Lokpal: The real fun and games begin now

Anna Hazare may have won the first round in his battle with the government, but he is aware that he has not been able to deliver a knockout punch.

Though the government has accepted virtually all his points in his version of the Lokpal bill, it has done so with a number of caveats. As a result, when the parliamentary standing committee and then parliament itself will discuss the final draft of the legislation, it is the caveats which are likely to prevail.

It is this apprehension that made Anna say after taking a sip of coconut water and honey on Sunday morning that the fast has only been suspended. His aides may be more worried because Anna remains their trump card. Without him, they count for nothing.

If, as is likely, the final document is seen to be closer to the government’s original, ‘toothless’ version, the activists will be stumped, for they cannot ask Anna to go on fast again even if the crusader himself is willing.

The reason is that a repetition of an old trick is rarely effective. Besides, by then, the cracks in the team may become wider. The divisive signs were apparent even before Anna broke his fast, with Swami Agnivesh complaining that the Gandhian satyagrahi was being badly advised and Justice Santosh Hegde saying that Anna should have broken his fast much earlier, notably when the government accepted his terms that the prime minister should come under the Lokpal.

Kiran Bedi’s ‘ugly theatrics’ at Ramlila grounds, as DNA’s website said, when she mocked parliamentarians, have not shown the activists in favourable light. Nor did the spectacle of Arvind Kejriwal waving a copy of the Indian Express that referred to his differences with Hegde since it was suggestive of intimidation and intolerance of criticism.

The intolerance has also been evident in cyberspace where the pro-Anna netizens have been abusive of his critics. Shiv Sena chief Bal Thackeray was not far off the mark, therefore, when he said that Anna’s aides were playing with his life.

If this outlook is now highlighted along with Anna’s disdain for legislators since he believes they are elected by voters who have been won over through the distribution of liquor and sarees — he calls them bikaau — then Anna’s crusade will begin to lose some of its halo.

His detractors are likely to resurrect the reports about his ‘brahminical’ despotism, as it has been called, in his native village of Ralegan Siddhi, where liquor, tobacco and even television are banned and those who disobey these diktats are tied to posts and flogged.

The real fun and games will begin, therefore, when the political class gets its act together. That it has already done so was evident from the unanimity that marked the passage of the parliamentary resolution on the government’s acceptance of the remaining three key points — the setting up of Lok Ayuktas in the states, the inclusion of the lower judiciary under the Lokpal and the provision for citizen’s charters in government offices relating to public grievances.

Team Anna called for voting on these issues so that it could spot the dissenters and target them later. The BJP, on its part, probably wanted to scare the Congress by supporting the idea of a vote since it would have shown the Congress as an opponent of Anna’s version of the bill along with the RJD, BSP, LJP and others.

The BJP apparently felt that this portrayal of the Congress would help the saffron camp in the ensuing elections, notably in UP. But, if the BJP backtracked at the last minute, the reason was the realisation that its hands, too, were not all that clean.

For instance, it takes a bit of hard swallowing to project the party of BS Yeddyurappa and the Bellary brothers as an anti-corruption crusader. Besides, three of its MPs dissociated themselves from the party’s move to edge closer to the Anna camp on the grounds that the BJP had already left the field open for these non-political elements to lead the charge against the Congress.

In the end, the BJP found it politic to side with the Congress in passing the resolution even without a voice vote, a ‘lapse’ that was regarded by Medha Patkar, a prominent social worker, as ‘part betrayal’ by the government.

The writer is a Delhi-based political commentator