Dear Friends,
Please read the following analysis published in DNA News Paper.
READ TEXT VERSION
Where JP failed, Anna succeeds
NV Subramanian
Some pundits consider Jayaprakash Narayan's movement superior to Anna Hazare's anti-corruption campaign. On some aspects at least, they are incomparable, and perhaps Anna will turn out more successful than JP. Anna's recent reiteration not to run for political office and never to midwife a political party will prevent him from making the blunder JP made.
The Congress/ UPA at the Centre stand threatened by Anna and especially by his decision to campaign against the ruling party in the 2012 elections in Uttar Pradesh and four other states if the Lokpal bill is not passed in the winter session of Parliament. But the Anna sword hangs equally over all political parties and leaders that do not measure up to his standards of probity, and this is good news.
JP and Anna are very unlike. JP was a US-educated Marxist while war veteran Anna had to leave school early. But ironically, it is Anna who is cannier. JP joined the Congress but refused Nehru's cabinet offer, left the party to form another, and quit it too disenchanted with party politics.
Students' agitations in Gujarat and Bihar in 1974 compelled his return to politics. He mobilised large parts of the country with his anti-corruption campaign, which he hoped to employ as a battering ram to bring systemic changes. He never managed it, getting trapped in the short-term aim of removing Indira Gandhi from power, which was temporarily effected with disastrous Janata rule.
Anna is in no such hurry. Because the party that is blocking a strong anti-corruption law in the Centre is the Congress, he opposes it. The Congress is in trouble if he carries out his threat in the poll-bound states. The party as such is badly placed in UP and a Bihar-like debacle would write it off in the 2014 general elections.
But that still won't make Anna anti-Congress. The Congress with its high levels of corruption just happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Anna was a thorn on the side of the BJP-Shiv Sena government in Maharashtra, and the principal opposition party at the Centre cannot easily forget that.
Pundits say that the fact that Anna's movement is not political makes it simultaneously frivolous and dangerous. It might be argued that JP was taken in precisely by such devious articulation and bound himself with the disastrous Janata Party against his instincts.
After all, JP was the man who privileged lokniti over rajniti much as Anna swears by lokshahi over rajshahi. Astutely, Anna has stuck to his guns where JP wavered and lost. And JP died in the middle of his experimentation.
Anna, on the other hand, is involved in creating a permanent opposition force to venal political authority, playing sections of the establishment against one another. Because of his mass backing, political parties cannot seek his goodwill and subsequently betray him. His power comes from the people and they will avenge the betrayal with their votes.
What Anna has done that JP failed at is to organise peoples' power against the crooked state structure and correct it. It is a long process and Anna knows it. To form a political party and come to power is possible with the nationwide support Anna commands. But that is not his game. He realises it won't resolve anything, least of all the issue of corruption. He is for incremental change while remaining outside the system. His activist history suggests he is on the right track.
Without question, Anna has transformed his village, succeeding on alcohol prohibition, grain banking, water management, and so forth. In the rest of Maharashtra, his impact has been felt since the 1990s.
In April, when Anna first fasted at Jantar Mantar, cynical, establishment Delhi wrote him off. But before Independence Day, he had the biggest following of any mass leader countrywide since Jayaprakash Narayan. He brought the corrupt UPA-2 to its knees.
Within two years, Anna Hazare will transform politics while remaining outside the system. And unlike JP, he will leave a legacy that cannot easily be erased
Thanks & Regards
Prashant Uikey
Founder - "IT'S MY RIGHT" Forum: CLICK TO JOIN Striving For Protection & Successful Implementation Of Citizen's Rights
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