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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Team Anna’s new call: Make laws in streets by Vandita Mishra

Team Anna’s new call: Make laws in streets by Vandita Mishra

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published Published on Dec 11, 2011   modified Modified on Dec 11, 2011

From the beginning of the proceedings today, speakers from Team Anna appeared to be pressing home one point above all: they had returned to Jantar Mantar with an agenda larger than the (Jan) Lokpal. The Bill must be passed this winter session, or else there would be a “jail bharo aandolan”, said Anna. “Not a single jail will remain empty,” he promised. But the larger goal was another law, or constitutional amendment, to ensure that “the people” are given a say in law-making. Representative democracy — that pact, in Anna Hazare’s own words, between “malik” and “sevak” — was sought not so much to be recast as cast aside for a more radical, direct notion of democracy.
 
Our democracy is “of the high command and by the high command”, said Arvind Kejriwal. “We need a law that ensures that before making a decision the MP does not ask the high command, but the gram sabha and mohalla sabha”. Said Manish Sisodia, described from the stage as “Anna’s shadow”: “Laws can no longer be made in a closed room”, nor in “North Block or South Block”, but in the “streets, in the villages”.

More than one member of Team Anna gave the example of the proposed FDI in retail and the India-US nuclear deal as policies and decisions where “the people” must be asked first. “Did you (the politicians) ask the people before you signed the nuclear deal?” asked Prashant Bhushan.

When they took the stage, the politicians chose not to respond to that question, nor did they address Team Anna’s larger challenge. They confined themselves to the Lokpal Bill.

From the BJP represented by Leader of Opposition in the Rajya Sabha Arun Jaitley, to the CPM’s Brinda Karat, the CPI’s AB Bardhan, the Samajwadi Party’s Ram Gopal Yadav, the BJD’s Pinaki Mishra, the Telugu Desam Party’s Yerran Naidu, the Akali Dal’s Sukhdev Singh Dhindsa and the JD(U)’s Sharad Yadav, they outlined their areas of agreement with each other and with Team Anna, and their differences. There seemed to be a broad consensus on the inclusion of the prime minister, lower bureaucracy and the CBI under the proposed anti-corruption body.

But one by one, they rendered a gentle snub to Team Anna. When Kejriwal tried to draw politicians into a point-by-point discussion of the specific provisions of the Lokpal, Bardhan urged, “please leave it to the wisdom of Parliament” and “you cannot insist that all the punctuation marks of your Bill must be taken into the final legislation”. Sharad Yadav said “There must be more debate in Parliament on the Lokpal, not less”, reminding everyone that at the time of Anna’s first mobilisation, it was the existing system that had sent 27 eminent people, including top politicians and corporate heads, to jail.

And Pinaki Mishra, the only one among the political group on stage who was also a member of the standing committee on the Lokpal, urged all those present to look at what the committee had achieved, not only where it had fallen short. “It was not a dead loss, not a write-off,” he cautioned.

Yet the very fact that they came to debate the Lokpal at Jantar Mantar at a time when Parliament is in session, the standing committee has tabled its report and the government is yet to bring the final draft to Parliament for discussion, was a moment of victory for Team Anna. “There is no inherent contradiction between the debate in Parliament and the one outside it,” said Jaitley, as he expressed gratitude for the invitation to speak from Anna’s stage at Jantar Mantar.

The legitimisation of Anna’s way, from that first mobilisation in Jantar Mantar when he and his group were seen as interlopers in the political process, seemed nothing short of dramatic. Nothing framed it better than the visual presented from the stage for most part of the afternoon: Anna sitting in the centre of a row of politicians, flanked by Jaitley to his left and Karat on his right.

Rahul Gandhi didn’t come but it was difficult to miss Rahul Gandhi at Jantar Mantar today, so often was his name invoked, or attacked, from the stage. Abhishek Manu Singhvi, chairman of the standing committee, came a distant second. The standing committee that had rejected “all that the nation wants” had only agreed upon one thing, said Kejriwal. “The Lokpal is to have constitutional status. Why? Because Rahul Gandhi says so. No PM, no Parliament, only one man will decide.”

Apart from the rhetoric against the Congress and Rahul and politicians in general — soon after the politicians left, Anna railed again at the nation’s “gaddars”, those who “looted the nation’s treasure by pretending to safeguard it” — and a canny appeal to Mamata Banerjee to do on the Lokpal what she had done on FDI in retail, what was most striking about the rhetoric was the fulmination against corporates. From a platform shared by mainstream politicians across the spectrum, barring only the Congress, Prashant Bhushan alleged that “Democracy is in the hands of the Ambanis and Reddys... Policies are not made for the people, but to serve the interests of big companies.”

Since that first comparatively impromptu collection of outfits, banners and slogans at Jantar Mantar in April, Team Anna also appeared to have developed a machine that is efficient, and a style that is becoming identifiable and standardised. In fact, it almost seemed to borrow elements from the polished Ramdev Machine.

Scores of volunteers kept the crowds in check. Large screens had been put for those who couldn’t see the stage and among the row of counters at one side was one for the sale of Anna artifacts, another for volunteer registration. There were virtually no banners of any other organisation, not counting two of the little-known “Sach Khand Nanak Dham” relegated to a lonely corner.

On stage, the picture of Bharat Mata, criticised for RSS-style imagery in the first Jantar Mantar fast, had been replaced by two national flags. A nod was also made to the more hip and contemporary, with several posters demanding “Sadda haq, aithe rakh” as they declared: “Anna Hazare you are Rockstar”.


The Indian Express, 12 December, 2011, http://www.indianexpress.com/news/team-annas-new-call-make-laws-in-streets/886715/


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