A Must Read article On how the UPA Govt had to eat humble crow in the Anna Jan
Lokpal Bill affair......
For Your Reading Pleasure.............................
Why Hasn't the PM met Anna Hazare between April and August?The answer to that
must lie between Dr Singh and his conscience, feels T V R Shenoy, who wrote
this piece on 26 Aug, before the fast ended.
Years ago, back when I was growing up in the village of Cherai, I heard the
parable of the 'Sticks or the Onions.'
'A thief was once caught stealing onions from a field. The village headman
offered him a choice of punishment; he could either chew and swallow fifty raw
onions in succession, or he could take fifty whacks with a stick. The thief
chose to eat the onions, but his stomach started heaving after eating just
five, and he gasped out that he would prefer the beating. Five solid swishes
later he yelled out that he would return to the onions after all. This went on
through the day until the headman smilingly halted both punishments because the
thief by then had endured both fifty onions and fifty whacks.'
I heard this story over sixty years ago, and in the six decades since then I
have never thought anyone could possibly be so stupid. Until, that is, I
returned to Delhi after a long hiatus to watch the gyrations of the UPA
government.
The stick they face is the undoubted assault that the Congress must face should
it stick to its guns, and present a Lokpal Bill with little or no output from
Team Anna. That would immediately unite the Opposition, and perhaps embolden
even those Congress allies within the UPA to attempt seizing the moral high
ground.
Can you imagine Lalu Prasad Yadav's Rashtriya Janata Dal or A Raja's DMK
solemnly castigating Dr Manmohan Singh ? Do not laugh, it is quite possible.
The lashing would continue outside Parliament too, in the court of public
opinion and possibly even in the actual, judicial, courts. (The Supreme Court
has already asked the Delhi police to explain a previous hamhanded action,
against Baba Ramdev ) With elections due in various states in 2012 -- giant
Uttar Pradesh among them -- the Congress may decide that it is better not to
risk the fallout.
This leaves the Congress with the option of swallowing the onions, and there
are plenty to swallow.
Frankly, a Lokpal Bill drafted entirely by politicians -- from any party really
-- was never going to win public confidence. My friend K N Bhat, a renowned
Supreme Court lawyer, put it rather neatly: "Asking politicians to draft a
Lokpal Bill is like asking prisoners to draw up plains to build the jail's
walls; they will plan escape routes before the foundations are laid!"
Having -- so they thought! -- dodged a bullet by persuading Anna Hazare to
break his fast on April 9, the Congress appeared to believe that it could
stymie the anti-corruption movement at the table if not on the street. It was
at this point that Baba Ramdev -- and it is no secret that some in the Congress
saw him as a potential rival to Anna Hazare --threw a spanner in the works.
When the yoga exponent proved too hard to rein in the Congress resorted to the
Delhi police. (This just four days after a farce where senior ministers rushed
to the airport to receive Baba Ramdev, the Cabinet secretary too in tow!) And
with this began the first of the onions that the party must swallow to avoid
the stick.
Here is how the onions came tumbling out:
June 5: 'A swami who teaches yoga to the country should not teach us political
asanas.' Thus spake Kapil Sibal , the Union human resource development
minister, one day after the Delhi police forcibly broke up Baba Ramdev's camp
at some crazy hour of the morning, well before sunrise.
The minister piously added that he hoped that the episode had been a warning to
other agitators, a clear reference to Anna Hazare, who had vowed to go on
another fast if the Lokpal Bill were not enacted by August 15.
June 26: Kapil Sibal announced that 'civil society' would not be used again in
drafting a law, adding, 'In the given situation, the government was in, it is a
decision that we took with open eyes and I don't consider it to be a precedent.'
July 27: Speaking at the Symbiosis Institute of Management Studies at Khadki,
Congress spokesperson and Ludhiana MP Manish Tiwari slammed Anna Hazare,
saying, 'He has a myopic vision. I believe that the Lokpal is not an issue.'
(For good measure, Tiwari took on his own party's Mani Shankar Aiyar for
having called the party headquarters a 'circus', describing his senior as
someone that 'unfortunately has a reputation of being a loose cannon on the
deck of Indian politics.')
August 14: This was a red letter day as far as Congress attacks on Anna Hazare
were concerned, after the veteran Gandhian refused to back down from his
proposed fast.
Union Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee , on a visit to Kolkata , told the
media that nobody could dictate to Parliament as to on what terms a law should
be enacted.
