Anatomy and Social Agency of the RG Kar Movement

Arindom Mookerjee

“Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already”
—Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte

[The brutal rape and murder of a young doctor in the premises of RG Kar hospital and the subsequent safe of misdeeds that have flung open has aroused the conscience of the city of Calcutta and awakened the spirit of righteousness like no other events in the recent past. The quest for a fair trial has morphed into a demand for justice and as the dialectics of domination and resistance rages on in the streets of the city, a Movement has taken shape and fledgling by all accounts. The secrets of coordinated collective action with a capacity to threaten, if not disrupt, the established status quo lies as much in the ‘collective identity’ constructivist approach as in its Marxist credentials, the latter not being a proxy for CPIM sympathisers but rather of the greater renaissance ethos of Bengal.

The Movement, led by junior doctors, has developed a wider ecosystem and found legitimacy from the moral authority vested in them by the people of Bengal. Those rattled by it scoff at any talk of its transformative potential, let alone change. After all, the Anna Hazare (Lok Pal) movement’s most recognisable outcome was Arvind Kejriwal. And people know how that has panned out. Even the anchors of the Movement have never alluded to transformative aspirations. Justice is all they want. Yet, to the optimist, the dust of change is within the realm of imagination. There is the palpable realisation that the system, in its present disposition, cannot be ‘just’. In fact, it is doing everything in its power to thwart and distort the course of justice. Although not high-pitch, the imperative of change is implicit in their demand for justice.]

In capitalist America, the Occupy Wall Street movement began on 17 September 2011 and continued for 59 daystill 11 November 2011. It was a populist movement against economic inequality and corporate money-politics nexus. Thousands of people moved into NYC’s Financial District, set up tents and organised a system of communication. The protest spread nation-wide and more than a thousand cities and towns had Occupy demonstrations. In communist China, the Umbrella Movement occupied the streets in Hong Kong for 79 days in 2014. Protestors were mainly university students and the younger generation, who camped in the populated streets and demanded fully free democratic elections in this Chinese SAR (Special Administrative Region). Calcutta has been on occupy mode for more than 50 days now.

All three are non-violent protest movements. Hong Kongers occupying the city’s financial district, sang ‘Do You Hear the People Sing?’ from Les Miserables. School and university students demonstrated by day and were pictured doing their homework in their tents by night. OWS protesters picked up litter from the demonstrations in order to keep the streets and parks clean. The protestors in Calcutta sang ‘Karar oi Louha Kopat’. Senior doctors managed Emergency and other hospital functions as the junior doctors staged the protest. In Shyambazar, alternate outdoor clinics were organised to provide service to the needy. Calcuttans poured out on the streets and protested through the language of poetry, song and dance in peaceful sit-ins and marches.

All three had to face brutal police action and state-sponsored repression. For OWS, declassified government documents reveal extensive surveillance of OWS-related groups across the country and a tally of almost 8000 Occupy-affiliated arrests. The umbrellas that were used for passive resistance against police tear gas, pepper spray and batons became international symbols of peaceful protests. Calcutta police, who are complicit with and part of the state machinery to destroy evidence, has also reacted with similar violence and brutality with a litany of threats, fake cases and unlawful arrests.

All three movements received and has been sustained by a surge of popular support, making them people’s movements ‘from below’. OWS protesters acted on consensus-based decisions made at the general assembly whose meetings involved OWS working and affinity groups and open to public participation. The Zuccotti Park camp evolved to include such amenities as free meals, wireless internet and a lending library. Facilities that the park lacked, such as bathrooms and laundry machines, were donated by local residents. The Movement in Calcutta is also being guided and enriched by a series of mass conventions. Every time the Hong Kong police tried to control, there was a surge of public support for the core protest groups, mobilised by social and other forms of media.

It is interesting to note the constituents that have propelled the Movements. Scholarship around collective discontent, inequality and authoritarian leadership transitions have tended to draw on the Davies’ inverse J-curve hypothesis (James C Davies, Toward a Theory of Revolution, 1962) which argues that collective rebellion of individuals are more likely to take place when the gap between expectations and reality widens. It is extremely unlikely those in extreme poverty will be able to overturn a government. Change comes not from the very bottom of the social hierarchy, but from somewhere in the middle. The Arab Spring, for example, was driven by people from the younger age group who experienced a chasm between what their education promised and what autocratic governments delivered. The core of the Umbrella Movement was middle to upper middle strata educated by liberal curriculum and exposed to democratic principles. ‘Occupy Wall Street’ too came from people in the middle. More than a third of the demonstrators on the May Day ‘Occupy’ march in 2011 had annual earnings of more than $100,000 (Richard Reeves, Brookings Institution). The RG Kar protests are being led by the medical fraternity in Calcutta and the Movement is being swelled not by the traditionally marginalised but by educated city-dwellers who form the bulk of the ‘middle-class.

