The Politicised & Corrupt apolitical Anti-corruption Movement
So finally Team Anna is coming out of their apolitical image. The team members now
themselves have come out showing their political colours. Anna, who has been
speaking volumes about the neutral attitude, had started his movement declaring
that no political party would share this dais. He declared war against
'corruption in political class'. The public had
quickly bought his ideas and crowds swelled in his support, the reason being
basic human nature. Corruption was externalised and the whole blame was put on
the political class disregarding the everyday corruption the common man himself
indulges in, examples being: the Rs. 10 bribe which he pays to the clerk to get
a work done, the Rs.5 tax he denies the nation everyday by not taking invoices
for the purchases and the list can go on. The total amount of money from this
list can end up making the total amount of black money of the political class
seem meagre and puny.
According to my judgement, the movement was
always political. The only difference it has with other movements is that Anna
doesn't have a political party and he doesn't contest any elections. But he is
no less than a politician. His anti-congress attitude is well known. The
movement today stands as 'Anti-Congress' and not 'Anti-Corruption'.
This fact is evident from the Hisar polls. Team Anna went ahead with only Kejriwal and Anna on board to campaign against the congress.
This same team had decided to wait till the winter session and give congress
(not government) a chance till then. But the same team played foul by
campaigning in Hisar.
Anna, I feel is a very smart politician. He
has cleverly defended his political actions. He justified his aggressive
anti-congress stand with the fact that Congress is the ruling party. It must be
noted here that Congress then should alone enjoy the credit for bringing the
Right to Information Act. This Act has been an eye opener and has been
responsible for unearthing the corruptions and scams. But Congress is sinned,
so he will oppose it everywhere, in every state. He will oppose it in UP too,
even if it means supporting Mayawati's BSP, one of
the most corrupt party in the state. He is ready to indirectly support all
parties no matter how corrupt they are but not the Congress. He believes
passing Jan Lokpal is the sole responsibility of
Congress (and no other party or members of the Parliament has any role in
getting this passed). Anna knows the tricks of politics. He kept the public
deceived, making sure that he enjoyed their support. He dissociated corruption
from the daily personal life of the people just to please the mass and keep
their support. Had he been honest he should have been vocal about the
corruption in personal life of the people. In another incident where his
malicious intents were exposed was Hisar. Instead of
asking the people to vote honestly for the best candidate they camped against
Congress. After this the Team Anna's movement no longer remains an
Anti-Corruption movement but an Anti-Congress political movement.
Kejriwal had remarked that 'Anna is above the
parliament', indeed Anna has surpassed the principles of democracy. He has
ignored the basic realities like the Standing Committee and the procedures and
support needed to pass a bill. Team Anna has said that their resolution to pass
the JLP is similar to Mahabharata's Arjun's concentration on the bird's eye. But it seems he
has forgotten a few important factors like:
* Cracks
have developed in the team due to the Hisar campaign.
* Prashant Bhusan, a core member still doesn't properly understand the
meaning of national integration. His Kashmir remarks were not in favour of
India.
* Two
of his core team members left realising their mistakes.
* Justice
Hegde coming out with his statement condemning Team
Anna's unfair Anti-Congress attitude.
* Anna
is so blind that he even can't see the issues raised by many intellectuals
against some of the proposals in his lokpal.
So can we assume
that Digvijay Singh was right in his remarks, where
he called Anna a RSS 'Mukhota'?
The aggressive Anti-Congress attitude is seen to be benefiting the
BJP quite a great deal. Thus it can be concluded that the BJP indeed has a hand
behind Team Anna. This conclusion is based on BJP's logic 'since you benefit,
you must be the culprit'. (They had applied this in the Cash for vote scam). It
is not me but even Team Anna is using this logic in blaming the Congress. If
their team is developing crack it's the Congress to be blamed as they will
benefit from this. Salman Khursheed
in a TV show was asked 'Why are you dividing Team Anna'!! Huh what an
insensible way to talk sensible!!
