The consent of the governed

Shiban  Khaibri
The basic premise of Anna’s movement has been that “democracy is based on the proposition that the legitimacy of all political powers arises from and only from the governed, the people.” Their consent is what matters in the democratic set up and perhaps there should have not been so much of evading and dilly dallying tactics employed by the Government in frustrating the moves to bring about a strong Jan Lokpal bill.  Whenever the Government seemingly tried to engage Anna in the dialogue and suggestions process, at each occasion he felt dismayed and dejected or else why should have he and his team decided to peacefully agitate afresh  and resort to fast unto death recently  to press for the passage of the Lok Pal bill ?
What made Anna Hazare disband his team including the core team barely a few hours after it was decided to put up a political alternative right in his presence when he broke his fast on August 5 at Jantar Mantar, has larger implications and needs to be gone into more thoroughly. Let us not see the movement initiated by him on Gandhian principles of non violence and satyagrah etc; with the prism of the oft floated hype of it being anti democratic and a challenge to the Parliamentary democracy. “We have decided not to keep any relations with the Government, today we end the work of Team Anna, team Anna committee also ends here.”
This, he said in his blog on August 6, lamenting for his movement bearing no fruits in as much as the Government not passing the Jan Lokpal bill. After all, how many times could he and his team afford to go on fasts and resort to sit in dharnas with no avail must have been weighing heavily on him, his team as also the public. Perhaps, he thought that the cause he was espousing was not only the remedy of the horrendous malaise which has engulfed this nation but it was the noblest and the most important one to make the living of the Aam Aadmi better. What he, however, did not envisage was that it was not an era of Gandhi, Nehru, Patel, Shastri and other leaders of similar standing to really respond positively to the cause and the mode for pressing for its resolution. They knew the sanctity of democratic norms more intrinsically and the peaceful ways of protests chiefly the ones shown by Mahatma Gandhi as resorted to by Anna. They had really seen the transformation from the foreign yoke to an independent well earned democratic form of Government.
Today, it has undergone a sea change both in perception and in practice. Then, none with any allegation least with any criminal record, was contesting the election nor therefore sitting in the august houses and the level of servitude and pangs of sacrifices alone were the norms of entitlement for becoming a law maker. Unfortunately, we are witnessing a sort of democracy where a leader from the largest state and supporting the present dispensation is suspect of the Lokpal giving a “Darooga” powers to “arrest” him and another lawmaker from one more regional party extending support to the present government, snatched the Lokpal bill papers from the Union Minister, Narayan Swamy and tore them to pieces in the Parliament. His leader extending explicit support to his act not only made a fun of the anti graft movement of Anna but termed it as fascist and anti democratic.
The unfortunate late evening happenings in the Rajya Sabha on Dec29, 2011 with respect to the bill made a mockery of our democracy which has entered into contradictions and is seemingly basing its functioning on opposing trends to keep its sustenance on. Do we not belong to the heritage of ancient India when our kings and monarchs used to be quite sensitive to the aspirations of the people and any blatant misuse of power or acts against the welfare of the governed were fairly kept at bay? The vision of Anna appeared to be promising, innovative and fairly on sound track and the motive was laudable and focused on reforming the stinking system in our public life, be it in politics, administration or in governance.
The reason behind Anna deciding not to go political nor allow his team to follow suit might be the established fact that in most of the cases , power has the tendency to corrupt  as most unfortunately many of our second generation politicians have , more or less proved it right.
He perhaps would not be as perturbed by the Lokpal  meeting the same fate of  the women reservation bill but would really rue dismayingly if any one or most of his team members get the infection of the arrogance of power, muscle and money if he would have allowed them to go political. It is also a fact that there are nice people, clean and upright in all political parties as also in the government but as  fears appear to be  more than any positive hopes due to which Anna decided to return to his village and wind up his movement , at least in the present form, appears to be convincing.
Solutions to problems especially under democracies are fairly enshrined therein through dialogues, debates and discussions. These being prerequisites in democracies are also known as acts of social engineering. Rewards and punishments coupled with checks and balances make a democracy robust and strong as we can see in case of the democracy of America where state and interests of the state are paramount and laws are stringent and obeyed scrupulously. We have periodic elections wherein the people are vested with the power of vote but how many of us exercise that power judiciously and in the interests of the nation is fairly known to politicians. We have seen fairly that  votes are mostly bought not only with money brazenly but officially with dolling out laptops, sewing machines, TVs, bicycles, loan waivers, and the like. There could not be a joke cruder with the basic functioning of democracy than this. Anna wanted to cure a part of this malaise but failed. Corruption is not to  be seen in money units only and that also in millions but playing with public sentiments – caste, creed, region, language, religion etc and exploiting to the hilt such sentimentalities to garner votes to gain power and afterwards to employ every trick to try to remain in power and pass on it to others in the family making it as an alluring paying industry. All types of compromises are made to stay in power and that is the breeder of corruption.
Everything is negotiable through means repugnant to the tenets of true democracy. Why should not our law makers, present and future, make a turnaround in cleansing the political set up and at the outset, wipe out criminality and money power from the political process and act fast to enact a Lokpal which Anna wanted? At least, his erstwhile team can thus review their decision to float yet another political party which cannot pass the test, not in the least slated in 2014 or even earlier as not even a portion of the vast whole “syllabus” of politics and fighting and winning elections can be “read, understood and then qualified in the said test”.

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