Kushwaha, Team Anna’s fig leaf

Babu Singh Kushwaha, the tainted former BSP minister who joined the BJP after being sacked by Mayawati on charges of corruption, has split the BJP at both state and national levels ahead of the polls to the Uttar Pradesh assembly . Suddenly, the main topic of conversation is centred around a corrupt former BSP minister who joins the BJP – and the Congress, clearly, is delighted by the developments. “The BJP’s central leadership is working overtime to deflect the flak it is receiving from its cadres onto the state-level leaders who were too caught up in caste calculations and short-sighted grassroots-level one-upmanship politics to fully understand the damage that Kushwaha’s induction inflicts to the BJP’s efforts to corner Mayawati and the Congress on the issue of corruption. A whisper campaign is currently under way in the hope of distancing central leaders like LK Advani, Sushma Swaraj and Arun Jaitley – and even state-level leaders in Uttar Pradesh like Lalji Tandon and Kalraj Mishra – from the decision,” Firstpost had commented yesterday. [caption id=“attachment_173043” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“Image courtesy ibnlive.com”]  [/caption] Much damage has been done to the BJP; but more damage has been done to Anna Hazare’s anti-corruption movement. Team Anna’s decision and repeated assertions that they would target the Congress in the elections in five states, but most notably Uttar Pradesh, is immediately questioned now. Is Team Anna fighting against corruption or against the Congress, as Digvijaya Singh often asks? How can Team Anna ignore Kushwaha, and in the context of corruption, ignore first the BSP’s association with him and next the BJP’s association? In Kushwaha, Team Anna has lost the fig leaf which was providing them protection in their controversial decision to name the Congress as the enemy. Kushwaha is only symbolic of the non-Congress corrupt politician. In Tamil Nadu, there’s Kushwaha equivalent in the DMK and ADMK politician who epitomises corruption. To a Mumbaikar, who suffers the corruption in the BMC every day, there’s a Kushawaha in every Shiv Sena and BJP corporator. In Bengal, it would be a CPI (M) Kushwaha, in Karnataka a BJP one, in Orissa a BJD one. If there’s a big lesson to be learned from the Kushwaha incident, it’s a lesson that Team Anna needs to learn. Actually, it’s something that Team Anna knew well, and was the basis of the beginning of the movement – that corruption is all pervasive and that corruption is in every political party. Team Anna’s strategic faux pas in identifying only the Congress as the face of corruption has received a significant credibility loss; any attempt by Team Anna now to target the Congress rather than all the corrupt will dent their credibility further. Team Anna needs to go back to basics, making corruption, rather than a political party, the focus of their attack. The anti-Congress tirade made for good television that yielded short term PR gains – at the cost of longer term credibility. What was common to the supporters of the anti-corruption movement was that all were against corruption – but the supporters came from differing backgrounds and differing political leanings. So an Anna supporter could be a BJP supporter as well, or a Congress supporter as well. As long as the movement stayed anti-corruption, all these supporters were firm and solidly behind the movement. The moment the movement tilted to target the Congress, the supporters were reminded of their political affiliations rather than the cause of anti-corruption which they so easily identified with as one worth backing and fighting for. It’s much harder to target specific politicians and political parties – the faceless politician who, in our imagery, represents corrupt politicians is much easier to recognise as an enemy. To a Congress-leaning Anna supporter, the faceless politician represents the enemy of the Congress, to a BJP-leaning Anna supporter, he represented the enemy of the BJP, and so on. The faceless politician is, and will remain, the enemy of all Anna’s supporters. Attack a single party, Team Anna, and you divide your own vote bank.