After hobnobbing with anti-corruption
movement for over a year and half, Team Anna is poised to float a new
political outfit or some kind of alternate political force to
translate Jan Lokpal Bill a reality. And that too only after 22
eminent citizens like former army chief VK Singh pleaded them to end
their fast and think of a political alternative to give a new
dimension to their fight. The fun part is that till evening of August
1, Team Anna was decisively against joining politics, and
specifically the mascot of Team Anna, Arvind Kejriwal, rubbished the
speculation of their political intention as reported by some news
channels. And what's more shocking that on July 27/28 Anna in an
exclusive interview to CNN-IBN and NDTV on two different occasions
had already revealed the political intention of his movement. On
replying to a specific question that whether his team members would
like to take electoral route, he improptu said if good people like
Arvind and Kiran would like to contest elections, he would support
them whole-heartedly; nevertheless, he underlined the fact that he
will never fight any election. What's going wrong with Team Anna is a
fitting anecdote of rolling stone that gathers no moss.
When the anti-corruption movement was
started last year by Anna Hazare, the whole nation supported him
because the issue of corruption was quite hot and live in public
domain. Reports on huge scams like CWG, 2G, and Adarsh were heading
the front page and consuming significant amount of prime time and the
entire country was fed up with the connotation of corruption. That
was a coincidental moment Team Anna leveraged for a life time. Once
newspapers and news channels shifted their focus to other territory,
the public memory disappeared instantly. Moreover, internal conflict
among Team Anna members and digression from the core issue of Jan
Lokpal Bill impregnated a sense of distrust among the same citizens
who supported Anna last time. And that rationally generated a low
turnover of supporters this time. The government was equally smart to
ignore this agitation and preferred not to initiate any dialogue with
Team Anna and that became a breaking point for them. With
deteriorating health of Arvind and other two members after nine days
of fast, Team Anna was completely flummoxed to understand as what's
the logical conclusion of this movement when government turned stone
wall. When they were thinking of an exit route to save their face,
the pleading of few eminent citizens to end “fast culture” and
begin an alternative political force to deal will corruption was just
a transitory point of victory for them. Maybe Team Anna had always a
hidden agenda to eventually launch a new political outfit, but it was
looking for the right time to unfold it in public domain.
Now the larger question here is whether
Team Anna can ever be successful in electoral fray where money and
muscle play a much bigger role in winning elections? Forget about
money and muscle power, does Team Anna have even the minimum
resources and network to run a national political party? What's the
certainty that Team Anna won't fail in politics as they shamefully
did in social activism, which was their forte? Moreover, politics is
not sloganeering or fasting unto death. It's about managing diverse
aspirations of people. A single issue like corruption, however
pressing maybe in the present context, can't touch the imagination of
1.2 billion citizens of this nation. There are far more important
issues that hurt a common man everyday than corruption does.
Championing anti-corruption movement is another thing and running the
largest democracy of this world is altogether a different ball game.
Can Team Anna first come out with a vision paper as how they want to
see this country 20-30 years down the line? Then only the citizens of
this country would be able to read their true intention.
