horeographed for the benefit of the nation’s TV news channels, Anna Hazare’s sound-and-fury show, staged to rid the country of the scourge of corruption in public life, is about to reach a finale. His threat to launch the ‘jail bharo’ agitation and to undertake yet another fast if Parliament fails to adopt his version of the Lokpal Bill before its current session ends next week has sent the entire political class into a tizzy. It should have been seen for what it is: a mocking defiance of an institution that for better or worse represents the collective will of the people of India.
The political class knows as much. But look at its conduct. The government is running helter-skelter for cover. It cannot summon the nerve to call Hazare’s bluff. Nor has it demonstrated so far the courage to present a robust Lokpal Bill that will take the wind out of the Teflon Gandhian’s sails. The opposition parties are even more craven. Honourable exceptions apart, they appear on Hazare’s platform to extol his agenda and to endorse the questionable methods he deploys to get his way. However, in all-party meetings held behind closed doors, they sing a different tune. In plain words, they are prepared to wield any stick to rain blows on the government and in the process regard the supremacy of Parliament to be a mere trifle.
In the midst of this pervasive cynicism, the voices of sanity are few and far between. They include A B Bardhan of the CPI and Amartya Sen. Both have gone on record to state that ‘people on the street’ cannot settle issues like the Lokpal Bill. But there is another, unlikely voice that has been heard too: Bal Thackeray. Not famed for his democratic credentials, the Shiv Sena chief has debunked Hazare’s campaign with the sort of abrasive candour that is his hallmark: the pressure tactics of Team Anna, he argues in substance, are meant to denigrate the institution of Parliament. Period.
Thackeray makes another, significant point that has got lost in the din of the Hazare campaign. He asserts, quite correctly, that we have enough laws to stem, and eventually roll back, the tidal waves of corruption. All that is needed is the will to implement them in letter and spirit. Why has this not happened? That is the question the political class needed to address before it discussed the Lokpal issue. Its inability or unwillingness to do so is typical of its myopia.
What is required is a clinically precise diagnosis of the malady of corruption. This has been done several times in the past but to no avail. The latest one that should command attention comes from Farooq Abdullah. At the all-party meeting last Wednesday, he caused much discomfiture when he uttered a blunt truth: to contest an election is prohibitively expensive. Friendly business houses alone can fund candidates and parties with unaccountable cash. This ‘golden goose’ will be killed if a Lokpal probes the ties between the two.
What Abdullah did not say is how this distribution of unsavoury largesse is to be tackled. But there is an answer. Sweeping electoral reforms, along with an end to discretionary powers of ministers and elected representatives, can do more to reduce corruption than the tedious arguments about the Lokpal Bill. The Bill could yet be passed. But you can be sure that the regiments of the righteous will pooh-pooh it.
No matter. The political class can still take heart from a recent development in Hazare’s native Maharashtra. In the just-concluded municipal council elections held in the state, the victorious parties, the NCP and the Congress, were the very ones that have been the prime target of Hazare’s ire. Did the people, as Thackeray observed, vote for money power? Or could it be that the sound-and-fury of the Hazare campaign in Delhi was no more than a whining whimper of no consequence by the time it reached the voters, including those in his very own Ahmednagar district? Should the latter be the case, Team Anna might well be left to wonder whether, to use Brecht’s stinging phrase, the time has not come to elect another people.
