First of all, my heartiest congratulations to all the Anna supporters who managed to convince the Parliament to include all the three terms which they were demanding to be included in the draft. I really am not a supporter of Anna or I can say that I simply disapprove Anna and his methods. IT is because of my conviction that India’s greatest achievement in the past 64 years is our democracy I believe he has an unhealthy disdain for democracy and democratic processes. The right to dissent, the right to protest and the right to mobilise opinion is given and it is respected and accepted. This is the reason why Anna and his team were fasting at Ramlila Maidan. In fact, the state was making all arrangements to facilitate the protest. The issue is the inclination to put a gun to the government’s head and say this is the Bill that you must legislate into law and you must do so by such and such time, irrespective and in derogation of the established procedure of law-making as per the Constitution. How can you, in the name of advancing a laudable national objective, completely negate the permissible means under your Constitution? Now the argument is that we, the people of India, come first in the Constitution, therefore, everything else is subservient to the will of the people. Even with this, I have no quarrel. But how do you determine the will of the people? The Constitution ordains that you determine the will of the people after every five years through an election. If you insult the collective judgment of the people of India, you are not advancing democracy. This is myview as a citizen of this country.. The Constitution is intended to be a bulwark against the impulses of transient majorities. Majorities will come and go but the Constitution is supposed to be an enduring edifice. Imagine a situation where politicians or the so called corrupt officials or judges would also have threatened the parliament against the inclusion of these demands? What if the people supporting them were also not less in number compared to Anna’s team? What if such a situation prevails in future where people of two different teams succeed in gaining enough public support and protest for and against the inclusion of certain demands in draft? Wouldn’t it be against democracy? Wouldn’t it be a chaos very difficult to handle?
After watching thousands of Indians rally to his cause last week, I decided that it was essential to try and understand his growing appeal. So I listened carefully to his statements and speeches from Ramlila maidan. They began nearly always with a report on how he had lost yet another kilo (women might be jealous of him!) and then they followed a simple pattern. He would launch into a tirade against the government, charging it with corruption and duplicity. Then would come the turn of politicians in general. Anna called them traitors and thieves. After politicians and officials had been brutally reviled, he would attack rich people who ‘lived in air-conditioned homes’ indicating that this was wicked when (good) people like him lived in a village temple with a plate and a bucket as his only possessions. At the end of this, he would recite a line from some Bollywood song and then go back to bed to conserve energy while his audience roared its approval. Analysis of his speech made me draw the conclusion that the man who has become the hero of urban, middle class Indians is ideologically almost Marxist in his hatred of the rich and almost anarchist in his contempt for democracy. I believe what has exalted him in the eyes of urban Indians is not just that he has raised an issue that hurts every Indian every time he deals with officials or policemen, but because he has appeared at a moment in Indian history when the institutions of democracy are experiencing severe stress. Parliament has been reduced to an arena for shenanigans rather than debate. When there is debate or even just a chance for someone to speak, there is so much background noise that above the din what you mostly hear is the thin voice of the Speaker saying, ‘Sit down, sit down. Please sit down. Nothing will go on record. Nothing will go on record. (Helpless Meira Kumar!)’ Then there is the disquieting reality that most of our younger MPs are hereditary MPs and mostly so apolitical that it is glaringly evident that it was the lure of power and pelf that brought them into public life rather than a desire to serve the people. This happens at a time when we have the weakest Prime Minister in living memory. One of the reasons why the mighty Government of India has blundered hopelessly in dealing with Anna Hazare is because the Prime Minister plays such a reduced role that a general secretary of the Congress Party dared to go on national television and say that if Sonia Gandhi had been here, there would not have been such a mess. As for the other two pillars of democracy, they show their own signs of stress. The judiciary has failed hopelessly to speed up the process of delivering justice but judges find time to make political comments and interfere in such things as whether the mining of iron ore should be banned. Our 24-hour news channels, they have exalted him not just by covering his every move in the way that sporting tournaments are covered but by never questioning his methods or philosophy. It would have been refreshing if one channel had taken the trouble to ask him why he believes that the Lokpal will be such a panacea. It would have been a national service if someone had asked him if he had read the Jan Lokpal Bill. My personal view is that he has not or he would never have said that it will serve to decentralise political power. It will do the opposite by bringing state level officials under the Lokpal but what is the point in saying anything now that Anna Hazare has become, with the unstinting help of the media, our shining new crusader. Well, good for Anna Hazare but maybe not so good for Indian democracy.
The good for our democracy can only come when someone like Anna or he himself comes to forefront and help the people of India understand what powers they possess and how to use them.
Such bills are simply useless until the people of India for whom such bills are passes are unable to understand the ways how to use them. SO LITERACY CAN ONLY DO ANY GOOD FOR INDIAN DEMOCRACY.
EDUCATE INDIA.
JAI HIND!!
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