My Grandfather,
especially after he hit the 70s, used to sulk a lot. His expectations
from everyone —family, friends, neighbours, even the perpetually edgy
mountain hen we kept for her delicious eggs that my uncle used to suck
raw after cracking a hole in it with a pin — soared with age. We all
loved him and cherished his presence in our lives but, man, could he get
cranky. Anna Hazare sometimes reminds me of him.
The stragglers and stray-arounds who sat
uneasily and impatiently with Hazare during his Mumbai protests may
just have aggravated his illness. It’s quite possible that he may not
have felt so sick had the attendance been thicker and the crowd noisier.
He should, of course, have been wiser and pared down his expectation
from a city that largely only prostrates before train and trade. Still,
that must have hurt.
As if that was not enough, our elders in
the Rajya Sabha dumped the proposed Lokpal Bill into the black hole of
parliamentary proceedings. Before anyone knew how exactly the tumultuous
day of its debate ended, chairman Hamid Ansari suddenly got up at the
stroke of midnight, said good night and left. The most painful cut,
though, came when the BJP, a party Anna and his team had warmed up to
and begun to depend upon to deliver on a strong anti-graft ombudsman,
opened its arms to Babu Singh Kushwaha, a tainted minister of the
Mayawati cabinet who was first stripped of his post and then of the
BSP’s membership.
In what must be the dumbest and most
short-sighted move the BJP had made in recent times — what will it now
tell those it was asking not to vote for a “corrupt” Congress? What will
be its main political plank for the coming elections, now that it has
proven itself to be more opportunistic and welcoming of wrongdoers than
any of the UPA members— one of those who got a resounding slap across
the face was Anna and his band of the faithful. No wonder Arvind
Kejriwal, his confidante and Man Friday, told The Times of India that he
was confused and did not know the way ahead.
But this might just have come at the
right moment for Kejriwal & Company. Confusion is not such a bad
thing. It often clears cobwebs of the mind after the initial
bewilderment. The BJP’s Kushwaha self-infliction will educate Anna and
gang better on how to deal with India’s netas. They will learn how to
weigh their words, to calibrate with caution and strategize with sense.
In any case, they should have distanced themselves from the BJP-RSS—
categorically and convincingly— long ago. It may not have brought in the
crowds, but it would have multiplied the respect.
And if they thought one Ramlila would
bring in Ram rajya, they needed this pinch in their bottoms to wake them
up. They have one great thing, though, going for them right now. It is a
generation ready to rock and roll with them — a generation that holds
our leaders to standards they have seen, read and heard about in the
advanced world; a restless, surging population that doesn’t know the
dark days of the licence raj and suffocation of India’s peculiar brand
of socialism; a breed that hatched just as the economy opened up,
growing up with all the advantages reforms had to offer. A youthful
force that is impatient of anything that hinders their progress. And
they think it is corruption. What more does Anna want? More cynically,
Indians are notoriously sensitive mostly about their own interests, and
the pay-per-favour system which blankets our lives these days goes
against the fundamental tenets of that very awareness.
More heartening for the Lokpal army is
the fact that very few actually believe street protests compromise
either our democracy or Parliament. That is a scam perpetuated by
pathological contrarians with blinkers. Governments are falling on the
streets now more than ever before. Forget the uprisings of the Arab
world, who would have thought Russians and Israelis would swarm their
cities asking for respite, change and progress. Who would have thought
Burma would actually allow Aung San Suu Kyi to contest elections in an
authoritarian regime hurtling so furiously towards democracy that the US
says it can’t keep pace with the transformation.
It’s a long haul, of course. For a
country wrapped around the neck in red tape, corruption often is the
only way to cut through it. The roadside vendor harassed by the police
won’t care if his misery comes to an end with the intervention of a
legislator, however sinister and devious he might me. It will also take a
mountain to tear away voters from reposing faith in leaders just for
being representatives of their caste, community and religion. Change
won’t be easy. But when you carry a torch, you should be ready to walk
through the dark.
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