Lone Man Standing?

The applause was thunderous, the kind reserved for film stars, for the new star on the horizon. For those who haven’t heard of him, he is Tukaram Mundhe, Mumbai’s new FDA commissioner, who has struck fear in the hearts of Mumbai’s eateries by strictly enforcing hygiene norms that have always existed on paper but have never really been enforced. Unlike what we have come to expect, he has started with elite targets, including prestigious clubs and places regarded as institutions in the city, ensuring that the message was clear— no one was exempt. Many establishments have voluntarily shut down for a while to get their act together

Two things are worth noting here. One is that an honest officer determined to do their job can still find a way to make the system work, at least for a while. The other is that the rapturous response he has received points to something important. People are looking for accountability, and whenever they see a sign that it is possible, they react with great enthusiasm.

Something is changing, as social media is full of people of all ages and backgrounds uploading videos of things that don’t work, of officials who are corrupt or ineffective and of the state of our infrastructure. Most notable is the spurt in videos showing young children demanding better schools and infrastructure. There is a visible awakening to the fact that governance is a right and not an occasional favour to be granted as a form of patronage.

There are some who argue against lionising any individual too much. He is just doing his job, they say. And strictly speaking, they are right. Yet we also know that what he is doing is remarkable. Our appreciation is both admiration for the individual and an indictment of the system. The truth is that today competence feels like heroism.

Read along with the surge in people demanding accountability, is it fair to conclude that this is a point of inflexion, when people shed their apathy and their acceptance of whatever reality they are forced to inhabit, and start demanding a new kind of politics? Before concluding any such thing, it is worth casting our minds back. Through the last few decades, there have always been lone warriors, individuals who have bucked the system and delivered its intent without fear or partiality. We have had our share of bureaucrat-heroes, but no one has been able to usher in sustainable change. We had T N Seshan, who, as chief election commissioner, captured the country’s imagination by his utter disregard for the powerful. K J Alphons in Kerala became a folk hero and eventually joined politics. Kiran Bedi became a symbol of courage and fired the imagination of many young women. She too eventually joined politics.

The track records of bureaucrats who acquired greater power are mixed. The neat origin story of their rise to fame gets a little clouded by the time we get to the end. Arrogance is one pitfall, personal ambition another. Most commonly, they get neutralised by the system.

The problem is both personal and institutional. The bureaucracy is not designed for fame. It is meant to exercise power behind the scenes for the benefit of the people it serves. It is meant to do ordinary things well, boringly and predictably. Not as an exception, but as a rule. When fame comes a bureaucrat’s way, when their name becomes more important than the position they occupy, it can be destabilising. The feeling might be heady, but it also makes it difficult to stay grounded.

Institutionally, there are enough mechanisms available to contain the damage to the existing arrangement caused by unusually dedicated individuals. Eventually, they can get transferred to the boondocks, to a department where they can cause little harm. The system regroups as the public need for accountability gets satisfied temporarily, and fundamental change is postponed to another day.

But there is reason to believe that things might be different this time, and it has nothing to do with Mundhe himself, or even with our growing need for accountability. The difference lies in the instruments we have access to today.

In Seshan’s time, mass media was that instrument, and it was powerful but necessarily selective. A few media outlets could carry a limited number of stories, which meant the public’s hunger for accountability had to be aggregated and centralised. We could focus on a handful of issues that caught the national imagination; systemic change was rarely on the menu.

Today, that instrument of broadcast which was tightly controlled sits in all our pockets. It can record everything at the smallest unit of administration. The terrible condition of rural schools, a bureaucrat asking for a bribe, a policeman misbehaving with the public, a new highway developing potholes can be filmed by whoever happens to encounter it, at no cost, with no institution’s permission required.

That is the real change, if it holds. When the demand for accountability becomes a mass movement that makes it impossible for the system to ignore. The anger is against a politics which has created a self-perpetuating system that treats citizens as supplicants rather than those that it is meant to serve . If this pressure grows, that is when we will see real change. Then Tukaram Mundhe can go back to being just another competent officer. For now, he gives us something to be grateful for.

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