Our magazine completes eight years with this issue. We have appeared every month since September 2003. Our second Civil Society Hall of Fame hopefully captures some of the huge diversity that we have so enjoyed reporting on in these years. The six initiatives that have been chosen by our jury are not just locally relevant but also have national value. It is by creating such linkages that a valid bigger picture of India and the many challenges we live with can emerge.

Funded as we are with small change, our survival as a magazine is proof that someone somewhere is reading us. Nothing gives us greater joy and satisfaction to find Civil Society being sought by individuals and institutions across the country. It instils in us a respect for local identities and the vastness of India.

As we go press, Anna Hazare is at the Ramlila Ground fasting for a Lokpal and an end to corruption. We have over the years seen Indian civil society organisations multiply and develop. People’s movements at the grassroots have become more assertive. Well-meaning NGOs have tried to fill gaps in governance. There have been efforts to cleanse electoral politics and force governments to open up. We remember somewhat wistfully that our first cover story was on the right to information which has been used to expose many of the recent scandals.

But in sharp contradiction corruption during this time has grown and engulfed us all in unimaginable ways. Economic reforms have created an oligarchy and made disparities stark. The access ordinary people have to quality health care, education and natural resources like water has diminished. Politicians and businessmen have openly cavorted together and flaunted their wealth.

It is against this backdrop of rising aspirations and collapsing governance that the Congress-led UPA gets egg on its face and Anna Hazare becomes a hero. People are fed up with the loot they have witnessed – be it during the Commonwealth Games or the cornering of land by companies.

However, even as public anger boils over, the challenge before civil society is a much less glamorous one. Protests in the street are needed to shake up the system, but new laws and policies aren’t framed from slogans alone.

Anna Hazare’s right to protest cannot be denied to him and his arrest is condemnable. But his insistence on a Lokpal Bill based only on a draft put forward by his supporters is also difficult to accept.

Civil society is sharply divided on what a Lokpal law should contain. There are also senior judges, lawyers and serious-minded politicians who find the Anna Hazare group’s version of the Lokpal Bill unworkable.

The problem with both the government and the Hazare group is that they are equally intolerant of other opinions. They don’t leave space for debate or the right to disagree. The task before activist groups, as we see it, is quite the opposite: to be inclusive and promote consultation.

A big thank you for reading Civil Society.