the authority-in-charge in hi draft can be later extended to RTR over any and all authority. If the activist leader refuses to add the above two CV sections, I can project him as anti-common and anti-democracy. And if the activist-leader agrees to add the above two sections in his law-draft, then his group will essentially become a pro-TCP group. I will support him.
I am interested in adding RTR law-drafts into the agenda of existing groups and I am not interested in stealing their activists into my RRP. Why? Because I have neither money nor time to run office space needed to provide meeting and working place to the junior activists. Real estate is important and expensive, and will become bottleneck in my plan to publicize RTR laws if I insist that activists musty join RRP. But if I can convince junior activists to inject RTR laws into the agenda of their groups, then their groups real estate will get employed to publicize RTR laws. This will bring down costs by over 99%. So it is best that I somehow convince junior activists to add the RTR laws in their groups’ agenda and not force RTR activists to leave that group. What if that activist leader refuses to add RTR laws in his agenda? Then my step will be to convince that junior activist to join a group which supports RTR so that real estate and communication links of that group can be used to publicize RTR law-drafts. As good activists start leaving anti-RTR groups and join RTR groups, the strength of anti-RTR-groups will decrease and those of pro-RTR-groups will increase.
I will describe more on this later.
16.2 All efforts are wasted in absence of law-drafts
In absence of drafts, all efforts of activists and citizens go waste. One of the worst examples is “draftless Right to Recall” idea floated by Jay Prakash Narayan in 1950-1977.
JPN claimed that he was ardent supporter of RTR. He surely supported RTR over MPs, MLAs. But it is not clear if he ever supported RTR on PM, CMs, Supreme Court judges, High Court judges, District Police Chiefs, District Police Commissioner, RBI Chairman etc. But one thing was sure – he always opposed giving drafts which when passed by Parliament would create RTR in India. From 1950 to 1977, for twenty seven long years, JPN claimed that he was ardent supporter of RTR, but Jayprakash Narayan never found few hours needed to write draft of RTR laws he wanted. In the end, the junior activists who gave time to JPN ended up wasting away all their time.
The young activists spent precious years of their lives campaigning for RTR under JPN. Many even went to prison for years. During 1977 election, one of the chief planks of JPN and the Janata Party he campaigned for were RTR. RTR was also there in the manifesto of Janata Party in 1977. And after Janata Party came into power, when junior activists asked Ministers to enact RTR, the Ministers formed a committee to propose RTR drafts. The committee wasted 2 years and then merely proposed utterly useless drafts. JPN never proposed his own draft even after Janata Party won 1977 elections. Nor did he asked students to surround Parliament House and gherao it till MPs pass RTR drafts. All in all, JPN only wrote a few letters to the then PM Moraraji Desai requesting him to enact RTR laws. And during this time, the intellectuals diverted the attention of activists on other petty issues like secularism, communalism etc. Finally, the movement for RTR got dispersed. Decades of efforts of junior activists went waste. But if junior activists had forced their leaders to provide drafts first in 1977, and if the RTR drafts were ready before 1977 election, then within days after Janata Party came into power, the junior activists could have been successful in forcing the MPs to enact those pre-agreed drafts. The labor of activists would not have gone waste.
Another case of lost cause is 1996 election when Atal Bihari Vajpai gave promise that he would remove “Fear, Hunger and Corruption” in 3 years. Lakhs of activists worked day and night for this hopes. Bit sadly, activists did not ask ABV to provide the law-drafts by which administration would reduce poverty and corruption. The labor was simply wasted away. ABV and his Ministers proved no different from Congress Ministers.
The advantage of having pre-agreed drafts is that it if after coming into power, if the leader refuses to pass these drafts, he will immediately get exposed before the activists. The atmosphere at the tip of the moment when a new leader comes into power is very charged and citizens are willing to spend time at that moment. If pre-agreed drafts are ready, then junior activists can take advantage of the fact that citizens right after declaration of election results are full of energy. If the pre-agreed drafts are not ready, then junior activists and citizens will loose that precious moment. E.g. if there were pre-agreed drafts in 1977, then atmosphere on the day of victory was so full of energy, that activists could have easily forced the then PM to enact those laws. And if activists had forced ABV before 1996 elections to provide the law-drafts to reduce corruption, then atmosphere on the day ABV won was so full of energy, that activists would have easily forced ABV to enact those laws within few days. But the intellectuals misguided activists and told them that law-drafts are not needed. And so all the efforts of activists went waste.