Digvijay Singh , the Congress general secretary, told the world that 'street
protestors' could not frame legislation, and that the job must be left to
elected lawmakers. According to reports, he doubted that anything more than ten
thousand people would support Anna Hazare's second fast.
The highlight of the day was an all-out attack by the Congress spokesperson
Manish Tiwari, who accused Anna Hazare thusly: 'We want to ask Kisan Baburao
Hazare alias Anna that with what face do you talk of fast against corruption.
You are involved in corruption from top to bottom, and we are not saying this,
this has been said by a probe panel which was headed by a former Supreme Court
judge.'
Manish Tiwari added, 'A few days ago, the Army received an RTI request seeking
past records of Anna. The army wrote to Anna to find if he has any objection
against it giving those records to the RTI applicant. Anna has not replied to
the army's query to date.' (This gave the impression that Anna Hazare's service
record was not above board.)
The Congress spokesperson wound up with, 'If someone was suffering from a
combination of grandeur and grandstanding, then he needs to be shown his place.
That's precisely what we have done today.'
In person, Manish Tiwari is affable and relatively soft-spoken, and, being a
lawyer by profession, one can only assume that spewing such vitriol was his
party's brief. Competent attorneys follow briefs; great attorneys know they
must occasionally tell their clients not to act like fools. Neither insinuation
holds any water, and Manish Tiwari's credibility has been badly damaged.
Following Tiwari's attack, Subhash Chandra Agrawal used the Right to
Information Act to ask the army itself about Anna Hazare. The response was
uncompromising: Anna Hazare never deserted any post, no punishment was ever
accorded to him during his years in the army, and that he was 'honourably
discharged' after serving for twelve years. The army's response also noted that
five medals had been notified to Anna Hazare, including the Sangram Medal and
the Paschimi Star. (According to his colleagues, the scar on Anna Hazare's head
is the result of a Pakistani bullet.)
As to the corruption allegations, the Sukthankar Task Force -- appointed by a
Congress chief minister, mind you! -- concluded that 'it cannot be gainsaid
that these offences are relatively minor and are of a technical nature,' and
that there was no indication of any malafide intention or dishonest motives of
the trustees.
Can there be anything more wounding than to hint that a retired soldier with an
unblemished record had behaved dishonourably, or that a crusader against
corruption was himself corrupt?
There was a final onion to be launched -- and from the ramparts of the Red Fort
no less.
Speaking on Independence Day, the prime minister said, 'There are some people
who want to create disturbances in the country so that our progress gets
stalled,' if anyone missed the import of that, the prime minister helpfully
added that anyone who disagreed with his government's version of the Lokpal
Bill 'should not resort to hunger strikes and fasts unto death.'
Was this the final straw?
That evening, Anna Hazare made an unscheduled visit to Rajghat, where he sat
before Mahatma Gandhi's samadhi without saying a word. His silence was more
eloquent than Dr Manmohan Singh's words of that morning.
The next morning, August 16, Anna Hazare and his team were arrested (for
reasons never made clear), and taken to Tihar jail (the same that is now home
to A Raja and Suresh Kalmadi ). The outpouring of public anger was so fast and
so ferocious that the government was on the run from the moment go. (So much
for Digvijay Singh's 'ten thousand'!) There followed the classic trinity of
'Order, Counter-order, Disorder.'
There were a few more onions in store, but these were mere bulbs, not
full-blown plants. Union Home Minister P Chidambaram spoke of a 'painful duty'
in arresting Anna Hazare (hours before all charges were dropped, and while
denying all knowledge of the details of the operation).
Rashid Alvi, another Congress spokesperson, raised the bogey of a foreign hand
-- 'It needs to be considered whether there is any power which is supporting
this movement which wants to destabilise not only the government but the
country,' before the party hastily dropped this line of attack.
Each onion must be swallowed before amity is restored.
A start has been made. Ten days after his 'create disturbances' speech, the
prime minister told Parliament that his government 'applauds' Anna Hazare and
'respects' his idealism. Oddly, between April and August, the Congress's 'Mr
Clean' has never actually faced Anna Hazare. Why is that?
The answer to that must lie between the prime minister and his conscience. As
far as the Lokpal Bill is concerned, however, its own miscalculations have left
the Congress pondering over another question.
Will it be the stick or the onions?
THROUGH MUD AND BLOOD, TO THE GREEN FIELDS BEYOND
