Ultimately, however, according to BJP leader Sushma Swaraj, the Prime Minister took  ‘control’ of things and on August 27th, the 12th day of Anna’s fast, the much needed debate in both the houses of Parliament ensured.

The result, as expected, was good. It was in the spirit of the debate that ultimately the crisis was called off — with the aging Gandhian calling off the fast the next morning on August 28th.

Young and old carrying the baton of a free India, free of corruption at the Ramlila ground in support of Anna Hazare

As the message of the historic gesture of the Parliament reached Ram Lila ground, some 15 kms from Parliament, former West Bengal Governor Gopalkrishna Gandhi was forthright in declaring that, “This is Anna’s moment and Parliament’s hour. But the day belongs to the people of India who have woken our polity from amnesia.”

Minutes before, during the debate in the Lok Sabha, BJP MP Varun Gandhi said till now people had been “passive observers and fence sitters” to the issue of corruption, but the Anna stir has proved to the younger generation that “they are also the active agents of change”.

United Parliament:

“The government has taken a U-turn and we feel betrayed,” said Arvind Kejriwal umpteen times. Even on August 28, the day the crisis was resolved at around 3.30 pm, Kejriwal screamed, “dhoka-dari (betrayal)”.

The ‘sense of the house’ and technically not any resolution, proposed by Pranab Mukherjee, was adopted without voting in the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha after about a 9 hour debate by members amid the thumping of desks.

The statement meant to convey a unanimous sense of Parliament to Anna Hazare, stated that the Parliament  “agrees in principle” on the three key Hazare issues - Citizens’ Charter, lower bureaucracy under Lokpal through an appropriate mechanism and establishment of Lokayukta in the states - centred around a strong and effective anti-graft Jan Lokpal Bill. The resolution also affirmed the members’ intent to forward the proceedings to the Standing Committee on Law, which has been examining the official draft Lokpal Bill. Addressing his supporters, who celebrated Parliament’s missive by dancing and shouting patriotic slogans, Hazare thanked the lawmakers. “We have won half the battle… It is your victory,” he said.

On August 28th, next morning breaking his fast, Anna said that the most underlining feature of the agitation has been its non-violent character. “This is a message the world must emulate,” he said. He also said “Jan sansad” (people’s parliament) is bigger than ‘sansad’ (Parliament).

The Genesis: Log on to Congress Mismanagement

The genesis of the fortnight long crisis in effect lay with the mismanagement of the episode – step by step.

The articulate Leader of the Opposition in Rajya Sabha and BJP’s chief strategist, Arun Jaitley effectively summed up the catch 22 situation the UPA –II government found itself in when he said that the country was “exasperated” with Dr. Manmohan Singh’s government and its smugness. The mood that people of India were certainly getting disillusioned with the government vis-à-vis a series of corruption cases was tallying in the streets in Delhi and across India when lakhs came out spontaneously protesting the arrest of Gandhian Anna Hazare on August 16th.

“We are away from ground realities and we have not been able to enhance the prestige of the government,” MP Satyavrat Chaturved in Rajya Sabha.

Day after day, the government looked clueless on how to handle the Anna puzzle; thanks primarily to arrogance and ‘know all’ syndrome of Dr. Singh’s A team of Kapil Sibal, P Chidambaram and Ambica Soni.

Thankfully, Sonia Gandhi’s intervention to replace the team by veteran Pranab Mukherjee and Anna’s fellow Maratha leader Vilasrao Deshmukh came about.

It’s not that Pranab had a cakewalk. The talks between Team Anna and the Centre’s chief troubleshooter also touched their low points more than once and as newspapers reported, ‘it was back to square one’.

“The government has taken a U-turn and we feel betrayed,” said Arvind Kejriwal umpteen times. Even on August 28, the day the crisis was resolved at around 3.30 pm, Kejriwal screamed, “dhoka-dari (betrayal)”.

