Wake Up Anna

There is a flip side to the Anna Movement. Something that detracts, something that unsettles, something that is omnious.

The rush of adrenalin generated by mass-hysteria has made people leave their hearth and work to protest at the ground zero level. The following has cut across class barriers. The executive, the NRI, the entrepreneur, the student, the villager and the housewife are rubbing shoulders for the cause. A good thing. But the hysteria has also made people fanatics. Their reason has been blindfolded by the do-or-die spirit. Anyone who is not pro-Anna is an enemy of the people, of Nation. Debate has been subverted by a spirit of dissent that is proving cannibalistic. It is devouring all that is contrary to the cause. It’s a subtle form moral fascism.

Agreed that Anna is not a true-blue Gandhian. Still his undue stress on legislative changes through public pressure without personal commitment to avoid corruption at the individual level can prove the achilles heel of the crusade.
Gandhi knew this well and laid great importance to personal change along with societal changes. Anna has been silent on this.

So it won’t long after the anti-corruption hysteria is worn off that the millions of his votaries will find themselves bending rules by greasing palms to get the work done. Won’t the now-proselytized person spend that extra buck to get his railway tickets in an emergency, or get a school admission for his kid by paying monies to the management.
This is the Janus-faced devil that the movment has unleashed and has to face. Demanding probity from public repsentatives without a corresponding personal commitment is hypocritical.

Anna has a bagful of other demands which he will pursue using similar pressure tactics.
Indo-US Nuclear Deal, Farmers Rights, RTI and so on. Which means law making will increasingly become the agenda of so-called civil society. A society which is adamant about its charter of demands, is dictatorial about the means to achieving them and is seized by its own correctness and high morality. It unleahes hysteria and frenzy amongst people, appropriates national symbols and has portents of transforming democracy into mobocracy.

As the UPA 2 fumbles and bumbles in face of this new `enemy,’ the opposition geares itself to gain every ounce mileage from the faceoff. A bunch of parties have formed a front to fight corruption. Advani has asked for the resignation of the Prime Minister and asked for fresh elections.

Anna’s movement is being used for their narrow ends by the ever- opportunistic opposition. Anna should realize all of it early in the day and make appropriate course corrections before he becomes a hand-maiden of his own noble movement.