Opinion Annarchy flops
As someone who has been distrustful of Anna Hazares rabble rousing ways from day one,it gave me immense pleasure to see his latest jamboree flop.
As someone who has been distrustful of Anna Hazares rabble rousing ways from day one,it gave me immense pleasure to see his latest jamboree flop. The crowds were so thin at last weeks anshann that television anchors,who have been his most devoted supporters,were forced to admit that there was less support than expected. I have argued in this column,since that first fast-unto-death,that Annas is a fraudulent agitation and the quicker it disappears into the garbage bin of dead agitations the better. But,since it brought more middle-class Indians into the streets of our cities than any other in recent memory,it is important to analyse why it had such resonance.
There is no question that Anna touched an aching chord last year when he raised the banner against corruption. No sooner did corruption get mentioned than most Indians thought of the daily corrupt practices that make their life hell. The shopkeeper who charges them double for a cylinder of cooking gas. The tout who took money to admit their child to nursery school. The shady agent they paid to register property. The taxman who they regularly bribe to file their income tax returns. And,the policeman who charges them a fee to not charge them with some imaginary crime. There cannot be an Indian alive who has not been angered by this kind of daily corruption. So when people saw a little,old man from a village in Maharashtra go all the way to Delhi to fast-unto-death against corruption,they rallied to his cause.
What they did not realise,and I hope they do now,is that the solution did not lie in creating a new law and a new policing infrastructure to implement it. If the Lokpal does come into being,the institution he will preside over will need more than 40,000 officials to man it. Will they all be honest? When members of Annas holier-than-thou team were asked this question on chat shows last year,they said that they believed that if an institution is a good one then the people who work under it are necessarily good. This is rubbish. But,because the government made the stupid mistake of arresting Anna,he became a messiah and his team members thought they were spreaders of a new gospel.
So they took to flinging charges of corruption and dossiers of alleged misdemeanours at public figures and thought they could get away with it. Perhaps it was because they demanded a special trial of fifteen supposedly corrupt ministers that Annas supporters started to fall away,perhaps it was because people began to become suspicious of the credentials and motives of his team members. Some have taken to playing an openly political role under the guise of being do-gooders. Whatever the reason it is just as well that public support has dwindled.
Since I have called Annas agitation fraudulent,I would like to explain why. Corruption is a huge problem in India but it is not the only reason why most Indians continue to live in degradation and desperate poverty. The idea that a strict new law will be able to end corruption is false. In China,corrupt officials are shot and there continues to be more corruption in that country than there is in India. Corruption can be certainly reduced but not by new laws but by reducing the discretionary powers of officials and by making public services transparent and efficient.
Anna is a simple-minded fellow and so may not be personally aware of such complicated issues but his clever team members must know. So if they have continued to bang on about the Lokpal,knowing that it cannot work,then it is either for reasons of self-aggrandisement or because they are morally corrupt. Moral corruption is more corrosive than financial corruption.
From what I have seen of the activities of some of Annas team members,I would like to humbly suggest that they are morally corrupt. I say this because I have seen them lend their names to causes that should be sacred,without being serious about them. In doing this they have defiled such sacrosanct ideas as protecting the environment and fighting the scourge of poverty.
The fight against corruption in public life must be continued but it cannot be fought by fasting-unto-death in Jantar Mantar road. In a year of agitations and hunger strikes,why has Annas team not been able to come up with a workable agenda for changes in governance?
As for me,I am totally in agreement with Baba Sahib Ambedkar when it comes to fasts-unto-death. Even in those heady days of the freedom movement when India was fighting to break the shackles of colonial rule,he warned the Mahatma that his hunger strikes bore the seeds of the grammar of anarchy. He was right.
Follow Tavleen on Twitter @ tavleen_singh
Share
