Anna’s political plunge

You win some and lose some, and in the case of the latest Anna Hazare agitation in New Delhi’s Jantar Mantar, he was the loser. To begin with, the frequent use of fasts which are never taken to their logical conclusion has become rather tiring, as the leader himself acknowledged.

Second, by making impossible demands on the assumption that the government would bend, as it did so cravenly last year, Mr Hazare miscalculated.
As the miscalculation sunk in on Team Anna, it had to look for a face-saver, first in the form of an appeal by prominent citizens to Mr Hazare and members of his team to give up their fast. And then the leader arrived at a theme he had hinted at, the formation of a “political alternative”. The team had earlier come to the conclusion that the government did not intend to pass the Lokpal Bill.
There seems a disconnect between Team Anna and political reality. To begin with, Team Anna seemed to be particularly biased against the Congress Party and had a pro-Bharatiya Janata Party tinge. But it later assumed an abusive posture towards most political parties and condemned Parliament, raising the hackles of most parties. Indeed, none of the main parties is happy with the concept of the Lokpal, as envisaged by Team Anna, and as the Congress spokeswomam, Ambika Soni, was quick to say, “It (the Lokpal Bill) is property of Parliament”.
The new turn of the Anna movement poses a host of questions. The time when the magic of the Anna movement had the nation in thrall last year is long over. The anti-corruption crusade struck a chord with a people tired of petty graft that rules the lives of even the humblest in their interaction with authority. A panicked government elevated the status of Team Anna by giving them the gift of a structured discussion with a string of senior Cabinet ministers before bringing a bill before the Lok Sabha, later to be rejected by the Rajya Sabha. It is, on the face of it, a bad bill introduced by the government to get Team Anna off its back.
Mr Hazare’s whole concept of a Lokpal is, to say the least, simplistic and is redolent of the kind of solutions that would suit a village. It can never fit into an increasingly urbanising India and the demands of a modern nation state. Even as he announced last Friday that he would end his and his team members’ fast and seek a political alternative, he spoke about how each village should decide on its policy on land and other issues. Holding an instant electronic public opinion survey on what the people wanted was a rather transparent ploy.
Corruption is a serious issue and has a deleterious effect on governance as on the moral fibre of the nation. The enthusiasm that met Mr Hazare when he began his anti-corruption crusade was heart-warming. But the leader has largely thrown away his great advantage by his rustic solutions and the over-zealousness of his team members, each of whom was seeking to promote his own leadership. Judging by what Arvind Kejriwal has outlined, the political platform is dangerously close to the traditional party, shorn of rhetoric. The choreography of events, complete with the presence of the former Army Chief, Gen. V.K. Singh, on the last day of the fast is an indication of the shape the new party wants to take.
The most difficult task for Team Anna will be to translate its anti-corruption crusade into a practical set of options that can become law. First, the team will have to accept the fact that a parliamentary democracy or any genuine democracy is based on the rule of law. There are ways and procedures to amend the Constitution, but one party or faction cannot impose its own solution with complete disregard for the parliamentary structures. It is just as well that the imperfect Lokpal Bill passed by the Lok Sabha is stuck in the Upper House because it would have distorted the structure of governance.
It is easy enough to speculate that Team Anna’s political party will become another version of the elusive Third Front — some are already calling it the Fourth Front. India’s experience with non-Congress and non-BJP governments that have come to power at the Centre is particularly unhappy. To begin with, coalitions that rely on regional parties have too many chiefs and are at the mercy of one of the two main parties at the national level for support.
One result of the new political formation would be the further fragmentation of an already fractious state of Indian polity. Apart from the issue of corruption, development and security questions demand constant attention. Sometimes one wonders whether Mr Hazare has any concept of a nation state in the 21st century. Recently, a string of notable figures from several fields pointed out that while independent India’s original planning was understandably based on rural communities, it should now be altered because of the dramatic change and urbanisation that has taken place. And here we have Mr Hazare declaiming on the virtues and needs of rural society.
A period of confusion seems inevitable as Team Anna figures out its political avatar. Team Anna no doubt consists of well-meaning persons, but benign intentions often get mixed up with leadership ambitions and the temptation to ride hobby horses. Mr Hazare has already raised the issue of how to collect funds to function politically. If he wants to take the straight and narrow path, he is unlikely to go far and the question his team will have to answer is how it will camouflage money received from dubious sources. Even if he stays outside the formal structure of a future party, he cannot evade responsibility. The most severe tests for Team Anna and its leader lie in the future. For many, the denouement at Jantar Mantar has come as an anti-climax.