More,merrier

That Anna Hazare and his team members have finally announced their political debut is a long-awaited but inevitable culmination of their campaign. The claim of this so-called mobilisation against corruption vis-a-vis its ability to dictate a law or its representativeness was always too large to remain outside the political arena. For Team Anna to claim a distance from the political cut and thrust seemed like a conceit and a contrivance. This is a moment,therefore,of a falling away of hypocrisies. It is also a moment of possibilities. Time and again,Indias politics has reinvented itself by resetting the stage and extending it to accommodate new actors,aspirations and concerns. From the elites that took on the responsibility of giving a government to a newly independent nation,the baton has been handed to a changing cast of players who rode on the backs of popular movements and agitations,be it in the wake of the Emergency or after the Mandir and Mandal mobilisations. By stepping out of its self-styled role as the systems holy outsider,and in accepting the imperative of electoral politics and the sovereignty of Parliament,Team Anna could potentially open up this field further.

Now that they are openly in politics,it will also be easier to talk to Team Anna and to ask them questions about themselves and where they are coming from. There is much that is still cloaked or unclear. The idea of a party that completely takes the shape of the peoples aspirations is a very old democratic ideal,or fiction. The onus will be on Team Anna to show how it can give this old ambition a new meaning,while tackling the pains of transition from a free-flowing agitation to a bounded party. It will have to give this party a name and a manifesto and position it ideologically in a crowded field. It must define its constituency and appeal. Team Anna has shown an ability to talk to urban middle class discontent over corruption specifically,but also vis-a-vis a system it perceives to be unresponsive and remote.

These are interesting times,when politics seems to twist and turn daily in the run-up to the 2014 polls. There was visible churning within the old set of players pegged to the just-concluded presidential polls. Now with Team Anna taking the political plunge,the question could be: will the new party disturb the chess board? Or will it run into another dead-end of its own making?