The chips
were always stacked up against the Government – a poor old septuagenarian messiah
vs the black hands of the Government was an unfair battle from a media coverage
and public empathy perspective. It was a no-win situation for the Govt but it
did not help that they committed hara-kiri and managed to make themselves the
laughing stock of the nation.
Hasn’t
the Congress ever thought of collective bargaining or were they so drunk in the
stupor of arrogance and out of touch with the man on the street that it thought
that AH was just another old man who would be forgotten quickly enough and so
there was no need to indulge him in a civil fashion. For a party that merely
takes orders from the top, it may have been tough to understand the meaning of
moral superiority.
UPA is
isolated now as it has to battle an army of protestors and an Opposition
waiting to strike but they have just themselves to blame for not including a
single member of the Opposition on the drafting committee. The party probably
did not want to share credit with anyone else and tried going alone and now
when they have egg on their face, they realize that they have to fight it out
themselves.
Forget
about the moral angle to the entire sequence of events; you’d think that the
Congress had some kind of a strategy to fight AH but it managed to dig a hole and
crawl into slowly at first and then rapidly. Without the presence of Sonia
Gandhi, is the party totally rudderless (assuming that they’d have done the
right thing if she were there ofcourse)? The Crown Prince has been silent
throughout assuming that it’s better to blame a lost cause on the PMs head than
take any action (their spin doctors still managed to give him credit for
releasing Anna!!!); the same attitude that led the PM to fix the responsibility
of the mishandling of the situation on the Delhi police.
For years
now, we have had this spectacle of an arrangement between the ‘honest’ PM and
St. Sonia taking the party together – an arrangement that worked well for them
as well as onlookers. Finally, it looks like the time has come to sever this
umbilical cord and get somebody else onto the throne. PM, the gentleman image
has served you long enough and it’s time for a forced renunciation now – get
somebody at the helm who can actually act. Rahul may not be my choice but if
Congressmen can stay united only under him, so be it; no more mukhotas are
needed.
Dear
Rahul, if the Congress party looks at you as a future PM, you need to speak up.
You cannot pick and choose your revolutions only looking at the safe areas to
score brownie points; so you cannot go to Bhatta- Parsaul and Pune and make long
winding assertions but choose to stay silent when your government is being
thrashed around by the entire country. You let Manish Tewari and a few other jokers go berserk in their attacks and be
slaughtered by the remarkable campaign of Team Anna.
We have
seen enough of Kapil Sibal and Abhishek Singhvi now; they have managed to weave
legal spin as much as possible but for God’s sake, show some spine, stand up
and talk if you really want people to take you seriously (Ideally, this appeal
should be to the PM but you know..). Are you waiting for the dust to settle
down, sacrifice the PM and then step in with a noble gesture of getting Anna’s
fast broken and get everyone’s applause?
There is
a broad consensus that it was the Government’s bungling that has brought the
issue so far but it is also the failure of the Opposition that has resulted in
the ‘civil’ society taking the matter into its arms. The UPA has lost all its
authority and is rudderless but where is the BJP in the midst of this entire
din? It has neither taken a stance on the bill or made any attempts to resolve the logjam but has been enjoying the show from the sidelines. The party badly misses a Vajpayee kind of statesman like figure who can
appeal to the masses and even talk to Team Hazare (the kind of credibility that
the current Parliament lacks). Maybe a Nitish Kumar can step in and help in
assuaging this public angst (would have suggested Modi but his image makes him
a polarizing figure).
In the midst of all the upheaval that I see around me in the nation, it
is difficult to stay unmoved and detached as a wave of emotions sweeps across
the political fabric of this country. I have been oscillating from one side to
another regularly unsure on what side I find myself in. Though my brain tells me
that ‘Anna way or no way’ approach is not in sync with democratic principles,
my heart asks me whether there was any other way?
