Crucial question for Team Anna: Who’s bigger, Anna or Kejriwal?

Team Anna has a grand goal to achieve. It should not wither away after coming this close. In just two months after the team spearheaded independent India’s biggest mass movement against corruption and forced the political class to eat humble pie, there are signs that it is sinking deeper and deeper into the morass of ego tussles, personal differences and ideological confusion. It’s fast losing the moral sheen. ( Read eBook on Anna ) Its most vocal and visible members are in a crisis of credibility after being accused of ethically indefensible financial irregularities. Members are moving out of the core team citing serious differences with the dominant miniscule group. Anna Hazare , the symbol around whom the country rallied around, has gone silent. It is obvious that Gandhian is not comfortable with the antics of his team members. [caption id=“attachment_118537” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“PTI”]  [/caption] This is not the direction the anti-corruption movement was supposed to take. It started off with the noble purpose of having a strong Lokpal Bill. It managed to force Parliament to accept its views in the face of great opposition. Not many agreed with the over-the-top attitude of some of the members which bordered on disrespect for democratic institutions and reflected sheer arrogance. But these are the people who were on the verge of delivering the near impossible. So their indiscreet moves were forgiven as acts of over-enthusiasm. Now that the bill is in the last laps, the team has to stay together and stay focused on achieving its objective. It needs to introspect deep and hard and get its act together. In this context, it is not a bad idea to either expand or reconstitute the core committee. Raju Parulekar, Anna’s official blogger, has said that the team would be expanded to address the perception that some of the members were acting in selfish interest. It comes close on the heels of the note of Kumar Vishwas, a member of the core team, seeking disbanding of the core team and induction of new members. He says the Team Anna members were facing attacks from detractors on serious charges like corruption. While fending off the charges, the team was losing out on valuable time in its anti-corruption crusade. If the unstated aim of the proposed exercise is to find a way to neutralise Arvind Kejriwal and Kiran Bedi, who have done as much good to movement as bad, it does not surprise. Both had become controversial earlier by taking an unnecessarily confrontational position against the government, now their actions are resulting in core committee members deserting the team. Worse, they have come under the public scanner for financial impropriety. Former Karnataka Lokayukta Santosh Hegde has been airing his dissatisfaction against the duo in public for some time now. Rajendra Singh, a Magsaysay award winner, who had left the committee along with PG Rajgopal a few days ago, has said the popular and media support to Hazare’s anti-corruption campaign in Delhi had gone to the head of his aides and made them arrogant. According to media sources, he has described Bedi and Kejriwal as the most arrogant members of the team who are in the habit of throwing their weight around and imposing themselves on others. Both have been on an attention-grabbing spree since the movement surfaced. Many of their decisions in the last two months have been questionable; the worst perhaps was to oppose the Congress candidate in Hisar, in the process backing indirectly the cause of supposedly more corrupt candidates. This move led to serious fractures in the team besides creating the impression that the two were using the movement to further personal agenda. The best option for the Team Anna is to use Bedi and Kejriwal in roles that are less controversial. But it is easier said than done. There’s no denying the fact that they are the most articulate and popular faces of the movement besides Anna. They have been the soul and the moving force of the anti-corruption movement since it began. Without them it would lose vitality and energy. Anna has a difficult choice to make. But the more serious question now: Is he the real leader of the movement? He is its great symbol but how far does he control his team and its activities on the ground? It is not clear yet. For all practical purposes it has become Kejriwal’s movement — it was so to begin with actually. Can Anna do without the help of his commander-in-chief ? He has to take a position. It is time he broke the vow of silence and asserted that the cause is bigger than individuals.