Anna, Ramdev and anti-corruption movement

When the likes of Anna Hazare and Baba Ramdev started their crusade against corruption, the ordinary citizen sensed a ray of hope and supported them irrespective of language and religion. But when Baba Ramdev got arrested in an undemocratic way, all that hopes were dashed and the common citizen was again thrown to the deep pit of cynicism. In the current day India, it seems quite natural to be cynical where nothing is going well and where every single person in power wants to loot the nation.

          There is no doubt that most of the people in politics are corrupt irrespective of parties. In one sense, parties are no more a barrier to the politicos. Gone are the days where people stood for some ideologies and remained in the party which adhered to that ideology. Today there is no ideology in any party though every party talks about it in a vivid way. The idea of ideology has become just rhetoric. The ideologies for today are money and power.

Coming back to the issue of corruption; when one is against such big shots of the nation, one has to be ready for all the kinds of mudslinging. No matter which party is in power, the primary aim of all the parties is to save power. It will do it willy-nilly. It can go to any extent to save the power. What we are witnessing today is different facets of the same underlying intention.

          The support that the civil society members got from the people of India is something unprecedented. There was an unseen ire in the minds of the people of India about corruption that was just waiting to get erupted. They were just waiting for the platform and a good leader with a strong character whom they can rely upon. In Anna and his movement, they found all these, so they wholeheartedly supported him. In the world which is networked, it did not take too much time to get the whole nation together. This would have given the government tremors.

          Even the government was supporting the issues raised by Anna, truly speaking it was obviously not interested in implementing them. The reason is so simple and blatant. But the government had understood that this movement can’t be scrapped so easily like some other movements because the whole nation had come together for the issue. It clearly understood the gravity of the issue. But somehow it had to dent the momentum of the movement but it could not do it in a direct way. So the state chose another way: mudslinging.

We have to remember that the party which is in power in the center is congress which has a history of more than a century and which has ruled the nation for more than five decades. So, it has got all the tricks in the bag. It is releasing the cat as and when it is required. This mudslinging is just one of its tricks. The effective way to counter the civil society members is to dent their image, the moral one because that is the core strength of the members. So, every effort was made by the people of the government to do it. The paid up media also supported the government in this cause.

          But the fact was that every member of the civil society had an unblemished history and was very successful in their respective fields. They did not have any individual interests or personal agenda. They were truly working for the nation’s good. So it did not take the people of India to see the ploy of the government and they did not heed to the fake issues raised by the government. Government was pushed to the back seat again. But it was not ready to give up.

          Now the government is coming with all guns against Anna and his team and even going to an extent to link Anna with RSS and to say the whole moment is sponsored by RSS. That’s a dodgy move from the government. Against Ramdev, it is more or less successful in damaging the image. When someone is fighting against a party like congress, one has to understand that they are fighting against a shitty behemoth. It is impossible to fight, let alone win without getting dirty.