Anna Checkmated

Anna Hazare before ending his fast

The government seems to have managed to checkmate anti-graft campaigner Anna Hazare using a judicious mixture of whisper campaigns, populist slogans and a halfway house Lokpal bill which sets up an independent Ombudsman panel without giving it control over the country’s premier investigative apparatus.

At the same time the ruling party signalled that it listens to its Prince Charming – Rahul Gandhi, grandson of the charismatic leader Indira Gandhi – but does not necessarily support him as yet, by defeating a parallel bill which sought to give constitutional status to the Ombudsman panel.
The bill after a series of brisk political horse trading over amendments, passed muster in Lok Sabha. The man, the treasury benches should really thank for this feat is this government’s Chankaya – finance minister Pranab Mukherjee.
His deft handling of the politically explosive situation  saw the main opposition Bharatiya Janata Party as well as recalciterant allies like the Trinamool Congress joining hands with the Congress to help pass the bill while regional parties like Mayawati’s BSP, Laloo Prasad Yadav’s RJD and Mulayam Singh Yadav’s Samajwadi Party `cooperated’ by walking out instead of voting against the bill.
Rahul `baba’ had sought constitutional status for the Lokpal panel, terming it “a game changer”. The young Gandhi is being touted as the leader of Generation X  in Indian politics and the party will certainly be positioning him as the next prime minister for the general elections to be held in 2014. However, when the issue came up for a vote, some 15 Congress MPs went missing as did a dozen crucial allies. With the BJP voting against, the bill collapsed and the Congress Party heaved a sigh of relief. An Ombudsman was bad enough, an Ombudsman with constitutional powers could be a bigger threat to politicians.
As one MP privately told this writer, none of the political parties except for perhaps to an extent the Left parties, really wanted a strong Lokpal panel which could start nit-picking and bringing graft charges unexpectedly against any of them. For forty years, governments had paid lip service to the issue and dilly dallied on bringing the bill.
Yet such was the power of the civil society movement led by former army truck driver Anna Hazare, that the bill to set up a Lokpal had to be brought. Parliament’s sitting extended beyond Christmas by three days and the bill debated upon and voted on.
However, Hazare himself was left weakened and with divided support, because of a clever whisper campaign launched against him. His links with the right wing RSS, his praise for communal riot tainted Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi were carefully highlighted. This saw the rising Muslim middle class which had like their Hindu, Sikh or Christian brethren, supported Hazare in the early days of his movement, veer away from him.
Small `scams’ in which his acolytes were allegedly involved also came out in the press. This saw more doubts among lay supporters surfacing.
Bringing in a minority sub-quota within the Other Backwards Castes quota in civil service jobs which could then be extended to reservation for minorities on the Ombudsman panel was another masterstroke. ( see:  Lokpal, Quotas, Hazare)
It brought support for the ruling alliance even as it divided the opposition political parties and marginalised Hazare’s demands.
When the Lokpal bill was taken up by the lower house (which is also called the house of people and is more powerful) of the Indian Parliament, earlier this week, Hazare sat on fast in Mumbai. However, unlike August, when his fast had attracted anything between 40,000 to 70,000 supporters daily, this time round just 5,000 turned up. The vast grounds were a picture of emptiness.
The house passed the bill which Hazare termed as “useless”, mainly because administrative control of the Central Bureau of Investigation was left with the central government and not passed on to the Lokpal. The Ombudsman panel could ask the premier investigative agency to take up a case or a lead but had no real time control over it.   
But by now, few if any were listening to Hazare. As one newspaper said “as far as the people were concerned, the fact that the government agreed to a Lokpal was proof of their success.” Asking for more, to the man on the street, “sounded like seeking the spoils of war” and consequently, Hazare’s lieutenants - Arvind Kejriwal (right to information campaigner) and Kiran Bedi (former award winning policewoman) - came across as people “desperate to promote themselves” by asking for much more than the `aam admi’ (common man) had asked for.

Game to the ruling alliance, Let us now wait for the Set, if there is one.