The Megalomania called Team Anna

In this freezing cold, it's time to dump Anna Hazare and his Sancho Panzas into the garbage can of history
Amit Sengupta Delhi

The irony is that if the Lokpal bill drafted by Team Anna is accepted in toto, even then they will find some stupid detail to oppose it lock, stock and barrel. They will find some other technical reason to flex their muscles. They have become addicted to this aggressive posturing in front of television cameras which love them. The corporate driven TV channels love them because this Lokpal Bill is stunningly status quoist. It promises change but this change is a farce; it is a recipe for yet another huge monster of a bureaucracy and police system which will be equally oppressive. It does not touch the poorest of the poor, the landless, homeless, exiled, marginalised people of this country. It has nothing to do with the countless struggles against displacement at the margins for basic survival against big corporates backed by the mighty Indian State. Besides, it blocks all radical movements for authentic social and political change, especially against the fat cats of the new economy.

Hence, everyone is happy: the upwardly mobile urban classes (beneficiaries of neo-liberalism – untouched by corruption?), the upwardly mobile media backed by the corporates, the upwardly mobile corporates, backed by the politicos, and of course, the upwardly mobile Team Anna, backed by miscellaneous and dubious big funders and sundry NGOs with deep pockets. You can see this fantastic, parasitic symbiosis every moment of this ghastly public spectacle. The daily farce which follows the ritualistic nightmare.

When small timers with shallow visions and transparent political opportunism, turn megalomaniacs, and the TV channels love it, the entire country has to suffer their bouts of hysterical, low brow, morbid melodrama. This is because, as many observers believe, beyond the belligerent, dogmatic and arrogant posturing, the one-dimensional agenda is fascist and negative, driven by sinister political forces working on a Rightwing Hindutva putsch; propelled by corporate, World Bank and Ford Foundation lobbies to delegitimise radical struggles and legitimise the NGOisation of Indian politics in the name of good governance.

Consider the fact that for this motley bunch of aggressive and self righteous publicity seekers, who are obsessively on television doing ritualistic press conferences (cut the TV off, and their movement is over and gone!), there is no big picture agenda stalking the fragmented, in-egalitarian, unhappy Indian landscape other than the Lokpal. The Lokpal itself is definitely draconian, a Stalinist piece of totalitarian super structure, with yet another manufactured Frankenstein's monster of a gigantic Kafkaesque bureaucracy, reflecting no progressive social transformation of Indian society, administration, or politics. Besides, this obsession with corruption has a skewed schizophrenic compulsive disorder. As if, it is a neutral category, untouched by all the inherited contradictions of contemporary society, outside the angst and anger of the invisible Indian terrain.