Anna’s hyperbole may yet produce a strong Lokpal – India

20 aug 2011

Anna’s hyperbole may yet produce a strong Lokpal

Although the Manmohan Singh government has been battered and bruised by its inept handling of civil society activists, the latter’s claim of being harbingers of a second independence movement has also begun to wear thin.

Dr Sanjay Kumar Cardiac Cardiothoracic Heart Surgeon India

The terms to which Anna Hazare agreed while negotiating with the government while in Tihar Jail – that he will not undertake a fast-unto-death and that his hunger-strike will be medically monitored – represent a climb-down.

It is too early to say whether a conditional fast will affect his reputation. But there is little doubt that some of the hype associated with his movement will be deflated.

Not only that. After an initial spell of enthusiasm – the gathering of thousands in various cities, the candlelight processions – contrary voices are gradually being heard. It isn’t the politicians alone who have voiced their disquiet over the denigration of parliament, with Lalu Prasad making the point most emphatically.

There are a number of others, too, who can also be regarded as members of civil society and are speaking out against Anna Hazare’s holier-than-thou attitude even if they endorse his anti-corruption plank.

Again, it is too early to say how all this will pan out if only because India has never seen this kind of popular upsurge earlier.

The only comparison can be with Jayaprakash Narayan’s movement in 1975, but since it was quickly crushed by the Emergency, there was no knowing how much of a success it would have been.

At the same time, its indirect achievement in ensuring the Congress’s defeat in 1977, and especially those of Indira Gandhi and Sanjay Gandhi personally, the two prime movers of the Emergency, was evidence enough of its mass base.