The Anna effect is bigger than the foibles of Team Anna

With each passing day, the media keeps dragging out yet more ‘dirt’ on Anna Hazare’s core leadership team. With absolutely no sense of scale, they have amplified and blown up what was, in Kiran Bedi’s case, merely an attempt at cross-subsidising her voluntary services:  simply put, Bedi accepted contributions from those who could afford to pay to have her come and talk - and used the savings on those contributions (by travelling cattle class) to offer her services for free to those who couldn’t defray her travel and other expenses. Would it have helped if Bedi’s NGO had been more transparent in its accounting practice vis-à-vis her contributors? Of course. Would it have been better for Bedi to have claimed actual reimbursements for her discounted economy-class travels – and asked her patrons instead to make donations that would have served the same purpose of cross-subsidy? Decidedly. Given the goodwill that she enjoys with her patrons, they would probably have made generous donations – on which they could additionally have claimed tax breaks! That would have been a win-win for everyone – except, of course, that the state exchequer would effectively have been subsidising Bedi’s NGO twice over: first, on the airfare discount she qualified for, and on the tax-breaks that donors would have claimed. Sure, you could then have picked on Bedi’s NGO for milking the mammaries of the welfare state, and she would have been guilty on that count. But so would have a thousand other NGOs – and Ministers and MPs across the political spectrum who personally profit on everything from government-subsidised accommodation to a clutch of discretionary quotas. But do these exposes against Bedi warrant the delirious sense of ‘gotcha’ emotion that hit-and-run media commentators and turncoats-in-saffron are exulting in, after dubiously blurring the ethical lines that separate minor accounting indiscretions from wholesale plunder of state funds and resources of the sort that Bedi and others campaigns against? Most definitely not. Nor do these hatchet-job commentaries dilute in any way the persuasive case that Anna Hazare and his core team have made over the past few months for a strong Lokpal institution – which the entire political establishment has at various times been lined up against. [caption id=“attachment_115903” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“Anna Hazare greets supporters. AFP”]  [/caption] The only ones who are rejoicing over the tar-and-feather treatment meted out to Hazare’s core team are the political class that has been fighting dirty to dilute the provisions of the Lokpal Bill. But what these slur campaigns perhaps miss out is that for all the momentary setback in the mood of the Anna-led campaign, the baton of the anti-corruption movement has, in a larger sense, been passed on from its leaders to its foot-soldiers. And at the grassroots level, the seed of empowerment that Anna Hazare planted with his two hunger strikes against corruption has taken root – and is giving transformative power to ordinary people in everyday situations. There are several anecdotal accounts of people who invoke the spirit of Anna in their daily lives to either not yield to demands for bribes – or otherwise find the strength of purpose to challenge wrongdoing by those in positions of power. Two such anecdotes are narrated here and here: they’re inspirational and worth reading. One other recent narrative, which has gone viral, relates to a Delhi resident who was flagged down by traffic policemen in Ghazipur – and found to his mortification that his insurance and pollution clearance certificates had expired. Asked to settle the matter without being challan-ed – by bribing the cops – he resisted, solely on the strength of his having been a part of Anna’s campaign at Ramlila Maidan. He instead asked to be issued a challan, after which he appeared at the Kakardooma Courts to pay the fine. Within the court premises, he was approached by an army of touts who said he would be required to pay a fine of Rs 2,000, but that they would settle the matter for Rs 600. Yet, he shook them off and persisted, and went through the due process of law, which took him barely a few minutes. More surprisingly, he was required to pay a fine of only Rs 100. The sense of empowerment that he feels today – at not having succumbed to the pressure to pay a bribe – is compounded by his realisation that the straight-and-narrow path of due process occasionally works. That realisation he owes entirely to Anna’s campaign. It is narratives like these, replicated a million times over, that will change the landscape of everyday corruption that confronts ordinary folks, irrespective of the slanderous campaigns that movement’s leaders are subjected to. After all, even the slogan of Anna Hazare’s movement has changed to reflect the sense of ownership that the foot-soldiers now have over the anti-corruption campaign. Where once they chanted: “Anna, tum sangharsh karo, hum tumhare saath hai” (Anna, carry on the campaign, we are with you), they now say: “Chalo, hum sangharsh karein, Anna hamare saath hai” (Let’s carry on our campaign, Anna is with us). As Leonardo DiCaprio says in the mind-bending film Inception, the most resilient parasite is not a bacteria or a virus or an intestinal worm. It is an idea. It is “resilient, highly contagious… Once an idea has taken hold of the brain, it’s almost impossible to eradicate…” Anna has planted a very radical idea – that you don’t have to give in to corruption, and can fight it - in millions of people’s minds. It may seem a foolishly naïve idea to some, given the monstrous hold that corruption has on our everyday lives. Yet there’s the hope that the spark that Anna lit, and the inspirational, resilient, contagious idea that he’s planted, could well start a prairie fire of a revolution that turns the heat on the monumentally corrupt.