Hoping to shed some clarity on Anna’s dilemma, India Against Corruption has now turned to the citizens.
Hoping to shed some clarity on Anna’s dilemma, India Against Corruption has now turned to the citizens. A survey is now under way, asking citizens what their opinion is: Should Anna or his team stand for elections?
Anna Hazare’s dismantling of his team and announcing a political alternative to the massive people’s movement over the last year and a half may have broken the hearts of quite a few number of people who had participated in the protests, demanding a Jan Lokpal Bill. Posters of Anna Hazare were burnt and volunteers of the septuagenarian stayed away from meetings or returned their ID cards in a number of places.
However, a few others rejoiced in the prospect of a newer option to cast their votes during elections.
A month after making the announcements and calling off his fast, neither is Anna anywhere close to forming a political party, nor is there any clarity on what exactly Anna’s political alternative is.
“These are difficult questions to answer. While some people believe the movement was and always should be apolitical, there are others who believe we need to be in the political system to bring change,” said Prithvi Reddy, coordinator, IAC, Karnataka. Anna wants to try and understand what the people want, he added.
He explains that the movement had activists. “Normally, activists and politics do not mix. However, after a year and a half, we realised that present-day politics does not allow what we want,” he said.
The movement was pushed to the walls, he said, forcing them to look for a political alternative. With this decision came a new set of questions, the biggest being what kind of political alternative.
“Should we form a party or support someone from the outside was the question before us. If we did support a good candidate from a traditional party from the outside, what guarantee did we have that if he won, he would do what we had been asking. Anna has asked people to stand as independents, but who will support them in terms of infrastructure? This requires a lot of money and how are we going to raise this?” he asked.
The third option was for the team to enter politics. “Although all of us are political in our activism, this is electoral politics and most of us are not very keen on that,” said Prithvi, explaining the dilemma. “We understand something needs to be done. We understand that the people of India will be able to help us in making this decision,” he said.
ABP News Neilson survey had found that more than 75% of those surveyed had said that they would vote for Anna Hazare, adds Reddy.
“We wanted a survey on a much more bigger and representative scale,” he said. The survey went online on Saturday and will be available for a few days.
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