Anna's movement......

16^th August 2011 marked the beginning of a new movement, redefined, in our country with the centre-stage at New Delhi. This was Anna Hazare’s second phase of Satyagraha movement against enactment of Jan Lokpal Bill. It is envisaged that this bill will tame rampant corruptions in India. We have seen massive support developing in almost all major towns and cities. There were many who joined the fasting but there was one, and only one (Anna) to be remembered!

On 26^th August it is said that a new history has been created. Government suddenly stooped down to agree with Anna’s team. At the beginning demand was, as I remembered, that the Prime Minister and the higher judiciaries should be brought under Lokpal jurisdiction. But on 26^th August government agreed on three other terms different from the earlier version! Of course, Parliament has agreed to reconsider Anna’s Jan Lokpal Bill and in that sense people can term it as a victory although. It is considered as the victory of democracy, victory of peoples’ power. India celebrated 2^nd Independence Day! All these every Indian knows.

Now, little retrospecting, where those initial conditions have gone? Why suddenly there is silence on those issues? Where is the deadline of enactment? Is it a compromise, because time was running short looking into Anna’s health or is it because Anna’s team could not sustain the mounting pressure successfully built up by the team of Dr. Manmohan Singh. Above all, there was an invisible pressure of expectations mounting up around from the people of the country. It became a prestige issue for both sides, more importantly, no one could afford to loose. There has to be a compromise on both sides for the sake of the government as well as Anna’s team. As expected, at the end of the day, it was a win-win situation!

It was a great match going on but it was painful to see Anna at 74 years of age, on the television fasting for the people of India. It was great to watch people of India cutting across all class coming out on the street on all those days. This movement cannot be identified as a class movement or a movement of the people woken up against the government. It is more of awareness developing (to some extent) among the people and much more of boundless emotions and sentiments still within us. Also, thanks to the government for achieving blunders in the initial stage of the movement.

It is long way for us to develop ourselves a nation fully aware of our rights or rather (other) peoples’ right specially the needy ones. Till we tend to save or even evade our taxes, till we care about the needs of a mass section of people (forget people, look at your neighbour), till we take care of our surroundings we shall be continued to be happy with such blurred outcomes. Clean governance shall remain a distant dream and we shall continue to remain as a befooled perplexed nation.