The entirely unprecedented and unexpected countrywide uprising of the populace in protest against Anna Hazare’s arrest has been a resounding slap on the government’s face, indeed. And although Anna’s manifesto explicitly states that they are not opposing any particular political party, but corruption in the country as a whole, the fact remains, that the central government, by virtue of being the entity in power, has ended up with egg on its face!
Having got away with their heavy-handed tactics with the Saffron Baba a couple of months ago, (as well as with an unending list of scams) they seem to have expected to literally ‘get away with murder’ in perpetuity. And so, the turning of the worm, that is the long-suffering, so-far-acquiescent Indian public, was the last thing they anticipated, or indeed, were prepared for!
The drama continues on multiple levels: the various factions of the opposition have been rendered temporary bedfellows, as the saying is, for the purpose of reviling the government; the Baba has not been slow to rush in to grab a piece of the limelight. And in perhaps one of the most farcical twists in the entire imbroglio, the populace, having offered arrests en masse and bundled into Chhatrasal Stadium, has been reportedly demanding that the overflow be accommodated in Nehru Stadium ‘to get some value out of the public’s money squandered in the name of the Commonwealth Games’!
Now, pacifists and ivory tower intellectuals have been heard to condemn fasts-unto-death as blackmail and thus, undemocratic—no less a personage than Dr. Ambedkar being quoted ad nauseam to this effect over the past months. However, the point that has been missed here is that desperate situations call for desperate measures. And for the common man, writhing under the twin whiplashes of corruption and inflation, the situation is desperate indeed!
As scams upon scams surface with increasing frequency, and as no facet of public life is left untarnished by corruption and graft, the common man has, for the past decades, stood by helplessly, watching the gap between the ‘haves’ and the ‘have-nots’ getting wider and wider, bearing mute witness to ‘his elected representatives’ stripping the country of its dignity, the public of its hard-earned money and the citizens of security at all levels, be it physical, financial, emotional or moral!
The way politicians deal ‘democratically’ with swindlers and with rampant and unabashed corruption in public life is no secret. Given such blatant failure of the democratic machinery to effect checks, and the consequently worsening plight of the citizens of the country, if it takes a ‘fast-unto-death’ by a 74 year-old idealist to spur the youth of the nation into a definitive stance against injustice, so be it!
‘Anarchy!’ scream the pacifists. Really? And what would they call the prevailing state of lawlessness, complete lack of accountability by the people’s representatives and the comprehensive denuding of the citizens’ security? Why is it anarchy only when the people raise their voice, and not when the establishment fails them on all fronts?
And this is no tirade against the ruling party—as the Anna says, almost everyone in the political arena is equally culpable! ‘Why doesn’t Anna contest the elections?’ is hardly a valid argument. Those who did contest the election and were voted to power chose to do so themselves, and if they have abused the people’s trust and the responsibility reposed in them, the civil society has the right to call them to book. If they feel it is unfair, it would, perhaps, be better for them to step down from the public arena.
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