Last Wednesday (21st September 2011), I went to listen to Alexey Navalny (35) at LSE - a lawyer and a super-blogger who has become a kind of celebrity and some sort of a global icon for grassroots fight against corruption in Russia. He had a great sense of humour, very pragmatic and very open-ended about this mission. His blog has over a million posts and has several million hits every month. With the anti-corruption movement in India, I just wanted to listen to an activist who was spearheading a similar movement in another part of the world.
Here are a few main points from his talk:
first, he fights corruption because he sees corruption as 'opportunities' stolen by an elite group.
secondly, he takes corruption 'personally' as his opportunities and his children's opportunities being stolen and so he wants to reclaim them.
thirdly, the main vehicle is the internet and the use of information.
fourthly, his movement is sponsored by what he calls 'crowd funding' using paypal. They had a target of raising 20,000$ in 1 year and ended up raising 250,000$ in 2 months.
fifthly, this movement has minimum structure, just a battery of lawyers to do all the boring work collecting information and filing cases against corrupt people. The minimum structure enables the movement to be organic and flexible.
sixthly, people are fed up of corruption and they want to make a contribution. The key is to organize their energy and interest and channelize them into constructive action.
seven, this movement is the biggest civil society organization in Russia and it is not even registered.
eight, the difference between the government's fight against corruption and theirs is that (I quote) - 'the president is talking about fighting corruption all the time but we fight. This is the huge difference'.
nine, the legal system is the key arena to fight as laws do exist but are circumvented by the powerful all the time, now we use the laws to fight the lawmakers.
ten, the inefficiency of the state is an important cause of corruption. The loopholes are used to steal. But the inefficiency of the state is good as it also gives our fight against corruption opportunities.
eleven, corruption thrives on a weak state, but then it is also good as it means a weak political system and the fight against corruption is possible in such a situation, for example, as opposed to a totalitarian regime.
twelve, to decentralise the team and have the fight in many fronts. Not to have a central structure for the fight against corruption.
thirteen, he said that they do not fight against the idea of corruption, but against corrupt people. There must always be a face to corruption, it is not an ideological fight. For example, apart from targeting corrupt politicians or business tycoons, he also demands of the public to not vote for the main party that according to him makes corruption thrive - United Russia ( Vladimir Putin's party).
A friend of mine also took snap shots of his slides and I slung them together as a short clip. If you want a copy of that clip, do send me a message.
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