dna edit: Raj Thackeray’s hordes were vandalising, not protesting, and the state must respond firmly

In a country with no dearth of emotive issues to rally people, the recourse to violence separates the hot-headed zealots from seasoned agitators. Civil disobedience becomes criminal transgression on the rights of other citizens when naked threats of injury and destruction of property are trumpeted by those purportedly protesting injustice. The unregulated and opaque manner of toll collection has become a sticky issue across the country. Heeding Maharashtra Navnirman Sena chief Raj Thackeray’s call to obstruct toll collection and destroy toll booths if necessary, MNS workers  damaged toll booths in eight cities. There can be no justification for such acts of vandalism. Raj can not claim to have exhausted all modes of peaceful protest against illegal toll collection before embarking on violence. But the long arm of the Indian law rarely reaches rabble-rousers, and Raj knows this well.
Scores of complaints filed in courts across the country accusing Raj of promoting enmity, after his cadres assaulted poor North Indian migrants in Mumbai, have been soft-pedalled. Non-bailable arrest warrants were issued by courts in Bihar, Jharkhand and Delhi against Raj, but till date, he is yet to be arrested. For how long can the government, the police and the courts appear to take no notice of Raj Thackeray’s incendiary speeches? This symbolic show of enforcing law — arresting and charging a few foot-soldiers while sparing the leader — must end. Both Raj, and cousin Uddhav, are locked in an intense competition for the same mindspace. On January 14, the Shiv Sena-BJP alliance promised toll-free roads as a poll promise. Only recently, suspected Shiv Sena activists vandalised toll booths in Kolhapur. It is possible then that Raj was attempting to snatch a poll-plank away from the Shiv Sena-BJP.
Even the Left parties, the most regular practitioners of agitational politics, have been accused of allowing their cadre to wantonly target public property. But the use of civil disobedience to highlight public grievances was achieved with telling effect by Arvind Kejriwal in Delhi. He restored power connections and urged people to not pay inordinately high electricity bills; but the crucial difference was that Kejriwal did not incite them to violence against power distribution company officials or their facilities. In contrast, Raj’s violent methods divert attention from the crux of the problem: the consistent stone-walling of attempts by RTI activists and motorists to ascertain the toll-burden of road projects. Consequently, allegations of toll collection companies under-reporting toll earnings, official collusion in hiking toll rates, and extending the duration of toll-collection have been rife.
A technological solution: using electronic displays powered by centralised computers that tabulate toll collection and display the gross collection and toll burden on a real-time basis — is required. Irrespective of the violent rhetoric of the Thackeray cousins, the government has a responsibility to foster transparency and accountability. The Congress learnt this lesson the hard way in Delhi. Public-private partnerships in the infrastructure sector are certainly needed but the government’s hands-off approach towards auditing PPP projects like the Mumbai-Pune expressway are untenable. The paying public have a right to know whether their toll payments are streaming into a bottomless pit. Unfortunately, their anger is being appropriated and frittered away by men who believe that violence pays. One cannot blame the MNS cadres for this delusion; the benevolence of the state towards them has been incredible.