The Clean vs the Unclean

The key issue is, who is right and who is wrong – not who will win or lose. If a popular uprising could unseat Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak, once thought to be invincible, why can’t the Indian people overthrow the most corrupt government the country has ever had? You might argue that while Egypt was a dictatorship, ours is a democracy. But remember, it is a democracy in which fully one-third of the MPs have criminal records; it is one in which Rabri Yadav could rule Bihar for years by proxy. True, several high-profile public figures, and politicians like A Raja, Kanimozhi and Suresh Kalmadi have been put behind bars. But the question is - why did it take so long to nail them for their misdeeds?

The so-called people’s “representatives” are cheating the very constituencies that elected them and amassing crores of rupees that rightfully belong to the public. The unease in the political parties over Anna Hazare’s insistence that the Lokpal be given teeth came to the fore during the all-party meet that was called to discuss its contents. When it came to its formal drafting, all parties insisted that it must be done “within the framework of the Constitution”. This, quite clearly, is just an alibi, a façade to conceal their impatience with a transparent polity. Their doublespeak too is on record – because just days before they had assured Hazare that they were with him in demanding a strong Lokpal.

Yet another noteworthy question is - why did the personally clean Dr Manmohan Singh keep ignoring the advice of senior ministers like the late Sunil Dutt and Mani Shakar Iyer who sent him documents that established Kalmadi’s dubious dealings during and before the Commonwealth Games. Why, for instance, is Dayanidhi Maran still walking free? What stops this clean prime minister from accepting moral responsibility for it all and stepping down?

If you want to know the real situation in the country ask the man on the street, the honest tax payer, who almost right since Independence has been looted by so-called popular representatives. You don’t have to be a constitutional expert to know what is wrong with the country. All you need to do is hear the people who have been defrauded day after day with no recourse to any kind of justice.

What is Anna Hazare getting from all this? He doesn’t want publicity. That much should be clear from all his public statements and his body language. It is in complete contrast with that of people like the smooth-talking Kapil Sibal who smugly justified boycotting the Hazare team because, to use his words, these “unelected civil society members are running a parallel government”. The fact, on the contrary, is that those who want the sanitized Lokpal are scared that someday they might get nailed themselves.