Attack from outside, by those wanting to discredit the anti graft crusaders.
Simultaneously, the team of disparate individuals who together constitute the core committee of team Anna –each fired by their own individual cause and ambition—is facing internal dissension and division. There’s a real threat of implosion.
Body blows, kicks, slippers, PILs seeking investigations into the various trusts and NGOs associated with members, internal dissensions and now finally even an expose by the Indian Express on how the feisty ex cop Kiran Bedi over invoiced and inflated her travel bills when claiming reimbursements from organizations, charities and companies hosting her.
The group that came together for a common apolitical cause, is imploding from the politics. PTI
Team Anna should have been expecting this no holds barred attack. They should have even been prepared for it.
The kind of challenge it has posed to the political class in general and the congress party and the UPA government in particular, it’s no surprise that quite a few very powerful people must be rubbing their hands in glee and enjoying the discomfiture of team Anna. Some may even be proactive in ensuring that team Anna remains under pressure and more skeletons were unearthed at regular intervals from what were supposed to be corruption free, clean and glistening cupboards of the leading lights of team Anna.
Team Anna and their supporters must be naïve to expect anything else. And quite frankly there’s precious little they could have done to ward off these attacks if they wanted to sustain their Jan Lokpal bill agenda with the necessary vigour.
But it’s in their inability to manage affairs internally and evolve a consensus in the core committee on key issues of strategy and decision making that team Anna has failed and let down their supporters.
Just look at the list of people who have either walked out on team Anna or have been sidelined.
Swami Agnivesh went ostensibly for conspiring and blaming his fellow team Anna members while on the phone with one Kapilji. Maybe he was doing all that he has been blamed for – being a Vibhishan in the ranks of team Anna and, a government mole. But surely even that instance could have been handled with more sensitivity and maturity. Maybe, just maybe and for the sake of being the devil’s advocate, Swami Agnivesh did have some issues on which he differed with other members of the team and was simply airing his frustration with the rival camp.
Whatever, the public perception is that Agnivesh’s case was not tenable and perhaps team Anna was not very much in the wrong in that case.
But again why and how somebody, like a Santosh Hegde started feeling sidelined by an all consuming, Arvind Kejriwal running the show during Anna’s hunger strike at the Ram Lila maidan and the subsequent negotiations with the government should be worrying. The gentleman that he is, Santosh Hegde did not go public with his opinion till recently when he opposed the rather whimsical and unilateral (or was it a bilateral decision authored by Kejriwal and Bedi) decision to oppose the congress party in Hisar.
The Congress may have been trounced in Hisar and the electoral verdict may well be a precursor to what lies ahead in Haryana politics but the call to oppose the congress party in the by election could well turn out to be a decision which team Anna may repent at leisure.
Speaking to Firstpost, the waterman from Rajasthan—as he is popularly referred to for raising issues pertaining to conservation of water—and Magsaysay award winner, Rajendra Singh, said he was increasingly feeling stifled, sidelined and even manipulated by people like Arvind Kejriwal who were hijacking the movement for their own agenda.
“Why should we be opposing and supporting any political party. Our aim was to secure the Jan Lokpal bill and we should have just focused on that rather than play party politics.”
Rajendra Singh and Gandhian activist P V Rajgopal have already quit the 25-member core committee earlier this week and now there are reports that some other members of the core committee like the Archbishop of Delhi, Maulana Shamim Qasmi, Jamiat Ulema Hind leader and MP, Mehmood Madani, and some other religious leaders may also either quit or distance themselves from the core committee of India Against Corruption (IAC).
All of these people have their political views and leanings and feel uncomfortable being tagged with whatever Kejriwal & co thinks is right.
There’s a growing perception that Anna Hazare is a virtual captive of the Kejriwal-Bedi-Bhushan trio and even amongst these three it is the combination of Arvind Kejriwal and Manish Sisodia who have the final say as far as Anna’s IPR (intellectual property rights) is concerned. It’s widely believed that they are the real voice of Anna and make the veteran articulate whatever they wish. Since even Sisodia is a relative lightweight and seen as a Kejriwal follower by most, it’s ultimately Arvind Kejriwal alone who is seen by observers as the one man who is now running team Anna in a arbitrary and authoritarian manner perhaps hurtling down the anti corruption movement on a self destructive course.
It’s a pity that the movement finds itself on crossroads in this manner.
If only the team occasionally learns to appreciate the virtues of silence ( like Anna himself is at the moment!). Unrelenting aggression and attacking the congress may have helped team Anna become popular amongst those who already are against the party and may even win them kudos from the BJP leaders. It also got them supporters for the common enemy against corruption. But if the team was made legitimate by the congregation of reasonable voices, it is losing support from that same group who were for an apolitical national cause. A reasonable cause.