Whom do the law-drafts hurt? The law-drafts never hurt us commons. The drafts do not hurt junior activists and they also do not hurt honest activist leaders. The drafts only hurt activist leaders who plan to evade the commitments. And the drafts also hurt the intellectuals who are agents of such leaders and paid to mislead activists. So the absence of drafts benefit only dishonest leaders and agents of such dishonest leaders. I request all junior activists to keep this fact in mind while analyzing the reasons activist leaders give in not disclosing drafts of the laws they claim they support.
16.3 Draftless activists : an engineer without deign
Say you have a plot of say 1000 sq yards and you want to make a bungalow on it. Say you go to an engineer and specify your requirements. The engineer makes you bold promises that bungalow will have spacious rooms, spacious galleries, good bathrooms etc. Next you ask him to provide design and cost estimates. And say the engineer replies “Please don’t bother about the details. Just give me non-revocable power of attorney over the plot for next 2-3 years, and in 3 years, I will provide you an excellent bungalow !!”. No engineer would give such an irresponsible reply. But strangely and sadly all election candidates and their activist supporters gave such replies for past 60 years. All candidates for past 60 years told voters that voters must not bother about drafts of the law-draft that that candidate will enact once he goes into the Parliament or Assembly. IOW, he wants 5 years of non-revocable exclusive representation rights, does not even want to provide the DRAFTS of the laws he would propose !! All in all, draftless wonders are similar to engineers who refuse to give design and ask for land/money.
In construction, it is necessary to give design to ensure that design is stable and not prone to faults. Likewise, in administration, the draft-law is necessary to analyze if the draft-law will worsen the situation or improve it. Every activist leaders knows the importance of drafts.
16.4 Draftless activists: doctors who don’t give out medicine names
Say you a patient has illness. And say patient goes to a doctor who gives detailed description on the illness, its causes etc and then refuses to give the name of medicine. Is that doctor any good?
The draftless activist leaders are not much different. It is known that many problems like poverty and corruption require change in laws, and change in laws need drafts to be passed in Assembly, Parliament. And for that drafts is must. Despite this, most activist leaders refuse to give the drafts needed to reduce corruption, poverty. These draftless activist leaders are similar to doctors who do not give medicine names.
Just as patient needs the name of the medicine to decide if the medicine has any severe side effects, same way citizens need to see the draft of the law-draft to decide if draft has more side-effect or more plus points. If a activist leader refuses to give drafts of the law-draft he claims will reduce problem, then that activist leader is not giving opportunity to citizens to verify its side effects. In such a case, he is worse that doctor who doesn’t give medicine. He is similar to doctor to believes in giving medicine to patients without giving him opportunity to decide its side effects.
16.5 The Anna’s method — show the draft, and ask activists not to read it !!!
In the category of “draftless leaders”, a new variation came — Janlokpal Movement of The Anna. The Anna did propose a draft. But he ordered that draft must be in English only and English too should be so difficult that even lawyer of London cant understand. The law-draft-drafts do not need to be complicated. eg take US Constitution; any 10th class student will understand every word of it. The Anna did finally gave Hindi draft, but that was after I have 4 advertisement in Indian Express demanding Hindi draft and threw challenge that I will ask The Anna to read one page of that 40-page Janlokpal draft in public.
The Anna asked the activists to just rally, shout slogans etc and not really understand and explain the draft. The Anna discouraged the activists were discouraged from reading drafts and that’s why, not even 0.1% of the activists had actually read the draft. There is NOT even one video where The Anna or The Chhote Anne would read the draft line by line and explain how the law-draft would be of help. This was avoidance was necessary because if the law-draft was read to the activists in detail, most would have seen that the law-draft is nothing but a grade-A nonsense in absence of Right to Recall Janlokpal clauses.
So the variation from “draftless activism” was “give a draft, but give it in complex English that no activist can understand, and ask activists not to read/discuss the draft, but read only the summaries”. And the summaries will consists of nothing but loads of lies , claims, declarations and simpletons.
In contrast, at RRP, I request volunteers to read and understand the drafts word by word, letter by letter. The drafts are written in simple English and also translated in Hindi, Gujarati and several languages. And activists are requested to explain the drafts to other people word by word, letter by letter. Our movement is genuinely a draft based movement — unlike Janlokpal where draft was only a fake-show.