“The success of this movement was largely due to the awakening of the  young Indian brigade  and also from the fact that every Indian was plagued by corruption”

The August 24th all-party meeting only showed that the opposition parties were not keen to bail out the beleaguered government, which for the better part of the last seven years only displayed utter arrogance and sheer disrespect towards them. Only a few months ago, the government had ignored the same opposition parties and unilaterally sat with Team Anna to draft a highly volatile legislation. Worse, in executing its strategy to deal with Baba Ramdev and Anna, the government hardly took even its supporting allies into confidence.

Sharad Pawar-led NCP spokesman D P Tripathi has many takers when he says, the problem could have been avoided if allies were taken into confidence. Other allies DMK and Trinamool Congress of Mamata Banerjee too felt ignored more than once.

“Is this government not violating (Parliamentary supremacy) by discussing a matter that is before a Standing Committee,” Laloo Prasad.

“There are low areas of society where the average man has to confront corruption as a way of life,” Arun Jaitley

“The party general secretary is at variance with what the leader of the government says. It is unfortunate that you cannot speak in once voice,” Gurudas Dasgupta

“The machinery is not sufficient to curb corruption and the Lokpal draft made recently is weak. We don’t trust in the Lokpal being made by the bureaucracy.” Medha Patkar

“Every idea has its own time.. and the time for Lokpal has come,” Sushma Swaraj

“When I met Anna Hazare, I realised that he was having some difficulty in communication with people from the government and maybe there was a language barrier.” V. Deshmukh

Dead End:

The deadlock between Team Anna and the government continued as the Manmohan Singh regime kept on trying out its good old tricks. The letter written by the Prime Minister to Anna on August 23rd in effect gave away nothing and only stressed on the oft-repeated line of supremacy of Parliament and that the Jan Lokpal Bill as drafted by the civil society could go only through the Parliamentary standing committee. When veteran troubleshooter Pranab Mukherjee actually started dealing with Team Anna, sources said, he was already handicapped by the Prime Minister’s ‘legally correct’ letter.  Thus despite repeated attempts, the talks could hardly progress and slowly the focus shifted to Anna’s health and the need to protect him rather than discussing anything constructive about the Bill.

Anna himself announced that he would not be deterred by his deteriorating health. “Till August 23, the Government seemed to agree to everything. But today yet again they have raised objections to certain aspects of our demand,” a frail Anna said in his brief speech at Ram Lila ground on August 24th morning.

“Those in power think, if corruption ends, what will happen to their extra income,” Anna said point blank.

On August 24th around mid-night, he said if the Government intended to arrest him, his supporters should stage dharnas in front of MPs’ residences and also gherao them. In fact, a few days earlier during the weekend, Anna’s supporters gheraoed many law makers across the country. In Mumbai, two Congress MPs, Priya Dutt and Sanjay Nirupam announced their support to Anna stir.

Why the overwhelming response?

Analysts offer several reasons for the overwhelming response generated by Anna’s stir.

One reason is that continuous scams one after the other from 2005 – including the popular ones like Adarsh scam, LIC Housing scam, Hasan Ali scam, 2G scam, ISRO deal, KG Basin gas scam, cash-for-vote scam, Commonwealth Games scam etc have given an impression that the Prime Minister is helpless and that the Congress-led government lacks  political will.

Worse, the powerful PMO under none other than Dr. Manmohan Singh, a man otherwise known for honesty, is seen as an alleged accomplice in various corruption related scandals chiefly the 2G scam and also the Commonwealth Games scam as named in the CAG report.

“If the Indira Gandhi era is known for bringing corruption into government institutions, the P V Narasimha era is slammed for institutionalising corruption; the Manmohan Singh government will be perhaps remembered as an era for condoning that corruption and also making attempts to crush the voice of dissent against corruption,” said BJP MP, Anant Kumar Hegde. CPI-M veteran Basudeb Acharia endorses this and says that from the JMM bribery scandal of 1990s to the July 22, 2008 trust vote ‘cash-for-vote’ scandal, the Congress has hardly changed. “Why blame the youth in the streets when even the vote of confidence in Parliament is vitiated by corruption,” asks Arun Jaitley. He also had some advice for the political class. “Unless, we put our House in order and the Government leads us in putting the House in order, people of the country will become restless,” he said.

