Firstpost

By Shiv Vishvanathan

Karl Marx once said that history repeats itself, once as a tragedy, then as farce. Indians, much more inventive than Marx, go one step further. They invent history again and again, enacting it as a parable, a Katha, and even a soap opera. Nothing confirms this more than the Lokpal bill. It is a play that has been enacted so many times that one wonders which version we are watching.

The Lokpal bill was introduced forty years ago. It sprang from the suggestions of the Santhanam Committee for Prevention of Corruption but it became a Sisyphean exercise rolling down the hill again and again. The first effort was made in 1968 and it almost succeeded.

Passed by the Lok Sabha, it ran into the elders at the Rajya Sabha. The bill ran through a range of repeats in 1971, 1977, 1985, 1989, 1996, 1998, 2001, 2005 and 2008, only to be spurned every time. Forty-three years after its introduction, it is still waiting to be accepted. Skeptics feel it is a proverbial lemon despite promises from the prime minister and frequent pride of place in electoral manifestoes. But recent polls show there is a major renewal of interest.

According to the CNN-IBN and CNBC-TV18 State of the Nation Poll conducted by CSDS, Anna Hazare has succeeded in forcing the government to acknowledge the issue of corruption. He has laid the foundation for an interesting battle. There are two things the survey makes clear. Firstly, Hazare is a force to reckon with. Secondly, the understanding that the people show of his efforts is more nuanced than the skeptical dismissal of our elite.

Swadesi samurai

Hazare’s campaign has acknowledged the vintage quality of the bill and given it a second life. The bill is no longer a legislative chore but a vehicle of  social movement. A sluggish legislation has been revived as a social drama, speaking a new idiom, echoing a Swadesi dialect and sounding almost revivalist in fervour.

Reform, unlike lightening, has struck Delhi twice, once as Hazare and again as Ramdev. The Ramdev movement is currently sulking in the sidelines after being treated as a law and order problem. There is a general feeling that he has trespassed roles, a sense that for all his popularity, he should stick to his original core competence, yoga. It is Hazare who is seen as the trusted warrior against corruption. Although less well known than Ramdev, he has become the Swadesi samurai for this battle.

Anna-ji, as his letters show, is quite capable of giving the PM a lesson in ethics. In his 7 April  letter Hazare reminds the PM “I am not a kid that I could be ‘instigated’ into going on an indefinite fast. I am a fiercely independent person.” Hazare tells the government that “sixty two years after independence, we still do not have an independent and effective anti-corruption system.”  Singh lapses into silence, stumped, as if someone has told him he does not know his Adam Smith.

The Congress struck back by inviting Anna and his team to the negotiation table, trying to show they were legislative illiterates, boy-scouts before the legal acumen of Sibal, Chidambaram and Kursheed. But a bunch of glib talkers with American and Oxford legal accents were no match for Hazare and Swami Agnivesh who invoke the people as the ultimate source of power. The Congress negotiators come off like technicians commenting on a morality play.

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