16.6 It is easier to spread the movement using law-drafts then using leaders as postor boys
Say I am an activist leader and I have convinced Mr. A that I am trustworthy and I can reduce corruption after several hours of interaction.. Now if Mr. A tries to convince Mr. B that I am a trustworthy leader and I can reduce corruption, then it will be an uphill task because Mr. B has never spoken to me or met me or seen me.
In contrast, if I convince an activist A that some law-draft such TCP, RTR etc can reduce corruption, then activist A can easily convince B about the merits of proposed law-draft. Why? Because entire proposed law-draft is self-contained and the draft speaks for itself. Whether the draft will have too many adverse side-effects or more plus points is something that activist-B can reason without contacting me (the draft author in this example). Thus popularizing law-draft is difficult initially, but later it can spread itself with much ease. Where as popularizing a person as icon needs too much communication time and will eventually need support of wealthy individuals who own newspapers and TV-channels. This will make whole campaign a hostage of elitemen.
16.7 Elitemen prefer individual over law-drafts; activists should do the opposite
The wealthy individuals prefer to support individuals rather than ideas as icons can be broken with ease, while ideas are difficult to break once become popular. So when wealthy individuals spend money to project a person, they have some control in hands. They can later threaten the iconic person of running a smear campaign against him. But if a wealthy individual invests behind a law-draft such as RTR or TCP, then later he has no means to run a smear campaign against the proposed law-draft. So the elitemen and their pet intellectuals prefer to invest after an icon.
But the junior activists should do just the opposite – they should invest their time and efforts in publicizing law-drafts and not icons, for iconic persons can be later subject to blackmail and threats and force him to betray the activists. Whereas no one can blackmail law-drafts, no one can threaten law-draft. And a law-draft will never ever backstab the activists.
16.8 Drafts are only way to deal with “your proposal is unconstitutional” argument
Whenever someone makes a pro-citizen proposal like RTR over Supreme Court judges or RTR over PM or MRCM etc, intellectuals will jump stating that “RTR Supreme judges is unconstitutional” and “RTR PM is unconstitutional”, “MRCM is unconstitutional” etc etc. Now these intellectuals have 12 hours a day to improve their talk-smartness (vaak-paTuta aka vaaNi-chaaturya) as they get salary for doing nothing, while we activists have to make real money by working in real economy and so we have no time for sophistry. So how can this “everything you said is unconstitutional” people be answered and silenced?
The most time efficient way to silence them is by actually putting the DRAFT of the law-draft before them and asking the, “please show me which clause of this draft is unconstitutional”? Now of course, your draft must be worded in such a away that every clause is Constitutional. But if you do take this care, then intellectual will not be able to point out even one clause that is unconstitutional. And in such case, within few minutes the audience will be convinced that your draft is constitutional and the intellectual is just a liar. But if you have no draft, then audience will remain under doubt.
16.9 Wrongs reasons for not giving drafts
I have been approaching many activist leaders over past decade and asking them to give the drafts of the laws they propose. They cook up 100s of excuses for not giving the law-drafts they say will reduce corruption/poverty. I have enumerated some of the reasons and given the rebuttal, so that concerned junior activists can argue against these reasons, and force their activist leaders to provide the drafts :
Excuse 1 for not giving law-drafts : Commons in India are stupid and wont understand law-drafts
Rebuttal : In medicine, patients are not informed enough to know every detail of every medicine. But at least the information is kept on internet for patients to see. An at least doctors are told every detail about every medicine. If citizens are morons and stupid (as the activist leader says), then you are free not put the descriptions of the law-drafts in your speeches to citizens. And do you tell your junior activists about those law-drafts at all? If not, are you claiming that your activists are also stupid and not capable of understanding the law-drafts?
Excuse 2 for not giving law-drafts : Drafts are useless.
Rebuttal : The hunger in India came down only after GoI in mid 1940s published the drafts of ration card system. Many undertrial prisoners got release only after draft of the law-draft which gave them relief was passed. Education became widespread only after series of drafts (legislations as well as Gazette Notifications) were passed to make education more accessible. I can give 1000s of examples to show that law-drafts play important role in the lives of us commons. I can summarize all these 1000s of examples as follows : a poor common has only one set of friends – honest officers in Govt ; and these honest officers have only one set of weapons to help the commons – law-drafts. If the law-drafts are bad, then there is nothing an honest officer can do. If law-drafts are good, then he can help commons. So an activists leader says that drafts are not needed or useless, he is intentionally or unintentionally speaking a white lie. I request junior activists to explain him why law-drafts are useful, harmless and also must.