Using a Marxian lens to study the on-going Movement has a dual purpose. First, it establishes the fact that this is not a narrative about the Left revival in the state. That objective is nested in the students and youth movement that is being pursued in support of the doctors’ movement by SFI and DYFI. The second objective is to underscore the fact that the Left has had a profound influence (in content and grammar, norm and form of the Movement) and that the Movement draws heavily from Leftist tenets, philosophy and organisation. While the conditions and context of the Movement is not out of classical Marxian understanding of deterministic history and economic cycles, the composition and class character that it has assumed and the trajectory it has followed has the looming influence of the Left.

RaatDokhol (Reclaiming the Night) had brought out the people from the home to the streets. Led by the women of the city, the people, cutting across age, gender and socio-economic position, occupied the streets at night in a spontaneous expression of indignation and empowerment. This at a time when the ruling dispensation was proclaiming work restrictions on women. The stand was deliberate and the position of the ruling party was spelled out from the highest level–the CM, who besides being the health and police minister, is a woman no less. The alienation was complete. The protests assumed a mass character.

RaatDokholcatalysed resentment and triggered a deluge of revelations on the misdeeds of the ruling class widely known to all but seldom attributed. While justice for the raped and murdered doctor was at the centre of the coalescence, it also was a mirror to the systemic and organised corruption and malpractices the TMC had brazenly institutionalised. The masses that had gathered for the doctor now had more reasons to stick together. They too are victims; they too are sufferers and they too have been stabbed again and again in practically every walk of life by the regime of miscreants. On one hand, the constituents of the Andolan have, through political enfranchisement, entered into a social relationship with the ruling dispensation. On the other, they as active, reflective beings navigate the dialectics through their lived experience. They regularly run up against features of the systems that impede them in the pursuit of their needs and goals. The masses thus imbibe a class character.

In the writings of Colin Barker, “….As they seek to resolve these engendered problems, they act in ways that are liable to disrupt existing patterns, generating conflicts that potentially reconfigure both their social relations and themselves as actors…… Class struggle’ is inherently a process involving (at least) two sides. One side involves multifarious forms of resistance to exploitation and oppression; the other includes the equally varied means by which ruling groups work to maintain their positions and to contain such resistance”

The participants of the movement–the rank and file–are a microcosm of Marx’s Capital. At a more grounded and intimate level on the streets of Calcutta they are also trying to understand and control their material and social conditions. Their protest against corrupt TMC and state-led corruption and repression have emerged as specific form of social and political activity. Their movement has become un-interceded expressions of class struggle.

Under the present regime, big manufacturing in Bengal is passe. Able-bodied, productive labour, both skilled and semi-skilled, is passe (out-migration). So, classical labour movement with welfare considerations and active trade unionism is passe. Yet at the heart of the RG Kar movement lies the crème de la crème of the organised working class–junior and senior doctors, nurses, paramedics, medical educators and hospital workers. This is among the best of organised sector employment the country has to offer. This is their movement. And it is being propelled and sustained by blue-collar workers and their solidarity. When a packet of drinking water bottles addressed to ‘All Doctors Protesting There Continuously’ is paid for and sent by delivery personnel, it is reflective of the ownership of the agenda by the broad working class. They all want a safe workplace and respectful working conditions.

Revisiting Gramsci–winning the battle of ideas
Has the movement invoked and adapted the Gramscian template? Antonio Gramsci’s insights into why capitalism is inherently exploitative and why changing it will require movements from below to engage in a contest of power, rather than buying into the idea that the system can be successfully tinkered (such as the transfer the Commissioner of Police) by technocratic reformers with clever policy ideas has core implications for the Movement’s trajectory. Gramsci believed that only through determined organising and the strategic application of human will would the fundamental structures of society change for the better. If progressive movements are to create change, they must win over large segments of the public to their way of thinking about the world. And that organizing must take place on multiple fronts–cultural, political, economic–requiring engagement with many different institutions of society. He encourages movements to accept responsibility for organising, educating and preparing a base of people that can be ready to act when opportune moments arise.

And the Movement, it seems, is accepting this responsibility. West Bengal Junior Doctors Front is leading the Movement and has resorted to cease-work to press for their demands of safety. Their senior counterparts are coming together under the aegis of the Joint Platform of Doctors, West Bengal in which several organisations have joined up. They include the AHSD (The Association of Health Service Doctors, the largest association of doctors in state-run medical facilities in West Bengal); SSU (Shramajibi Swasthya Udyog is an organisation of doctors and health workers); WBDF (West Bengal Doctors Forum, a forum for protection of rights of doctors and patients); DFD and HAS. It is participating and helping coordinate the response on the street and in court. The Rasta Dokhol (Reclaim the road) call for the citizen’s march on 1 October 2024 mobilised the support from 60 organisations and the participation of more than 100,000 people.

