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When sarkari jholawallahs lost the plot
May 01, 2011 4:12:32 PM
Chandan Mitra
Digvijay Singh's diatribes are part of a script for 10 Janpath can't digest that the NGO agendas it has nurtured have been upstaged by newbies in the game
Will the Lok Pal Bill see the light of day? No way, if the Congress has its way. Irrespective of Ms Sonia Gandhi’s assurance to a distressed Anna Hazare of her continued support to his aims, Congress leaders are out to scuttle it. The controversies that have engulfed Anna’s chosen coterie have not helped the Bill’s cause either. The self-appointed chieftains of civil society have fallen out among themselves, which of course was only to be expected. Justice Santosh Hegde may eventually be persuaded to remain on Anna’s panel, but the mirror’s cracked and no amount of superglue will ensure the crack doesn’t show up or more cracks don’t happen. The fundamental fallacy of the anti-corruption crusaders was to attempt usurpation of the entire moral space in Indian politics by determinedly excluding the political class. They forgot French revolutionary Regis Debray’s famous dictum: “In order to overthrow the system, you must first come to grips with it”. No systemic change can ever be ushered without the support of sections of the political class as Gandhiji and JP well understood, which is why they succeeded.
But that is not the only thing that is set to dissipate the mass effervescence we witnessed at Jantar Mantar some weeks ago. The Congress, past master at manipulation, has unleashed a full-scale assault on the weak links in Anna Hazare’s chain of command. Having severely wounded the Bhushans, Congress’s wiliest commander Digvijay Singh has fired a salvo at Justice Hegde, Lokayukta of Karnataka, hitting him where he is most vulnerable. He is ultra-sensitive to criticism, being accustomed only to adulation for honesty and uprightness. The charge that he is not sufficiently motivated to act against Chief Minister BS Yeddyurappa has got his goat.
Mr Digvijay Singh is smirking for the arrow has hit bull’s eye and may even deliver another political benefit. Stung by the attack, Justice Hegde may well be tempted to go out of his way to indict Mr Yeddyurappa when he files his final report — something he hinted at during a TV discussion Thursday night. So, at one level his vacillation over continuing in the Lok Pal panel has already dealt a blow to its credibility while at another, the enraged Lokayukta may hand an issue to the Congress by slapping serious charges on Mr Yeddyurappa. Both developments will come handy for the Congress, which has already succeeded in diverting attention from its myriad scams, channelising attention to alleged wheeling-dealing by Lok Pal panel members, exploiting Mr Amar Singh’s eagerness to please 10 Janpath.
Initially, many Congress leaders were gravely discomfited by Mr Digvijay Singh’s unconventional diatribe. Its TV gladiators merely mumbled that in a democracy everyone was free to air personal views, but they were genuinely hard put to explain how the party’s seniormost general secretary and purported mentor to the heir-apparent could sing a completely different tune. Ms Sonia Gandhi’s reply to Anna Hazare’s complaint, paradoxically, helped clarify things. Congressmen, clueless till then, realised everything was part of an elaborate plot scripted by 10 Janpath, a drama in which one would play good cop and another the bad cop — as a TV anchor put it succinctly.
Mr Digvijay Singh has often been cast in this role, something he appears to revel in. Calling Mr P Chidambaram “intellectually arrogant”, sympathising with Maoists, agreeing with a communalist writer that Hemant Karkare’s killing and even 26/11 itself could have been masterminded by “Hindu terrorists”, and travelling to Azamgarh to debunk the Batla House encounter as fake, were all part of this script. Had it not been so, he would have been firmly asked to shut up. Congress is known to act swiftly against people who deviate from the script — Mr Abhishek Manu Singhvi was taken off his spokesperson’s job, even if temporarily, after the Kerala lottery episode, while the hapless ex-Socialist Mohan Prakash was told to stay away from TV studios when he compared the party’s heir-apparent to Jayaprakash Narayan!
There is a discernible method in the utterances of the former Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister. He was among the first Congress leaders to discover the utility of NGOs and worked meticulously to win them over to serve his party’s aims by lubricating them with funds, access and privileges. In turn they offloaded their agendas onto him. Mr Digvijay Singh adopted many of their ideas in matters of governance although politically that failed to work and Madhya Pradesh fell into the BJP’s outstretched arms. Having nurtured the jholawallahs for long he appears to have encouraged Ms Sonia Gandhi to float the most powerful sarkari NGO ever, namely, the National Advisory Council. He also suggested to Mr Rahul Gandhi to toe the NGO line, spend highly publicised nights in Dalit hutments, direct UP Congressmen to follow suit and undertake other visible elements of NGO agendas. Ms Sonia Gandhi, meanwhile, emerged as the patron-in-chief of this brigade, promoting their leaders like Ms Aruna Roy and Mr Jean Dreze to impose their dictates on a reluctant Mr Manmohan Singh.
