Is Team Anna less ‘Team’ and more ‘Anna’? Jury is out

Is Anna Hazare finding it difficult to manage his own small team, the team which brought all major political parties to their knees over the Lokpal Bill? There have been many indicators of, at best, a strain in the team, and, at worst, a major difference of opinion between its members. The first sign was Anna Hazare’s decision to launch his own blog. Overtly, where was the need for it when the India Against Corruption website was available as a platform? Hazare spelt out the reasons. “People from world over want to know my thoughts on various issues. Many a times people (even those who are closer to me) make statements that do not collaborate with my thinking. Henceforth, through the medium of internet, I will personally make sure that my thoughts and views reach over to the people,” he wrote in his first post on the blog. Firstpost’s Raman Kripal, perhaps, foresaw where Team Anna, as they proudly called themselves, was headed – looking at how Team Anna was born. “The story doesn’t begin with Anna starting out as an anti-corruption crusader building his movement brick by brick and finding followers along the way. In fact, corruption wasn’t the focus of the initial movers and shakers in this story. It began with different civil society activists pursuing their own goals before it all fell into place as events unfolded over 2010. Anna Hazare was grafted onto the movement at the last stage -  once the activists decided they needed a credible face to show the world,” Raman wrote on 17 August2011. After the euphoria of Team Anna’s success over the political classes, Anna went back to his home at Ralegan Siddhi. Once there, the media focus and attention was squarely on him, undistracted by other members of the ‘Team’. Marathon (exclusive, of course) interview schedules saw him speak to all major news outlets in one day – with no other member of the team at the interviews. It took members of the international press to push Anna Hazare into admitting that there were cracks in the anti-corruption brigade. Lydia Polgreen and Hari Kumar of The New York Times spoke to Anna Hazare. You can read the entire conversation here. Q. Among your allies are Prashant Bhushan, who criticizes economic liberalization, and Arvind Kejriwal, who has been criticized for saying overly harsh things about the prime minister. Do you agree with them, and is there disunity among your senior leaders? [caption id=“attachment_99994” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“Reuters”]  [/caption] A. I will try to change them. There were some ego problems. From the government side it was Chidambaram and Kapil Sibal. From our side also there were some issues. I was not getting the right feedback, nor was the prime minister. That complicated the issues. Later, Vilasrao Deshmukh and another minister got involved and direct contact with the prime minister was established. I have an old relationship with Vilasrao. Then the issues were resolved. They (Mr Bhushan and Mr Kejriwal) are good people. I need to change them. I will change them. During the entire reality show that was the period immediately preceding the fast and during the fast, the first person singular ‘I’ was noticeable by its absence, with the inclusive, warm, ‘We’ dominating all pronouncements by members of Team Anna. In the single answer that we’ve reproduced from the conversation between Anna Hazare and the NY Times team, Anna Hazare uses the word ‘I’ five times. There’s more than a hint of the hierarchy as seen by Anna: “I was not getting the right feedback, nor was the prime minister,” Anna says, suggesting that the PM and he are equals, and the rest of the players (on both sides) mere members of the team. The unity will get further asundered by Anna’s choice of issues, which seem driven by his experiences and his passions. The same Anna who leads the country in a battle against corruption and corrupt politicians chooses to take up the problems caused by toll roads in Maharashtra as another focus area. He targets Narendra Modi’s handling of the Bhatt case as another, and a by-election at Hisar as a fourth. Do Messrs Kejriwal and Bedi, and the father-son Bhushan duo, and the near-forgotten Santosh Hegde see eye-to-eye with Anna Hazare on this prioritisation? Do they have a common view? News media, especially TV news, combined with new media, especially social media, saw Anna and team pitchforked into the limelight and, ostensibly, become extraordinarily popular in an extraordinarily short time. Anna Hazare would do well to remember that his arch foes, the politicians, do this every election; it is what they do after the elections that matters in getting re-elected. Team Anna, ‘Civil Society’ and the individuals who comprise both, have, in a way, won an election. Sadly, like the constituents of the UPA, they seem incompetent, inept and focused on selfish interests immediately after, rather than demonstrating commitment to the ‘manifesto’ which won them the popularity in the first place.