TRI COLOUR FLIES HIGH FOR JAN LOKPAL It became almost a rare occasion to see the tricolour flying in the sky of trouble torn North East. Even the Independence Day and Republic Day witnessed very few flags hoisted in the region for many years as the separatist militants continue imposing diktats on the celebration on both the auspicious days. However, Anna Hazare’s movement has made it clear that the government is not synonymous with the national flag. So protesting against the Government does not necessarily mean opposition (or hatred) towards the tricolour. Rather every patriotic Indian should honour the national flag as it resembles our martyrs (of freedom movement) and definitely not the regime in New Delhi. Nava Thakuria

Ivory-Tower Congress:

The total aloofness of the Congress leadership from the ground reality came to the fore when the Prime Minister himself in his statement in both houses of parliament on August 17th said that Anna’s agitation was “misconceived”. He also blamed ‘external forces’ for being responsible for instigating the agitation. The Congress spokesman Rashid Dalvi went a step further and dubbed the stir as an US-inspired movement.

The Congress leadership was so  caught in a trap of its own creation that in the Lok Sabha only a latent voice of support for them came from RJD’s comical star Lalu Prasad, who vehemently harped on the government “thesis” reiterating the supremacy of Parliament. Little did the Congressmen including an otherwise politically alert P Chidambaram realize that Lalu is not only a politically spent force in Bihar, it is also a fact that Lalu’s credit in terms of honesty was seriously under question during the infamous days of fodder scam.

Similarly, on August 25th in the all-party meeting, it was another discredited Ram Vilas Paswan with ‘zero’ strength in Lok Sabha who was supporting the Government against the demand from 10 political parties including the Left and BJP for withdrawal of the Government Bill on Lokpal.

The Congressmen too spoke against the party and the Government. Party veteran Anil Shastri, son of illustrious Lal Bahadur Shastri, twitted against the Government’s miscalculated strategy. “We are away from ground realities and we have not been able to enhance the prestige of the Government,” party MP Satyavrat Chaturvedi said in Rajya Sabha.

PM breaks convention:

It was only on August 25th that the Manmohan Singh Government started making the right moves and resorted to a multi-pronged strategy to reach out to the agitating Anna Hazare. In a path breaking gesture, the Prime Minister sought to break away from convention and in his intervention in Lok Sabha offered a new formula to end the deadlock. The Prime Minister said that the Government is ready to ensure debate of “all versions” of the Lokpal Bill in circulation in Parliament. The Prime Minister said along with the Jan Lokpal Bill prepared by Team Anna, the bills prepared by Sonia Gandhi’s National Advisory Council member Aruna Roy’s NCPRI and Hyderabad-based social worker Jaiprakash Narain’s paper on the subject could be debated by the Parliament.

He also made a climb down from his August 17th ‘misconceived’ and ‘foreign forces’ remarks and paid glowing tribute to Anna. “I respect his idealism, I applaud him and I salute him,” he said and urged Hazare to end his fast.

The Prime Minister’s appeal was seconded by the leader of the opposition Sushma Swaraj. The Lok Sabha made a unanimous appeal to the Gandhian and urged him to withdraw the fast. The Speaker Meira Kumar made an unprecedented gesture and was on her feet appealing to Anna Hazare to withdraw his fast.

The ice was broken.

The Congress simultaneously forced its errant spokesman Manish Tewari to tender an apology to Anna for his personal attack and also fielded Vilasrao Deshmukh, a former Maharashtra Chief Minister and an old hand who has the experience of handling at least a dozen agitations and fasts by the 74-year-old Hazare. Kapil Sibal and Chidambaram with their ‘know all smiles’ vanished into the backrooms.

Rahul could have played spoilsport:

Ironically, the internal bickering within the Congress was brought to the fore by none other than the Congress General Secretary Rahul Gandhi himself.