Had the 2G, Commonwealth Games, Adarsh Society and similar multi-billion rupee scams not played havoc with the Government’s credibility, the plan seemed to be going very well. Narega was a big hit and loan waivers by nationalised banks an election-winner. The Food Security Bill was up next and the NAC was convinced that the slew of spendthrift poverty alleviation packages would help Mr Rahul Gandhi to coast to power in 2014. Then, all of a sudden, a 73-year-old ex-Armyman came along and upset Ms Sonia Gandhi’s applecart. The frustration at his ability to galvanise the youth was palpable in Congress leaders’ body language during and after the Jantar Mantar episode.
Taken for granted by successive Congress regimes, the urban middle class revolted. Swayed by Anna Hazare’s sincere, even if naïve, call to fight corruption, the youth flocked to him both in the real and cyber world. Overnight, “youth icon” Rahul Gandhi had no takers; a septuagenarian had swept the rug from under the 41-year-old Gandhi scion’s feet, leaving the heir-apparent with no agenda. He can’t attack NGO culture having been part of its spawning process, nor is he acceptable as part of the Anna brigade. Understandably, his alleged mentor feels that unless the Anna movement is discredited, young Rahul has little future. Ms Sonia Gandhi’s desperate attempt to convince people that she is as much against corruption as Anna Hazare won’t cut ice with anyone for the Congress is rightly perceived as the fountainhead of all corruption in post-independence India.
This doesn’t mean Anna Hazare’s people are squeaky clean — far from it. Personally I am deeply suspicious of agitators who stupidly rail against the political class and demand politicians be fed to (nearly extinct) vultures. As the weeks roll, Anna Hazare will be hard put to defend the shenanigans, past and present, of many of his self-seeking cohorts. But the genie he has unleashed can’t be put back in the bottle. It is for parties like the BJP, whose emergence in the mainstream was a by-product of the JP Movement, to resume its ordained role as the cleanser of the corrupt system erected over the years by the Congress.
May 01, 2011 4:12:32 PM
Chandan Mitra
Digvijay Singh's diatribes are part of a script for 10 Janpath can't digest that the NGO agendas it has nurtured have been upstaged by newbies in the game
Will the Lok Pal Bill see the light of day? No way, if the Congress has its way. Irrespective of Ms Sonia Gandhi’s assurance to a distressed Anna Hazare of her continued support to his aims, Congress leaders are out to scuttle it. The controversies that have engulfed Anna’s chosen coterie have not helped the Bill’s cause either. The self-appointed chieftains of civil society have fallen out among themselves, which of course was only to be expected. Justice Santosh Hegde may eventually be persuaded to remain on Anna’s panel, but the mirror’s cracked and no amount of superglue will ensure the crack doesn’t show up or more cracks don’t happen. The fundamental fallacy of the anti-corruption crusaders was to attempt usurpation of the entire moral space in Indian politics by determinedly excluding the political class. They forgot French revolutionary Regis Debray’s famous dictum: “In order to overthrow the system, you must first come to grips with it”. No systemic change can ever be ushered without the support of sections of the political class as Gandhiji and JP well understood, which is why they succeeded.
But that is not the only thing that is set to dissipate the mass effervescence we witnessed at Jantar Mantar some weeks ago. The Congress, past master at manipulation, has unleashed a full-scale assault on the weak links in Anna Hazare’s chain of command. Having severely wounded the Bhushans, Congress’s wiliest commander Digvijay Singh has fired a salvo at Justice Hegde, Lokayukta of Karnataka, hitting him where he is most vulnerable. He is ultra-sensitive to criticism, being accustomed only to adulation for honesty and uprightness. The charge that he is not sufficiently motivated to act against Chief Minister BS Yeddyurappa has got his goat.
Mr Digvijay Singh is smirking for the arrow has hit bull’s eye and may even deliver another political benefit. Stung by the attack, Justice Hegde may well be tempted to go out of his way to indict Mr Yeddyurappa when he files his final report — something he hinted at during a TV discussion Thursday night. So, at one level his vacillation over continuing in the Lok Pal panel has already dealt a blow to its credibility while at another, the enraged Lokayukta may hand an issue to the Congress by slapping serious charges on Mr Yeddyurappa. Both developments will come handy for the Congress, which has already succeeded in diverting attention from its myriad scams, channelising attention to alleged wheeling-dealing by Lok Pal panel members, exploiting Mr Amar Singh’s eagerness to please 10 Janpath.
