Jai Shri Ramdev: Oppostion exercise boomerangs

On December 1, 2010, a press conference was held in New Delhi, in which a comprehensive Anti-corruption Bill, Jan Lokpal Bill, was released. A memorandum signed by Sri Ravishankar, Mallika Sarabhai, Kiran Bedi, Arvind Kejriwal, Swami Agnivesh, Sunita Godara, Archbishop Vincent M Concessao, Devindra Sharma, Maulana Mufti Shamoom Kashmi, Pradeep Gupta, Kamalkant Jasawal, BB Lal,  Gopal K Aggarwal and SK Tijarawala on behalf of Swami Ramdev on the letterhead of ‘India Against Corruption’ was sent to the Prime Minister. Interestingly, Anna Hazare was not one of the signatories.

On February 26, Anna wrote to the PM for setting up a joint drafting committee. He mentioned about going on an indefinite fast in that letter. On April 5, 2011, Anna sat on an indefinite fast; nearly 500 people sat with him. On April 8, government agreed to form a joint committee to draft the Bill and with the full help of the media, Anna’s movement became a national movement.

The campaign against corruption was dangerously assuming the colour and character of a genuine people’s movement against graft. The calculation of the opposition had gone wrong on three counts.

Firstly, somewhere down the line, Baba Ramdev was dropped and Anna became the sole leader of the movement. Secondly, Anna had no politics. He in fact hit the Modi government on the rebound after having praised it earlier.

Thirdly, the people had started debating on the Jan Lokpal Bill rather than on the corrupt practices of the UPA government. The entire exercise of the opposition to steal the thunder from NAC had not only failed but boomeranged.

The entry of Ramdev had therefore become inevitable. If the CWG and the 2G scams could not destabilise the government, nothing could. The peoples’ anger against corruption was meant to be aimed against the UPA. It was not meant to become the focus of framing a new law against graft.  Ram temple and Hindutva slogans had long stopped giving political dividends and the opposition was counting on the movement led by ‘India Against Corruption’ to kill two birds with one stone, to make NAC ineffective and discredit the UPA government.  Instead, they had almost scored a self goal with Anna’s wayward shooting.  Sibal and Co. have given them another chance.

Will the opposition now achieve their goal or will the country have a genuine anti-corruption law? The opposition would be hoping that their new slogan, Jai Shri Ramdev, would yield better dividends than their original Jai Shri Ram. We have to wait and watch.
  
 (The writer is a city-based
human rights activist and lawyer)