If I support a claim like ‘Anna Hazare’s campaign against corruption stirred the nation’, it would be falling in the trap that the media has so painstakingly woven. Media hypes incidents and happenings to such an extent that one actually stars living in this make believe world. In a country where poverty, hunger, depravity, unemployment and illiteracy are rampant, this actually is not such a huge task. There is always a ready audience available for whatever is dished out by the media, and they can then claim that this is what aam admi wants. The problem is that there are so many aam admis in this country that anyone would find enough of them at any given point in time to make any cause look absolutely genuine and close to the heart of the aam admi.
Anna’s campaign definitely did give a push to people who were already awakened to some extent, who were already engaged and who were looking for a rallying point. Beyond getting such people out on the street to express their solidarity with Anna’s movement, I personally feel it had little impact on indifferent, complacent, self possessed and to a large extent beleaguered masses of this country. During Anna Hazare’s fast (which I went to support at Jantar Mantar), I had reservations about the integrity of some of the people associated with the campaign, but the cause to me seemed so extremely important that I felt a strong urge to lend my support to it. Some of these people of Anna’s core group have a misplaced belief about their self righteousness and portray absolutely impeccable records and antecedents. They believe that their association with a cause automatically lends credibility to it, but they need to do an honest soul searching of their own integrity. To my chagrin there are enough people, even the well educated and aware crowd, who would readily buy their claims and follow these people blindly. However, it was a great relief when Anna and his aides decided to keep a safe distance from all political parties as he rightly claimed that all of them were involved in corruption and malpractices. The agitation ended well with the government agreeing to jointly draft a Lokpal Bill.
I still have not been able to fathom as to why Ramdev (I will refrain from calling him a baba, which in my book is a person who has achieved a spiritual status, and not the owner of a business empire) was itching to do a replay of the same agitation when he did not have anything new to demand or ask for from the government. What did Ramdev have in mind when he decided to embark upon this agitation without having a cogent agenda or a locus standi? He seems to have used the mass support of his yoga followers to satiate his own whims, fancies, ambitions, in the process taking this gullible crowd for a ride. Has this type of a ‘fast’ become the new ‘mantra’ to arm twist the government in to submission, on issues valid or invalid. Anna Hazare at least is a man of integrity with commendable social work to his credit, and is a selfless activist who did not have anything to do with any political party and had no hidden agenda. He is above board, does not have a business empire, and one didn’t have any compunction lending support to him and to his cause despite some people with questionable antecedents in his core support group. His fast got spontaneous support from the disappointed, frustrated people of this country. I however do wonder why he has now chosen to lend support to the fast of a man with dubious objectives and no clear agenda, especially when the BJP was so clearly on the same platform with him. Why did Anna have to change his previous stand of maintaining a distance from all political parties? I strongly feel that Anna has by this action created deep doubts in his supporters on the credibility of his own campaign. At least people like me would think twice before wanting to associate even with him or his cause, because of his stand in the Ramdev matter.
More surprising in this drama however has been the erratic, inconsistent behaviour of the UPA government. What was the fear, provocation, anxiety or apprehension that led the government to behave the way it did? What was the government so afraid of that they defied all norms of logical, intelligible and sensible behaviour all through their handling of the situation? First they gave an impression that they were willing to go to any length to dissuade Ramdev from going on a fast and then when they did not succeed, they behaved like an autocratic, insensitive, dictatorial, paranoid government in the middle of the night. There have been no believable explanations given by the govt on their actions on this affair so far, and even people sympathetic to the govt and who look up to Dr Manmohan Singh have started to question their ability and vision. Actually every subsequent development in this bizarre ‘naatak’ is more surprising than the previous one. If Ramdev is a thug, as he is being labelled by some Congress leaders, why did the government want to woo him, appease him or even engage with him in the first place? I want to know that if the government knew about the irregularities and malpractices in the trusts he has formed and in the antecedents of his aides, that the govt is now claiming, why was it sleeping till now? Why don’t the relevant authorities in this country detect and take action on such frauds at the very inception or at least in their early days? Why does our system fail consistently and allow such scams to happen and flourish resulting in people creating empires out of nowhere? Is the government hand in glove with such people, and when they cannot manage them anymore, does it then decide to expose them?
It is amazing, shocking and extremely disappointing to see that anyone and everyone irrespective of their own personal conduct and behaviour talks about corruption and sermonises about honesty and integrity with impunity. Look at the way the BJP has managed to land itself bang in the middle of this muddle, trying to juice maximum political mileage. Politicians from all parties barring may be a miniscule percentage (hopefully) are the biggest thugs in this country. Nobody can touch them; nobody dare say anything to them because this muck runs so deep and is so pervasive across all party lines that chances are that anyone who rakes this up would end up getting consumed by the gigantic stink it would raise. In fact, this seems to be happening in the recent CWG, Telecom exposures etc, as one after another bigwig is being exposed. If we could somehow manage to conduct a free and fair enquiry in to the assets of all these people who hold public offices, it would not be a surprise if each one of them turn out to be of minimum a few hundred crores and obviously ranging to a few thousand crores. The nation would want to know the secret of their productivity and the exponential rate of growth of their assets after entering public office.
It is disgusting but true that this country has reached a moral and ethical nadir. Our politicians of course are the most shamelessly corrupt, but having said that our society is not too far behind. Whether it’s our bureaucracy, judiciary, business, media or the middle class, everyone has become so corrupt that it has actually become a huge task to be able to live clean and above board in our country. People ridicule you, disbelieve you or look down upon you or brand you an utopian or a bragger or just plain incompetent or an imbecile, if you try and tell them about going about getting a job done with honesty or integrity. It is appalling but almost everyone seem to now believe that everyone has a price, everyone can be bought over. I am amazed at this transformation of our society, and even accommodating the enamour of the idea of personal upscaling that our country is obsessed with (along with the absolute lack of fear of a compromised state authority), I wonder why has there been no self check to this comprehensive collective moral downfall..
The government needs to wake up fast and install systems that deliver unfailingly, consistently and every time. I also sincerely hope that people of integrity and values find their voice, and rise up individually to root this problem out, rather than desperately backing random and reckless civil society movements.
