Girish Patel: Team Anna and its tin soldiers

Anna Hazare's self-anointed 'civil society' movement against corruption is now coming out in its true colours. A closer examination of some aspects of the masquerade - who started it, how Hazare was inducted into it as the central figure, who financed it, how people were mobilised in different parts of India, why and how some TV channels hyped the movement, how much they earned, which were the real forces behind it, how Hazare' fast was manipulated, who were the real decision-makers - will reveal the truth about it. The 'Team of Four' who demanded transparency in governance and public life could not practice transparency in their own conduct. As it subsequently became clear, such honesty would have brought out skeletons in their own cupboard.

Their defensive explanations were ridiculous. Their angry retort - 'Do not look at our conduct. We will correct it, but look only at our movement' - shows their arrogant self-righteousness. What a mockery they have made of what they called was a movement for purity in public life! The democratic pretensions of the so-called 'Second Freedom Movement' has been thoroughly exposed. The people who gathered or were mobilised have gone back to their barracks. The 'Team of Four' with Hazare as their mask are now left in the field acting as if they were like the National Supreme Council after the recent revolutions in Egypt and Libya.

Oblivious to the suspicion and contempt they evoke, they have been taking all kinds of unilateral decisions, giving calls to the people and firing threats at the UPA government. When they were called upon to make the team broad-based, their reply was first like that of the Supreme Council: “We will frame the constitution. Till then, we will rule and lead the movement.”
Their political character and vaunted commitment to honest candidates was unmasked when they called upon the voters in Hissar by-election not to vote for the Congress candidate. They did not bother to find about the character of the other candidates. Now they want to participate indirectly in the elections in a few states, apparently because they are unable to gather the courage to fight the polls openly. Anna Hazare and Kejriwal's mild condemnation of the physical assault on Prashant Bhushan for his stand on Kashmir even as they disapproved of his democratic stand on the issue, leaves no one in doubt where their hearts lie. Their lip-service to democracy and freedom and their devotion to ultra-nationalistic ideology are finally out in the open.

These tin soldiers of the 'Second Freedom Movement' did not have even two sympathetic words for the people of J&Kwho are helpless victims of a proxy war. Their real problem is that once the UPA and parliament accepted their demand for a strong, independent Lokpal and conceded their three points, they find themselves without an agenda. Since then, they have been making frantic efforts to make their presence felt by all sorts of gimmicks.  This was bound to happen as their movement is bereft of any social and economic content, or any vision of tomorrow's India. Even the unorganised and spontaneous 'Occupy Wall Street' movement in the US and similar movements in other countries have raised fundamental questions about poverty, inequality and corporate greed, the inevitable consequences of globalised capitalism. Do Anna Hazare and his team have the will, courage or the capacity to bring to the centre stage of Indian politics the real problems of the country? Or, are these problems - poverty, malnutrition, homelessness, inequality and crony capitalism - too lowly for their wise eminences?