The beleaguered first Congress family scion on August 26th broke his silence as he made use of ‘zero hour’ and admitted a well known fact that “corruption is pervasive”  at every level. The AICC General Secretary, who temporarily took over the reins of the Congress in August after his mother Sonia Gandhi underwent surgery for an undisclosed illness in the U.S., said in Lok Sabha that the Lokpal Act alone will not help eradicate corruption, and disapproved Anna’s fast. Almost negating the Prime Minister’s good gesture, Gandhi dragged the debate to the need for ensuring constitutional status for the proposed Lokpal. He also slammed Anna’s agitation by stating that “individual dictates” must not weaken democratic process as dangerous precedents could be set.

CPI’s Gurudas Dasgupta rightly said that the genesis of the problems was that the government had “two power centres” and was thus speaking in different voices. BJP leader Sushma Swaraj was more candid. “Please listen to your Prime Minister,” she counseled Congress members in Lok Sabha.

How much did Anna achieve?

Predictably, Anna hailed Parliament’s nod on key elements of Jan Lokpal Bill as “people’s victory” and declared that poll reforms will be on the top of his next agenda to fight corruption menace at its roots.

But did he really achieve much?

Given the political class lip-service, skepticism still prevails.

Asked if this was truly a victory of Team Anna as several of its demands like passing the Bill in this session, inclusion of higher judiciary or Prime Minister and so on have not been met, BJP’s Prakash Javadekar says that this agitation was about the larger issue of having a strong and effective Lokpal. So too does BSP floor leader Dara Singh Chauhan have a point when he remarks,  “It is for him (Anna) to answer what he has achieved”.

The aging Gandhian knows he is dealing with netas. “I have only deferred my fast, not given it up,” he said. Minutes later, his associate Prashant Bhushan demanded the convening of a special session of Parliament to pass the Lokpal Bill with all necessary changes.

The Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh, who showed his rare statesmanship at the fag end of the crisis by his offer for a Parliamentary debate, has described the Parliamentary nod as manifestation of the people’s will. “People’s will is Parliament’s will,” he said. Experts, however, say the nod that is the sense of the Parliament is not a command for the Parliamentary standing committee.

Final words:

True, Anna’s anti-corruption crusade has left Congress and the political parties by and large bemused. This movement reasserts that democracy is all about “people’s power”. BJP veteran M M Joshi has rightly warned that politicians “are sitting on a volcano of the anger of the people”. The combined anguish of the youth and the middleclass are just the right ingredients to give birth to any revolution. The streets are the proof of an angry India.

Anna – The Chosen one

The events that have unfolded  are proof that it’s not Sharad Pawar, but Anna who is real Maratha strongman!

Anna Hazare’s real name is Kisan Baburao Hazare. Born on 15th June, 1937, he became popular as ‘Anna’ for ‘elder brother’ in Tamil after he launched social work in his native village Ralegan Siddhi, a drought-prone and rain-shadow zone of Parner Tehsil of Ahmednagar district in central Maharashtra.

Anna had joined the Indian army in 1963 under emergency recruitment drive as a driver. During the Indo-Pakistani war of 1965, Hazare was posted at the border in the Khem Karan sector. After the close call that he had after a bullet passed by his head while all his team members were killed, the issue of life and death came to him. Picking up a small booklet by Swami Vivekananda, ‘Call to the youth for nation building’, Anna then had decided to plunge into social service. He slowly transformed his village by working for an irrigation system and the rest is history. Anna in later stages worked in fighting social menaces like alcoholism and during as late as  2004, Anna had filed a PIL in Bombay High Court on the infamous Telgi scam. His detractors say, Anna has been essentially an anti-Congress and anti-Sharad Pawar crusader in the backyards of Maharashtra. According to daily English newspaper ‘Daily News and Analysis’ (DNA) annual list of top 50 most influential people, Hazare is the most influential person in Mumbai. Well, the nation knows how well he influenced the whole of India during this year.