What Is Anna Hazare’s Crime?

Now that Baba Ramdev has given up his indefinite fast it is time to concentrate on Anna Hazare and his associates, that is, civil society members in the Lokpal Bill drafting committee, and their efforts in the committee to ensure the realisation of an effective Lokpal Bill. After the “success†of the high-handed action by the Delhi Police, under instructions from the Union Home Ministry, to evict peaceful agitators at the venue of Baba Ramdev’s fast, based on the anti-black money crusade, at the Capital’s Ramlila Maidan, the government representatives in the drafting committee have become more belligerent and their leader, Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee, has issued a stern warning to his civil society counterparts led by Anna Hazare. The words used by Mukherjee are both surprising and striking, to say the least. Let us recount what he stated in Kolkata on June 12: the civil society movement against the government amounted to a “sinister move of destroying the fine balance between the three organs of government enshrined in our Constitution†. He also asked: “If someone dictates terms to the government from outside to the government, does it not weaken or subvert democracy?â€

Today we are being threatened that by August 15 the (Lokpal) Bill needs to be passed or else there will be fast-unto-death. It is Parliament’s right to decide on bills and legislations… nobody can give a guarantee as to how long Parl,iament is going to take to pass the Bill or when it will be passed. Parliament is Supreme.

Nobody, neither Anna Hazare nor Baba Ramdev, has questioned Parliament’s supremacy or tried to usurp its powers. Why then this diatribe against Hazare? His only crime was to highlight the urgency of passing the Lokpal Bill in Parliament. Who does not know that the legislation has not been passed for years together despite assurances by governments of different complexions at various times? Anna had announced his intention of resuming his fast-unto-death (that he had suspended due to the government’s initial positive attitude) on August 16 if the legislation was not passed by then. This was to underscore his demand to have it adopted by Parliament at the earliest possible opportunity. And this was fully in tune with the public desire, in the wake of a series of mega scams that have lately rocked the government at the Centre, to see an appropriate and viable Lokpal Bill in place forthwith in order to launch a concerted drive against corruption. Is this anti-democratic?

The response from the Finance Minister was a clear indication that the government did not share the urgency of drafting and passing the legislation in national interest. At least that was what was conveyed by his words

In fact Pranab Mukherjee and his colleagues in government as well as a few Opposition politicians (like Sitaram Yechury) have got it all wrong. Or else they wouldn’t have questioned the term ‘civil society’ posing the redundant query: “Are we then uncivil?†A fitting reply came from no less a person than Kiran Bedi, the gutsy retired police officer of unimpeachable integrity who has stood by Hazare through thick and thin. She said none was questioning the people’s representatives’ prerogative to legislate bills and their obligations as law-makers. But the public perception, based on substantive facts, is that quite a large section of them is steeped in corruption and least interested in fighting the scourge in order to root it out of our polity. That is precisely why concerned citizens, belonging to civil society, have stepped in to give the necessary push to legislate the all-important Bill. Is it a crime to do so? Pranab Mukherjee and his parliamentary colleagues may think so. The people at large don’t.

As The Times of India pointed out in a brilliant recent editorial:

This isn’t just India-specific. The resonance of WikiLeaks highlights global concerns about abuses of power—with the belief that truth can change things. The same belief’s showing in the Indian electorate now, media-armed and well-informed. It knows for instance of the Ombuds-man’s office in Scandinavian nations, controlling corruption, itself woven skillfully into a system of interlocking checks and balances. It knows it is entitled to the same, an effective Lokpal overseen by a stringent judiciary, for example. It also knows why, instead of calling a special parliamentary session for representatives to clarify positions on corruption, politicians are instead deflecting the topic through allegations and retorts.

Yet, the belief in change is strong, energised by developments that range from Barack Obama’s ‘Yes, we can’ slogan to the Jasmine Revolution, Arabs standing up peacefully before dictators and their tanks. This is in fact a time of wonder for politics around the world. With its ‘trans-parency revolution’, India is joining in. It’s time for its politicians to see that big picture. And drop their small talk.

That is the crux of the matter. But the politicians of Pranab Mukherjee’s ilk refuse to see reason. Hence the unnecessary attack on Anna Hazare and other civil society activists. By so doing they are undermining their own position and standing before the public in general.

Meanwhile the meeting of the Lokpal Bill drafting committee on June 15 predictably ended on an acrimonious note without any agreement being arrived at on the vital contents of the proposed legislation. There is thus a distinct possibility that two sets of the Bill’s drafts—one prepared by the government representatives and the other by the civil society members—would be presented to the Union Cabinet after the next and final meeting of the committee slated for June 20. The major sticking point is whether or not the PM and higher judiciary will come under the Lokpal’s ambit with the govern-ment members of the committee adamant against entertaining any such proposal while the civil society representatives hold a diametrically opposite position on the subject. (Interestingly, AICC General Secretary Digvijay Singh declared at his hometown of Raghogarh on June 12: “My view is that the Prime Minister, judiciary, NGOs and industrial houses should also be brought under the ambit of the Lokpal. But there should be a system to ensure that the Lokpal does not misuse its power.†)

Corruption and criminalisation of the polity are the two major evils eating into the vitals of our nation. Criminalisation of the society is epitomised by the Mumbai underworld. And the latest evidence of that underworld’s brazen-faced audacity came out in bold relief on June 11 when Jyotirmoy Dey, a veteran journalist and Editor (Investigation) of the publication Mid-Day, was gunned down in broad daylight by motorcycle-borne hired killers in an upmarket Mumbai suburb shocking the city’s intelligentsia and media community into silence.

Till date the inquiry into the murder has failed to make much headway thus enhancing discontent among the citizens of the metropolis. However, as in several other cases, the High Court has stepped in to ask the Mumbai Police for a detailed report on the progress made in the investigation so far as the demand for a CBI probe gets louder by the day on account of the city police’s alleged direct links with the underworld —yet another instance of the rot prevailing in different layers of governance which the govern-ment, deliberately or otherwise, seeks to ignore at the cost of public interest.

June 16 S.C.