'Anna, go to hell': Revenge of the career politician

For the career politician, Anna Hazare has always represented something of an anachronistic enigma. Here’s a man who, from all accounts, believes that ‘Gandhigiri’ works — even in the 21st century — and who has foolishly dedicated himself to doing public good when he could so easily have been milking the system. Close to the end of a lifetime of toil, Anna has all of Rs 68,000 and some change to show as his assets, besides a smallish plot of land in his hometown. Fool that he was, he even gave up (for the village to use) two plots of land that had been donated to him. And, yet, while career politicians have to pay truckloads of money to bring in supporters to attend their political rallies, this impoverished nobody from nowhere was able to mobilise, with nothing more than his moral force, millions of people in towns and cities across India in early April when he went on a protest fast to draw attention to the delay in bringing forward a bill to set up a powerful anti-corruption agency. And although Anna himself acknowledged that he would never be able to win an election, the political establishment always perceived him as an existential threat to their well-being. Petrified of his mass support even in an apolitical cause, which however was suffused with a political edge, they were busy trying to figure him out. Yet, although the political establishment chipped and chiselled away at his moral authority, questioned and mocked his right to speak on behalf of “civil society” and staged guerrilla attacks on the reputation of his fellow activists, they couldn’t summon up any bilious rage and take him on frontally — in the way that they could so easily with, for instance, Baba Ramdev. [caption id=“attachment_35949” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“If the Lokpal issue has acquired any urgency in the public discourse, and if the political establishment even feels a bit of pressure today to make the proposed anti-corruption agency halfways effective, it owes to Anna Hazare’s movement.  PTI”]  [/caption] Each party was perhaps worried that if it came out openly criticising Anna Hazare, it would leave the field open for other parties to come out on his side – and walk away with public support for his cause. But at last evening’s all-party meeting, the political establishment, gathered in its entirety, found strength in numbers, and found its voice. Together, they systematically shredded the Anna Hazare movement to bits. Together, they told him to “ go to hell”. Barring one rump of a party from Tamil Nadu – the Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi (the Liberation Leopards Party) — none of them spoke up in defence of the draft Jan Lokpal Bill put forward by Anna Hazare and his fellow activists as distinct from the government’s version of the Lokpal Bill. They merely gave themselves over to proforma pronouncements about the need for a “strong” Lokpal Bill. The one-line resolution adopted at the all-party meeting “agreed that government should bring before the next session of Parliament a strong and effective Lokpal Bill following established procedures." Indeed, the unwritten subtext from the meeting was for all parties to stick together in beating back the challenge from Anna Hazare and other civil society members, since he wasn’t just challenging the authority of the current government and the parties now in power, but of the entire political edifice. The reference to “established procedures” is a giveaway. For all its suggestion of procedural propriety (and who can complain with that except anarchists?), what it actually means, when it is decoded and deconstructed, is that these things are best left to “us” and we don’t need well-meaning busybodies to butt into our domain. Never mind that these selfsame “established procedures”, the ritual obeisance to doing things the right way, have effectively ensured that the mechanism for an effective anti-corruption agency has been grounded for decades. It’s a fair bet that if Anna Hazare hadn’t brought the issue of the Lokpal Bill onto the front pages of newspapers with his hunger strike in April, the “established procedures” would have proceeded at their stately pace for eternity. Heaven only knows whether the procedurally proper political establishment will now deliver on its promise to bring forward a strong and effective Lokpal Bill. But this much can be said for sure: if the issue has acquired any urgency in the public discourse, and if the political establishment even feels a bit of pressure today to make the proposed anti-corruption agency halfways effective, it owes to Anna Hazare’s movement. Just for that, Dear Anna, even if you don’t do anything else, there’s a place in Heaven for you….