Now coming on the issue of corruption
in Team Anna. Anna has always
maintained he has no corruption in him but he has only justified people calling
him corrupt. Team Anna has accused our PM Manmohan
Singh, Pranab Mukherjee,
Party president Sonia Gandhi, MP Rahul Gandhi corrupt just because some of
their team members like Kalmadi, Raja (belonged to
DMK and not Congress) were found to be corrupt. But how far is Team Anna clean?
Arvind Kejriwal violated
his bond conditions. He went abroad to study (2000-2002) on government's
expenses. But he violated his contract by resigning in 2006. As per the bond he
had to serve for 3 years after his return. He was served notice, he initially
pleaded for a waiver of the dues pointing out his contributions as a RTI
activist. But today he says he never violated the terms!!
Kiran Bedi too didn't maintain her clean
image. She was caught in wrong foot when she was found charging elevated travel
expenses to the conference organisers. She charged business class fare, where
she travelled in subsidized economy class (75% discount in economy fare). She
claimed she donated this money to the NGO. So who should be the actual donor??
Is it she or the organisers or the Govt. of India which provided her 75%
discount?? Anyways how can she justify deceiving and cheating by donating the
ill-gotten money to a NGO? I would quote a blogger in this regard:
"Because if one chooses to buy the
argument what is stopping DMK from saying that the money made from 2G scam was
used for distributing free sewing machines to the poor? Or Congress, from
saying that the money from the CWG scam was spent to fund some such
poor-friendly initiative. Do A Raja, Kanimozhi,
Suresh Kalmadi and the lot in Tihar,
then get a clean chit? What is Anna Hazare agitating
against then?" (Abantika Ghosh
- Corruption is in the way Ms Bedi - dated 20th
October)
So now, that we can conclude that members of Team Anna are not
clean, so we can call Anna Hazare corrupt in a
similar way by applying the same logic applied by Team Anna while accusing Manmohan Singh, Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi.
Finally it stands; Anna is neither apolitical nor non-corrupt,completely justified by
the Team Anna's principles. So why should we sympathize, when Prashant Bhushan was whacked for
his Kashmir remarks? Why was hurling a shoe at Kejriwal
made an issue? Politicians have been whacked often and even murdered. Shoes
have been hurled at them and they have never made any issue out of it. And also
what's wrong when Anna is accused of corruption and secret pawn of RSS? Not
only these accusations have been justified above but also as politicians do, he
should also not worry about the charges because in our country politicians have
always faced charges from different fronts.
So what happens when Anna has lost his apolitical shell? How many
people would come out in support when he fasts the next time? The much talked
anti-corruption movement will finally end up in a political corrupt dirty game?
Now when Anna's political link has been established, it won't take
much effort to strengthen this bond with the BJP. His attitude towards BJP has
been very soft, very much contradicting his stand against congress. He has
praised Modi ignoring his hand in the communal riots. Why didn't Anna ever
speak against Modi when he played politics to keep the seat of Lokayukta empty? They have always used Justice Hegde's report against BJP as a shield against this
allegation. But now when Justice Hegde has come out
clean with his apolitical image, how can Team Anna justify their silence in
issues related to BJP? They have not spoken against Yeddyurappa,
and were also silent when Amar Singh was arrested. He came hard on Congress but
was soft on BJP though BJP was vocal about its objections in including
judiciary, MP's in-house conduct and few other issues.
So finally where does Team Anna's movement
stand? After playing the political cards Anna is now maintaining silence,
waiting for things to die down. (B. Brummet has called this kind of silence as 'political
strategic silence' where political leaders deliberately refuse to comment on a
situation when expecteed to do so in order to achive a particular objective.)
It
turns out to be another political fight. It is no different from the Rath Yatra's of Advani, full of deceit and contradictions. Finally it's
time to remove the pure halo around Anna. Support him if you agree with
political views or else oppose him without any guilt.
Rahul
Das
M.S
(Cyber Law and Information Security)
Indian
Institute of Information Technology, Allahabad
With
inputs from: Shilpita Roy, Apeejay
School of Mass Communication