Occupy LSX in England and Lokpal in India

There are parallels between the reporting of Occupy LSX and that of the Lokpal movement discussed in Pressure Cooker Politics, a recent blog by Jehangir Pocha, the chief editor of India’s NewsX TV station. 

Conspiracy to discredit 

Arvind Kejriwal, the Indian Revenue Service officer who became an anti-corruption crusader, says that there is a conspiracy to ruin the Lokpal movement by destroying the reputations of Anna Hazare and his team.

A number of allegations are routinely made about Occupy LSX, ranging from insincerity [leaving tents at night], lack of alternatives and squalor – all largely unjustified according to those who have travelled to London to interact with the protestors. 

Like Occupy LSX: 

“The Lokpal movement has taken root in the country’s heart. It is the citizens’ most crystallised response to their otherwise disembodied frustration with a political system that is not just ignoring how the everyday pains and pressures of life are increasing but actively making a profit from it”. 

Lokpal responds to the unmet physical needs in India: Occupy LSX protests about a system which provides adequate water and low-grade food, but keeps millions in enforced idleness rotting their self-respect. Physical needs can be met with political will, but “ministering to a mind diseased” is a difficult, often impossible task.

Governments indicted 

Pocha refers to the ‘deliberate spreading of misery for profit’ and sees “a government that wants to shut people up instead of listening to them, and that is getting increasingly restrictive and aggressive with anyone who keeps talking”.  The British government is so arrogantly secure that it ignores over a million of its citizens demonstrating against war on its streets.

His conclusion:  

“The government needs . . . to allow the socio-political revolution that is the Lokpal movement to succeed – in large measure if not full.” 

That is our wish for Occupy LSX: governments can release tension by starting to act for the common good – rather than the corporate interest

Pressure Cooker Politics ends with a verse of a Peter Gabriel song: 

You can blow out a candle

but you can’t blow out a fire.

Once the flame begins to catch

the wind will take it higher.