Team Anna ‘at a crossroads’, seeks direction on way ahead

After a year in which Team Anna held centre stage and pretty much set the political agenda with its anti-corruption campaign to demand a Jan Lokpal, it is today facing an anti-climactic moment. The movement, which intuitively struck all the right emotional chord and connected with hundreds of thousands of Indians, is now dispirited and stuck for ideas – and is seeking suggestions from the public. All of last year, Team Anna had incredible momentum, and the entire debate about the shape of the anti-corruption legislation revolved around its demand for a strong anti-corruption agency that it had envisioned through its Jan Lokpal proposal. [caption id=“attachment_170338” align=“alignright” width=“380” caption=“What next for Team Anna? It wants you to show the way ahead.”]  [/caption] But today, it wants the Lokpal Bill that the government brought to parliament to be defeated – because in its present form, it doesn’t address any of the core demands about preserving the independence and autonomy of the Lokpal institution. And, in fact, it believes the Bill in its current avatar is “dangerous” – insofar as it weakens existing agencies investigating corruption even further. But the bigger question that today haunts Team Anna is whether to continue to agitate against the Congress and the UPA alone, or whether to expand it to cover the entire universe of political parties. Arvind Kejriwal, one of the firebrand core leaders of Team Anna, has in an article in today’s Times of India given expression to Anna’s anguish at the way in which political parties had cheated him (and the anti-corruption movement) and sought suggestions from the public on the way ahead. With disarming candour, Kejriwal acknowledges that the anti-corruption movement is at a crossroads and is acutely conscious that “a wrong decision… could prove disastrous to the movement.” Fending off criticism that the “anti-corruption” movement had turned “anti-Congress and “pro-BJP” , Kejriwal points out that Team Anna had been engaged in back-channel discussions for much of last year, even until December. “If we were anti-Congress, we would not be talking to them and engaging with them all this while.” To convey that Team Anna is not softer on the BJP, Kejriwal also criticises the BJP’s induction of the tainted former UP minister Babu Singh Kushwaha who had been dropped by chief minister Mayawati. The dilemma that confronts Team Anna today is this: Should it campaign against the Congress and the UPA in the upcoming Assembly elections – on the grounds that the government and the ruling coalition bear much of the blame for the weak Lokpal Bill that is before Parliament? Would campaigning against the Congress alone reinforce the notion that it is “anti-Congress” and “pro-BJP? Alternatively, if Team Anna doesn’t campaign in the upcoming elections, should it continue the movement in some other way – perhaps by having Anna Hazare go on another fast? Given the poor reception to the Mumbai fast by Anna, is the mechanism of a fast overdone – and has it lost its utility as a vehicle to harness people’s support? Should Team Anna float its own party and contest elections, as some have suggested? Can it make a difference, given that the current nature of the electoral system favours big parties that have money and muscle power?