Did Team Anna have no choice but to enter politics?

What a difference a year makes! Last year, when Anna Hazare was on a fast at the Ramlila Maidan, he received repeated appeals from the government – and a cross-section of political parties – to call off the fast. Parliament even passed a ‘sense of the House’ resolution taking on board his team’s demand for an anti-corruption agency. Anna ended his fast on a triumphant note.

This year, however, when Team Anna similarly went on a fast, they were by and large ignored by the political establishment. Yet, they have decided to call off their fast from tomorrow. The appeal issued by some eminent citizens to Team Anna to call off the fast and set up an alternative political mechanism gave Team Anna a face-saving way to end the fast well before the 8 August date that they had committed to the Delhi police.

What did Team Anna achieve this time around? On the face of it, very little. Their demand for a Special Investigation Team to investigate allegations of corruption against 15 Cabinet ministers was ignored by the UPA government, and the issue did not resonate with any of the other political parties, even those in the Opposition.

By shifting the goalpost from the demand for a strong Lokpal agency, Team Anna appeared to lose some of the single-minded focus they had last year.

Yet, this round of protests marks a defining moment in the evolution of the movement, because for the first time Team Anna appears to have come around to the view that perhaps the only effective way for them to advance their cause is to become a political movement – either directly participating in electoral politics, or more likely, becoming a pressure group.

In a sense, Team Anna has crossed the Rubicon, and it does come with a certain loss of innocence on their part as well. Much of their initial campaign was propelled by their disdain for the cynical mechanics of electoral politics. And now, they have been forced by circumstances to consider entering the cesspool. How this will play out isn’t immediately clear, particularly since they appear to have effectively antagonised a vocal section of the BJP with their criticism of Narendra Modi.

Team Anna now faces formidable odds, but there is a space for a political force such as theirs. Once they end their fast tomorrow, they now have to go back to the drawing board and draw up a strategy for the next phase. The hard grind begins again - and this time, they have many more political adversaries to contend with.