I want to build more on the political side of this debate from both sides. After all this is one of the things that politicians do well , in theory, is politics. Even if it is about being self-serving, which most of them are, they still play a lot of politics. I don’t use the word politics as some bad thing. Far from it, it is the way the government functions and every profession has their own unique game. It could be as simple as understanding how the system works to get their way.
It is clear that to me that the civil society is now increasingly politicised than even 10 years ago. One big step in this direction was the formation of the National Advisory council under UPA-1, which was a collection of leftist and centre-left organisations who got together to debate various social and economic reform policies. Out of the deliberations of the NAC came NREGA and the Right to Education Act. Working with the government so closely for the first time would have given an insight to some of the political games that gets played and often a well-meaning reform proposal doesn’t translate itself into an act.
I don’t know the organisations behind Team Anna and whether they are the same as in the NAC, but it seems that there are quite a few and they’ve played political cards very well. They’ve been under immense government and media pressure right from the start on their antecedents, their methods and then their ‘unconstitutional’ means. But they’ve withstood that pressure, spoken to the people directly and side-stepped the government by saying if you don’t agree to our demands we will launch a mass people agitation. The government was left with two choices – either increase the pressure and hope they will be cracks in team anna and attempt to discredit them or back down and try to claim some credit for the change. As I wrote in my blog earlier, I would have liked to see the government do the latter and take the initiative back from civil society. In the end the government did a bit of both probably because of different factions with the government.
Team Anna it seemed to me came prepared for a long fight. They had sat through the drafting committee that came about after the first fast and saw how the government muscled them out and was getting its own way. Theirs was a higher risk strategy which if failed would make them lose momentum and the government would pass its own version of the lokpal bill and claim all credit for it. After all when the parliament is in session, Jantar Mantar is full of all sorts of people who are protesting, fasting, on dharnas; the government pays no attention to them and what would be the guarantee that they would pay attention to Anna.
They were helped by the government who treated them like they would treat the opposition – as in we know your skeletons too and we are both equally in this. In the case of Team Anna they were no skeletons and the core team are well-respected lawyers and social activists. They are what many of us wanted to be but then said ‘nothing will ever change here’ and moved onto whatever we do now. The government made another blunder by arresting Anna for some flimsy law and order reason on which the team capitalised and said lets remain in jail until the government agrees to our protest demands. So over a few days the protest went up from a few thousands to tens of thousands ! That to me was a brilliant tactical move.
The point I am trying to make here there has been some smart political play, both strategic and tactical, by team Anna. As an observer of politics I have not seen this at the Centre for quite some time. The politics at the Centre has been mostly about carrying political vendetta against the opposition or just ignoring the opposition as if didn’t exist. The back office team got their social media and marketing strategy right and there were able to spread their message and Anna caps everywhere. I can’t remember this happening in India ever as a mass movement at the Centre.
I applaud the commitment of team Anna to reform and holding steadfast to their resolve in the face of immense pressure and I also applaud their political strategists for playing the game so well. A big reason for their success is that people don’t see them hungry for power and hence their moral authority, I want this team to get into politics and fight for elections. Unlike the US where the tea party has to attach itself to the Republicans, the beauty of a multi party democracy is that they can form their own party and fight elections. That to me is the logical next step for this movement.