When lakhs (let’s call it thousands for Karan Thapar’s sake) hit the
roads with a sort of vengeance, can we simply disregard it hiding under the
cloak of constitutionalism and Parliament? If different versions of the bill
have been lying in the cans for more than 40+ years, does it not reflect the
failure of the elected representatives? Yes, the people on the streets do not
understand the Lok Pal and its intricacies but their protest is the only tangible
way to tell the powers-at-the-top that they need to be heard (Agreed that the
agitation has gone overboard on any occasions like the Anna-is-India and timeline
based demands but it gives the Govt an opportunity to act mature, put aside
egos and show magnanimity in handling the issue and actually win over people).
No one thinks that the bill will eradicate corruption and to that
extent, the JLP bill may backfire (remember the much-maligned Anti-Defection Law was drafted by Shanti Bhushan) because of its grandiose design but the voice of
the people is a voice of desperation and frustration, a voice that says we have
a role even beyond the ballot box. It is this voice that the State needs to
recognize and provide a platform, otherwise we will see more such agitations. If
the Government had been able to communicate properly its views on the bill, it
would not have come to an us vs them situation, where even strands of
intelligent opposition are being attacked. This coupled with the fact that the
principal opposition is not able to present an alternative has led to a vacuum
in the polity, which the civil society is trying to fill, albeit in spurts.
We are the world’s largest democracy but simply providing universal
suffrage does not suffice – we need to evolve into a participatory democracy
from an electoral democracy. Every 5 years, we vote a leader into the Assembly
and Parliament but till the next election, we have no role to play in the
day-to-day governance of the state. Decisions taken in the House have no
relation with what happens in our lives even though they affect us. I’d see the
protest not in terms of the JLP or even corruption (though it is the rallying
point) but in terms of how millions in this country feel alienated in the
decision making process in the country. If all this action translates into some
kind of mechanism where we feel responsible (even accountable) for governmental
decisions and have a concrete say in it, it would be the real victory of the
agitation.
But let us not push it a point of no return where even if a compromise
is desired, it cannot be achieved because the legions of supporters will not
settle for anything other than total victory. The point has been made well
enough for the polity to understand that citizens cannot be taken for granted
and it’s time to move to a more conciliatory rather than confrontational
approach; while rhetoric works well to get in mass support, a more nuanced
approach is needed to break the current logjam and accept other points of view. Team Anna has to be careful not to snatch a loss from the jaws of victory by its dogmatic and sanctimonious posturing which is taking us to a rather uncalled for chaotic situation.
Unlike the Arab Spring, the objective here is not toppling a government
but a strong moral show of strength in
tackling political apathy. So, once the target is achieved, there is a danger
that this triumph will be short-lived and the hubris will evaporate just as
quickly as it was created. The anger can crystallize into either an apolitical
or political movement but it should hopefully not be an anti-political movement
as it is now. Eventually, only when the politics of the land undergoes a transformation (this
is where electoral reforms are a key), a true change will emerge. Otherwise, we
need to keep searching for an Anna like figure to rally people around on every
issue that concerns us.
I am neither
in favour of the JLP or the Government bill and look forward to the debate in
the Standing Committee to come up with its recommendations. The Govt is
responsible for the current impasse but Team Anna and followers have been quite
adamant, jingoistic and inflexible in their approach towards resolving this, so
hope good sense prevails!!!
Image courtesy - http://www.cartoonistsandeep.com/post_detail.php.php?id=MAYAF1298789679MAYA4d69f52fbffff
Image courtesy - http://www.cartoonistsandeep.com/post_detail.php.php?id=MAYAF1298789679MAYA4d69f52fbffff
Its good to know that not everybody is buying the JLP will eradicate corruption theory, Why are we Indians so easily gullible? The utopian concept of a Land Free of Corruption can only be the handywork of someone totally oblivious to the realities of life. Everybody knows that almost all the companies indulge in corruption, voluntarily or forced, but that does not deter used from seeking job or growth or even investing through shares in that company. We Indians are a bunch of hypocrites.
ReplyDeleteVery well written.. I think most of us are having exactly the same feeling which is coming out from ur blog.
ReplyDelete