The TMC can only remain intact through the maintenance of hegemony. This entails not only the use of force, administrative machinery and legal instruments, but also by ways in which ruling class ideology is disseminated through society, creating an illusion of consent for the rule of the dominant group–syndicates, threat culture, cut-money and Lakshmir Bhandar (Rs 1000 transfer scheme for women)being some of them. The power of the ruling party seeps through the institutions of, education, medical, religious, media, civil society and other institutions but most vociferously trough party channels and agents’ illegitimate usurpation and vilification of governance mechanisms. The battle for resisting and overturning hegemony is a long one waged through many spheres of social life. The streets of Calcutta is but one such theatre.

Agency of the Movement
Movements are framed around antagonists. What you are fighting for is as important as what you are fighting against. if the goal is clear, anyone who gets in the way is, by definition, an antagonist. The social agency of the movement is revealed in the unequivocal identification of the antagonist–the corrupt CM and the party she heads.

The social agency of the movement is revealed in the rejection of the fissiparous right. By summarily asking agents of the footage-craving and byte-propelled co-opters with a dubious and tainted record with rapists and abusers to “go back”, the Andolan has reaffirmed its higher moral imperative of women’s safety and dignity.

Marshall Ganz (Leading change: Leadership, organization, and social movements in Handbook of leadership theory and practice: A Harvard Business School centennial colloquium) talks about transformational vision occurs at the intersection of two factors: criticality, which is perception of the world’s pain, and hope, a sense of the world’s possibilities and of its promise. “One without the other doesn’t yield the energy for change.” The social agency of the Movement is gained in being present at the interface facilitating the terrain for greater collective action.

The social agency of the Movement is derived from and discharged through the fact that movement participants come across not as reformers but as part of an effort to build the intellectual and moral leadership required for a progressive narrative of change.

Last, but most importantly, the agency of the Movement lies in holding the antagonist accountable. The central demand of the Andolan– Justice–is simply a form of accountability. And while parties and cabinets can be held accountable, the purest and most immediate form of accountability is individual accountability. Hold the health minister accountable for the malpractices of government hospitals and for fostering and flourishing a culture of debauchery and fraud. Hold the police minister accountable for brutality, vandalism and destruction of evidence. Hold the chief minister accountable for failures of the administration. If justice is redemption, then the CM and TMC are the opposition.

Accountability and alliances
While the fulcrum of demanding and reinstating accountability currently resides with ‘apolitical’ participants inside the movement, those outside, particularly the Left parties have a shared responsibility. If the legitimate demand of the Movement is systemic change, then it must extract political accountability from the ruling disposition. In order to navigate and reshape accountability relationships in favour of those demanding it, the CM must be held answerable and sanctioned politically. The dislodging of an administrative order is an electoral exercise in a democracy. The demand for courtroom trials is a legal one. The Right to Information legislation adopted in 2005 was the outcome of Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan’s success in scaling accountability mechanisms through a large campaign which uncovered corruption in state services and schemes. The Left parties, with their rich legacy in this domain will be a vital determinant of how the angst and indignation from the Andolan platform is carried forward and channeled towards delivering on the Movement’s goals and objectives.

Movements deal with foes but they have to deal with friends as well. Some scholars caution of the “inner life” of movements being made up of an intense internal political life, where deliberations, strategies,splits and co-appropriation take place. Building a new ‘common’ sense requires combating the divisive ideology of vested interest and co-opting agents that have the potential to demobilize. The Movement must, therefore, create a big enough “we” to change the very way in which people think about themselves and their connections to others. It is to build the collective will for action.

The conjunctural agitations in Bengal such as those on education recruitment scam, government employees struggle with dearness allowance, the ruling party and the state administration being complicit to cross-boundary, illicit transfer of natural resources and the failure of the state machinery to provide disaster relief (state currently ravaged by floods) and their past history of embezzlement of disaster-relief commodities and cash on an unprecedented scale and illegally profiteering from natural disasters at the expense of affected people–create conditions of broad-basing coalitions to press for political accountability. People’s action on the streets have to translate to commensurate and decisive verdict at the hustings and EVMs. The art of political and popular messaging and coalition-building will have to rely on and tag with competencies and capabilities from other organised groups. It is important for the Movement to retain its core–the constituents and the charter of demands. The alliances they shape and friends they choose will determine the pathway and the algorithm for political accountability and thereby their quest for justice.

[Arindom Mookerjee is an economist and a former Head of External Relations and Partnerships with WHO and UN OCHA in Geneva. His earlier commentary on the Movement was published in The Wire on 16 September 2024 (https://thewire.in/politics/august-deaths-and-an-andolan-sublime-the-left-is-right-again). The views expressed are personal.]

Back to Home Page

Frontier
Vol 57, No. 19, Nov 3 - 9, 2024