Rift is inherent in Team Anna

The country-wide protest and hunger strike for Jan Lokpal Bill to fight out corruption is the noblest and the greatest cause for the nation started by Anna Hazare, a famous social activist, more than a year ago. There is no doubt that the credit goes to him and his team to galvanize the nation, especially the youths, against the burgeoning corruption that has set deep in Central and state governments. But all the credits earned by Anna Hazare are going to be wasted because of the inherent rift in Team Anna since beginning. First of all, the team itself is not representing all sections,economic classes and communities of the Indian society. Socially, it is representing exclusively the middle class urban people while majority of Indians still live in villages. It must be of inclusive nature and character. All the members of team Anna have their own personal agenda that reflects their inner envy with political class in general. It is now also clearly reflected that Anna Hazare’s unquestionable credibility in public is being used by some of the Team Anna members to serve their own vested interest. Their tone and tenor is dictatorial and they reflect nowhere that they consider Parliament as supreme in democracy. All the prominent members are facing one charge or the other. In the given situation, the expulsion of a Muslim member from the team for transmitting the recording of Team Anna’s Core Committee meeting while it was on with Mobile Phone after Swami Agnivesh does not reflect any positive signal from it. Apart from this, team Anna’s differences over the issue of launching joint agitation with Baba Ramdev, who has been launching movement for bringing back black money stashed in foreign banks into the country. Only two days ago, it was announced that Anna and Ramdev will launch joint movement and both will share dais of each other and their first joint meeting will take place on June 3. Now, Team Anna has announced that they will organize movement separately and not jointly with Baba Ramedev but support each other’s cause. Baba Ramdev is fighting against black money and Anna Hazare is demanding Jan Lokpal Bill to eradicate corruption. Though Anna Hazare claims that there is no rift in the team and says he will share dais with the yoga guru in the fight against corruption but ruled out any joint countrywide tour, his claims themselves reflect that he is parroting only those words and sentences which are tutored by his team members. Team Anna also suffers from inherent weakness of personal greed and ambition. The corruption in our government is not a creation of a particular political party but it is of all the successive governments of different political parties at the Centre and in the states. There is also no doubt that Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh-led UPA Government at the Centre was shaken by Anna’s protests and hunger strike and forced it to introduce the Lokpal Bill in Parliament, though hanging in balance. But the Govt. is under pressure politically in view of the adverse election results in five state assemblies to move forward to re-introduce the strong Lokpal Bill. It is also correct that no political party at heart is in favour of Lokpal a super boss to keep an eye over malpractices of its elected members of Parliament as they themselves consider as Monarch of all they survey.