Excuse 3 for not giving law-drafts : Drafts will enable opponents to find flaws
Rebuttal : The flaws should not exist to begin with. And if opponent is finding flaws, he is doing favor to citizens – because what if such a law-drafts passes with flaws? So all in all, drafts must be given so that right or wrong, opponents can find flaws.
Excuse 4 for not giving law-drafts : Law Dept is supposed to write the law-drafts
Rebuttal : This is a white lie. Anyone can write law-draft. There is no article in Constitution which says that only Law Dept can write draft. In fact, any MP can write law-draft and present it as private member’s bill and any citizen can request an MP to put his law-draft as private member’s bill. In fact, it is duty of every citizen, or at least aware citizens, to take active interest in changing law-drafts.
Excuse 5 for not giving law-drafts : Activists should focus on charity etc, not focus on law-drafts
Rebuttal : I have rebutted this excuse in previous chapter.
Excuse 6 for not giving law-drafts : Activists should focus on reducing corruption, not law-drafts
Rebuttal : I have rebutted this excuse in previous chapter.
Excuse 7 for not giving law-drafts : Activists should focus on improving laws, not on law-drafts
Rebuttal : I have rebutted this excuse in previous chapter.
16.10 What if your activist leader does agree to give law-drafts?
I would keep all my cards open, lest a junior activist feels cheated. My purpose is to convert every junior activist into campaigner for RTR, TCP, MRCM law-drafts. And this needs communication links and also some office space. And I want to use communication links and office space of existing parties, NGOs etc for purpose of spreading information on TCP etc.
One of my intermediate goal is to convince junior activists that draftless activist is utter waste of time in reducing corruption, poverty. And so they should force their activist leaders to publish the law-drafts they think will reduce poverty/corruption. And once the activist leaders publish a draft other TCP, I will ask activist leaders why they refuse to add Section-CV as follows in their law-drafts.
| . | Section-CV : Citizens’ voice | |
| CV.1 | District Collector | If any poor, woman, dalit or any citizen-voter wants a change in this law, he may submit an affidavit at DC’s office and DC or his clerk will post the affidavit on the website of Prime Minister for a fee of Rs 20/- per page. |
| CV.2 | Talati (or Patwari) | If any poor, woman, dalit or any citizen-voter want to register his opposition to this law-draft or any section or wants to register YES-NO to any affidavit submitted in above clause, and he comes to Talati’s office with voter-ID and pays Rs 3 fee, Talati will enter YES/NO and give him a receipt. The YES-NO will be posted on the website of the Prime Minister. |
If the activist leader refuses to add Section-CV in his draft, then he will end up providing a proof that he is anti-common. Or else, why should he oppose letting us citizens register NO on the law/clauses he proposes? Refusal to add Section-CV in law-drafts will ruin the reputation of an activist-leader before all pro-poor pro-common junior activists in his group.
And now if the activist leader agrees to add section-CV in his proposed law-draft, then he will become a campaigner for TCP law. And thus my goal of using part of his organization to politicize TCP will be served. In addition, the draft that the activist-leader gives may invariably have some nodal officer in-charge. I will request him to add clauses by which citizens can expel/replace that officer. If he agrees, then part of his organization will end up working for campaigning of RTR laws. And if activist leader refuses, then again he will end up ruining his reputation before his junior activists.
16.11 Summary
I have explained my motives in detail. My motive is to convince important of TCP, RTR and MRCM law-drafts and force every organization to become campaigner for TCP, RTR and MRCM laws by appealing to the inner conscious of the selfless junior activists.
Now so junior activist has to decide now whether he wants to ask his activist leader to give drafts of the laws to reduce MNC domination, reduce poverty, improve weapon manufacturing in India or he wants to continue with his clone negative, insufficient draftless activism and waste away time. Wasting away time can be fatal because US s not wasting time. Iraq and Libya are captured, Iran is next and then comes India. US is developing better and better weapons everyday and will not wait once his weapons become capable of doing an Iraq on India. Wasting time on pro-MNC laws like Lokpal, wasting away time in teaching kids etc now may prove royally fatal.