Opinion Which Hazare?

The Hazare I grew up respecting was not Anna but Vijay Samuel Hazare

April 17, 2011 01:24 AM IST First published on: Apr 17, 2011 at 01:24 AM IST

The Hazare I grew up respecting was not Anna but Vijay Samuel Hazare. He used to captain the Baroda side in the Ranji Trophy,and,also in the early 1950s,India. He would go in at number 4 and bat away to his best ability. In those days,India used to be on a constant losing trek,with Hazare often batting with his back against the wall,trying to draw the match rather than lose it.

Those days are a distant memory from today when Sachin bats forever and scores tons of runs and Dhoni powers the team to win. Yet,the events which followed in the week after Indias World Cup triumph reminded me more of those days in the fifties than anything else.

My thought about Mohali was that here were two teams competing to lose the match; only Pakistan were better at losing than India was. This is as much as the Lok Sabha seems to function between the UPA and the NDA. The Prime Minister bats more like Sachin did against Pakistan at Mohali; not his best but then the Opposition keeps dropping chances to get him out.

Anna Hazares team is behaving rather like Pakistan at Mohali. After the initial triumph of Saturday April 9 (remember getting Sehwag out quickly?) they have made many false moves. First was to dictate a deadline for passing the Bill by August 15. Whatever the symbolic significance of the date,you can only pass a complex Bill like what we have in prospect by taking great care and deliberation over it. Haste will be counterproductive. I know whereof I speak. After the Omagh bombing in Northern Ireland which killed scores of innocent bystanders,an angry UK government recalled Parliament from vacation,and within a day,both Houses of Parliament passed an anti-terrorism bill to bring the killers to justice. Alas,the bill was so hastily drafted that no one could be prosecuted under that Bill.

People are suspicious of politicians. But in this respect of passing legislation,it is best to ask Parliamentarians to do their job with dispatch,but not hurry too much. If the bill is sloppy,the Supreme Court will reject it and then the fast would have been wasted. The Hazare team should trust its duo of lawyers to insist on a good draft before it goes to Cabinet. Then let the Lok Sabha and its Standing Committee debate it. Then the Rajya Sabha,which has wisdom on its part. The Hazare team should keep a watch over it and insist on transparency but not dictate the pace.

The BJP/NDA want to seem like good guys,but are making a mistake in promising fast passage of the bill which is not what the Opposition is for in a democracy. The BJP should scrutinise the bill with thorough care since they have not been party to the drafting. Other parties should also watch hawk-like,that the bill is not just a window dressing which it could become, if passed hastily.

The Hazare team is also getting swamped by partisan sentiments. Within days of its triumph,it is being capturedperhaps willingly? By the RSS. Anyone who saw Baba Ramdev speak during the Anashan rally at Jantar Mantar could see that his agenda is very different from that of the civil society. His first reaction to the membership of the Committee by objecting to the Bhushan duo- Shanti Bhushan and Prashant Bhushan,was blatantly political. While Anna Hazare stopped him in his tracks,the praise for Modi and Nitish was unnecessary and destabilising. No one should be giving out good conduct certificates; being uncorrupt should be normal. The point is not to praise the uncorrupt,but to punish the corrupt which is much more difficult.

The normal pattern of a popular uprising is to win a symbolic victory and then dissolve itself into factions. I have seen this during the students revolt in the 1960s and also in anti-war movements. It is difficult to sustain a popular movement which does not have an organisational structure to sustain it. This is why civil society constantly loses against governments.

The idea should be to play,not to win outright but not to lose. Anna should play like Vijay Hazare.