Anna's backroom boys did a great job, but the frontroom?

Who are Anna Hazare’s back-room boys? Whoever they are, they deserve praise and a lot of credit for the success of the anti-corruption campaign. They have orchestrated Anna’s moves most brilliantly: refusing to come out of Tihar Jail, for instance.

The government realised its folly a few hours after they stupidly put him in jail. If Anna had come out then, his jail term would have been if-you-blink-you-missed-it kind of appearance. So the back-room boys made him stay in jail to get the full benefit of being ‘a victim’ for a full two days after he was officially released.

Then came the master-stroke of taking him in a long procession to the Ramlila Maidan in an open truck, so he could be seen by a whole lot of people, the equivalent of a warrior’s triumphant return from the battlefield. There was also that wonderfully conceived moment when he ‘meditated’ for three hours at Rajghat, a lone seated figure in white surrounded by a large expanse of green.

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[caption id=“attachment_70849” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“Instead of I am for Anna Hazare, by dropping just one word the slogan made the involvement of the wearer much more intimate. Diptendu Dutta/AFP”]  [/caption]

It was a striking image, though some newspapers played spoil-sport by drawing the camera back and showing us the whole picture: Anna Hazare wasn’t alone lost in deep and solitary meditation;  around him in a large circle were people (lots of them), cameras of TV news channels and still photographers, reporters with notebooks open, TV reporters speaking into their microphones…

Meditation? Or photo op?

Before that, of course, came the master-stroke of the Gandhi cap (oddly named, when you think of it because Mahatma Gandhi didn’t wear it). This was particularly true of the slogan ‘I am Anna Hazare’. Note this was not the obvious ‘I am for Anna Hazare’; by dropping just one word the slogan made the involvement of the wearer much more intimate.

The words proclaimed that you were one with Anna: in a sense everyone’s atmas were now merging into the Maha atma, who by implication became the Mahatma.

It should have stayed there, but then, as it inevitably happens, the frontroom boys (and girl) took over. The stupid slogan ‘Anna is India and India is Anna,’ with its echoes of Indira Gandhi during the Emergency, began to be bandied about.

Kiran Bedi, the ultimate front room person, then started to wave the tricolour around as if it was hers and hers alone. If Anna Hazare’s movement has now started getting derailed, it is because the backroom boys have been pushed aside by the power hungry members of Team Anna.