Initially, many Congress leaders were gravely discomfited by Mr Digvijay Singh’s unconventional diatribe. Its TV gladiators merely mumbled that in a democracy everyone was free to air personal views, but they were genuinely hard put to explain how the party’s seniormost general secretary and purported mentor to the heir-apparent could sing a completely different tune. Ms Sonia Gandhi’s reply to Anna Hazare’s complaint, paradoxically, helped clarify things. Congressmen, clueless till then, realised everything was part of an elaborate plot scripted by 10 Janpath, a drama in which one would play good cop and another the bad cop — as a TV anchor put it succinctly.
Mr Digvijay Singh has often been cast in this role, something he appears to revel in. Calling Mr P Chidambaram “intellectually arrogant”, sympathising with Maoists, agreeing with a communalist writer that Hemant Karkare’s killing and even 26/11 itself could have been masterminded by “Hindu terrorists”, and travelling to Azamgarh to debunk the Batla House encounter as fake, were all part of this script. Had it not been so, he would have been firmly asked to shut up. Congress is known to act swiftly against people who deviate from the script — Mr Abhishek Manu Singhvi was taken off his spokesperson’s job, even if temporarily, after the Kerala lottery episode, while the hapless ex-Socialist Mohan Prakash was told to stay away from TV studios when he compared the party’s heir-apparent to Jayaprakash Narayan!
There is a discernible method in the utterances of the former Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister. He was among the first Congress leaders to discover the utility of NGOs and worked meticulously to win them over to serve his party’s aims by lubricating them with funds, access and privileges. In turn they offloaded their agendas onto him. Mr Digvijay Singh adopted many of their ideas in matters of governance although politically that failed to work and Madhya Pradesh fell into the BJP’s outstretched arms. Having nurtured the jholawallahs for long he appears to have encouraged Ms Sonia Gandhi to float the most powerful sarkari NGO ever, namely, the National Advisory Council. He also suggested to Mr Rahul Gandhi to toe the NGO line, spend highly publicised nights in Dalit hutments, direct UP Congressmen to follow suit and undertake other visible elements of NGO agendas. Ms Sonia Gandhi, meanwhile, emerged as the patron-in-chief of this brigade, promoting their leaders like Ms Aruna Roy and Mr Jean Dreze to impose their dictates on a reluctant Mr Manmohan Singh.
Had the 2G, Commonwealth Games, Adarsh Society and similar multi-billion rupee scams not played havoc with the Government’s credibility, the plan seemed to be going very well. Narega was a big hit and loan waivers by nationalised banks an election-winner. The Food Security Bill was up next and the NAC was convinced that the slew of spendthrift poverty alleviation packages would help Mr Rahul Gandhi to coast to power in 2014. Then, all of a sudden, a 73-year-old ex-Armyman came along and upset Ms Sonia Gandhi’s applecart. The frustration at his ability to galvanise the youth was palpable in Congress leaders’ body language during and after the Jantar Mantar episode.
Taken for granted by successive Congress regimes, the urban middle class revolted. Swayed by Anna Hazare’s sincere, even if naïve, call to fight corruption, the youth flocked to him both in the real and cyber world. Overnight, “youth icon” Rahul Gandhi had no takers; a septuagenarian had swept the rug from under the 41-year-old Gandhi scion’s feet, leaving the heir-apparent with no agenda. He can’t attack NGO culture having been part of its spawning process, nor is he acceptable as part of the Anna brigade. Understandably, his alleged mentor feels that unless the Anna movement is discredited, young Rahul has little future. Ms Sonia Gandhi’s desperate attempt to convince people that she is as much against corruption as Anna Hazare won’t cut ice with anyone for the Congress is rightly perceived as the fountainhead of all corruption in post-independence India.
This doesn’t mean Anna Hazare’s people are squeaky clean — far from it. Personally I am deeply suspicious of agitators who stupidly rail against the political class and demand politicians be fed to (nearly extinct) vultures. As the weeks roll, Anna Hazare will be hard put to defend the shenanigans, past and present, of many of his self-seeking cohorts. But the genie he has unleashed can’t be put back in the bottle. It is for parties like the BJP, whose emergence in the mainstream was a by-product of the JP Movement, to resume its ordained role as the cleanser of the corrupt system erected over the years by the Congress.
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