Anna Hazare: new age Gandhi or media-fed megalomaniac?

As the drama unfolds, there are many questions that plague my thoughts:

1.                 Should I support Annaji?

2.                 Is he doing the right thing?

3.                 What will be achieved by fasting?

4.                 What am I doing to support Anna?

5.                 Should I take on the road with a candle in my hand and start chanting Vande Mataram or start fasting!

Somehow, I couldn't relate to either of the support methods. My views might be a little far fetched but are the ideal means of removing corruption from the grass root level. This doesn't mean that I am against any one or any other means, its just that I don’t see myself convinced that these means will achieve any permanent solutions to the evils that plague society.

So let’s get some facts clear. Where did corruption start? It started at our doorstep. We have laid the foundation. It is YOU and ME who are to be blamed along with the corrupt politicians and officials. Take any field... Education, Construction, Medical, Housing, Taxation, Law & Order, we are the ones who bribed the officials to get our way out and for our own benefit.

Those who wanted their children to get in to the best of the colleges so they started buying seats. We called them the donation seats. We kept the worthy students out and got non-deserving students to get their seats. The schools/colleges in turn forced the education ministry to increase the seats, offered them enough money to allow them. Seats increased, donations doubled. Builders in the Garb of big corporates wanted all the construction contracts, wanted to construct tall buildings to earn more money. If the FSI was for 10 floors, built 20 then filled our babus mouth with gold/cash/diamonds and offered them share in the buildings.

What intrigues me most is the enormity – and absurdity – of the belief vested in the gospel according to Anna. It has been projected as the instant answer to corruption. Pass his version of the Bill, and this omnipresent monster will disappear. Reject it, and rot forever in bribery’s greedier maw. Am I the only one who thinks in this simplistic manner?

We can see that it’s the educated masses out there, not some lumpen mob. Yet, is anyone ready to give pause to the lusty slogans and lustier bhajans, and question the naïveté of this assumption? By now I know, Anna-ji is the potent symbol of public rage and frustration. But symbolism needs only one small step to fall into tokenism.

I am intrigued by the so called Gandhian as much as the next person however, i continue to have a problem with the posturing bunch he has around him, starting with a former top cop known for her brutal enforcement of the law but who on Tuesday did nothing short of inciting the police by disobeying orders. Since when has blatant flaunting of law and order begun to be idolized in our Democratic set up. Why do we always misuse our freedom and rights under a Democracy?  His ideals may be correct but there is no Method to this madness, and what examples are these so called people in media light trying to set for the others. I agree that in a democracy people must be not be passive recipients’ but active participants and set the agenda for the government but the prerogative of legislation is always with the Parliament and the educated masses have been taught that since primary school. The era when charismatic and silver-tongued leaders could change the public mood with just one stirring sentence appears to be over. The Prime Minister, well-intentioned though he might be, was hard put to make himself heard above the din in Parliament when he tried to assert the supremacy of elected bodies as opposed to street corner rabble rousers. He certainly had a point, the problem is that no one is willing to listen anymore.

I am deeply concerned about all the protests and fasts: one needs to practise not bribing in daily life rather than waiting for someone to remove corruption: No bribes or chai pani to traffic cops, telephone linesman, house registration, passport office etc. 

Team Anna should be grateful to the government for its ham-handed actions have saved their day. In fact the government by giving so much credence to this movement has turned them into the neo martyrs of the faux freedom struggle, and the cycle of arrests-release-refusal has deferred the problem of actually delivering the end of corruption. the government bungled by arresting Anna Hazare, though I believe that the Jan Lokpal bill that Anna wants to impose on the nation, is as dangerous, impractical and unworkable as the one the government has created. The reason I say this is that in any democracy, the intent is to empower people, not to create another ‘super elite’ or a pseudo centralised power structure that one imagines will resolve the problem of corruption that has seeped into the very roots of our country. It is naïve for people to believe that once the Jan Lokpal bill is green-lit, corruption will be rooted out and India will become a country free from the vice of corruption. Anna’s bill will take away power from the people and make the process a law unto itself with absolute power. 

I once again say that his ideals and his goals are not the problem it’s the chosen means for achieving this goal that is becoming nuisance and the day to day life of the masses. However, Annaji u need to be worried about the so called personalities who are hitching a piggy back ride with you, and grinding their political axes by shooting from your shoulders.

Why does Annaji need a venue to fast? So he can gather public support and incite more public furor? Common its not as if BJP that is the alternative choice to the Congress at the Centre is any clean. Not that I am not against corruption but sitting on a fast and defying law and order is not the way to achieve CLEAN INDIA. 

Yes, corruption is a major issue and the government has failed to deliver on it. So there is place for people like Anna. But let’s back the cause and not necessarily follow the person blindly. You can’t find solutions in a virtual world. Every Indian will have to get into the crevices of the rotten system and do his bit to fix it.

Like Mr. Mahesh Bhatt said in an article titled Anna Hazare: new age Gandhi or media-fed megalomaniac? in todays Hindustan Times “ I have nothing against people believing in their God, but for God’s sake, don’t impose ‘your’ God on me. You can follow Anna and his team, but allow me the freedom of not following him”.