Anna movement against 2G was a political scam

Oh my god, what a movement it was! Anna Hazare sitting like a Mahatma on a dharna at Jantar Mantar, entire electronic media of the country airing it live to the entire nation while hundreds and later thousands of young men and women marching to Jantar Mantar and later to Ram Lila Maidan, Delhi. What a spectacle it was!

All for what? It was ostensibly meant to cleanse corruption from public life; corruption that was woven around the 2G telecom scam. The opposition propped up by the Anna movement was holding the UPA2 government headed by Manmohan Singh to ransom, demanding an immediate Lokpal bill to check corruption. The Congress led UPA government cowered at the massive protests and succumbing to pressure agreed to each and every opposition demand. The then Communication and Information Technology Minister A Raja not just resigned but was eventually sent to prison for allegedly gobbling up thousands of crores of public money.

But what has been the ultimate outcome of this song and dance show to eradicate corruption from public life? Five years after the historic protests, a CBI Special Court judge on Thursday declared, “I have absolutely no hesitation in holding that prosecution has miserably failed to prove any charge against any accused.”

Well, the so-called Anna Movement was itself a political scam. Arguably there has been none bigger than this in this century in India. It was an organised conspiracy to discredit the UPA2 government with an eye on the 2014 parliamentary elections. There were media reports that the movement was planned at the right wing Vivekanand Foundation and was fully backed by the RSS and Vishwa Hindu Parishad. RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat admitted that they mobilised crowds for the movement and the then international president of the VHP had declared that the VHP had organised bhandara for thousands at Ram Lila Maidan during Anna’s satyagrah.

This cooked up frenzy against corruption and movement against corruption was not new to Indian politics. Independent India has gone through at least two more mega anti-corruption movements: one in between 1987-89 and the other in the early 1970s.

I have personally participated in both the movements in 1980s and 1970s. The nation still remembers the Bofors corruption case led by V P Singh. I recall Patna and Ahmedabad streets reverberating with anti-corruption slogans against Congress governments during the JP agitation.

If Anna Hazare shook up Delhi in 2011, V P Singh electrified the entire North Indian Hindi belt with his anti-Bofors tirade. I was a young journalist then. Singh’s crusade against the Rajiv Gandhi government on corruption issue fired me with passion. I travelled with V P Singh in the entire Hindi belt to report the so-called churning against corruption. I, like thousands who took part in Anna movement, was convinced that the Congress was a corrupt party and its government must go.

The Congress government did go out of power in 1989. But what happened to the issue of corruption being wiped out from public life? Nothing at all. Indian public life turned much more corrupt after the so-called Bofors movement. But why did nothing come out of a ‘peoples’ movement’ led by V P Singh?

Simply because like the Anna song and dance show against the supposed 2G scam, the anti-Bofors scam movement too was not meant to cleanse public life. It was aimed at discrediting Rajiv Gandhi and his government so that rightist forces could replace the liberal Congress in power--- precisely what Anna movement did in 2014 while propping up Narendra Modi. It is not an accident that both VP Singh and Modi went on to become Prime Ministers.

The VP Singh government was fully dependent on BJP’s support from outside. Don’t forget that the Bofors movement propelled the BJP from just two seats in the Lok Sabha in 1985 to 80 plus seats in 1989. Besides, the fall of V P Singh government initiated by the BJP culminated in the Ayodhya movement in 1990s, a movement that ultimately ended with BJP grabbing power in the late 1990s.

The story of the 1974 JP led anti-corruption movement against the then Congress government in Bihar was no different. The then Bihar Chief Minister Abdul Ghafoor was later recognised as one of the few clean politicians. But so fierce was the Bihar students’ movement against his Government that Jaya Prakash Narayan jumped onto its bandwagon and soon converted it into an anti-Indira movement who committed a blunder by imposing Internal Emergency leading to massive curbs in peoples’ fundamental rights. But the JP movement, too, was backed by, among others, the RSS and the then Jan Sangh which for the first-time assumed power in the 1977 Janata Party government.

All anti-corruption movements have been designed to discredit Congress governments in office and ended up helping the BJP to grab power. Anna movement was no different. It was a political scam meant to discredit the Congress in 2012 to pave the way for the BJP in 2014 parliamentary elections. Both Narendra Modi and Arvind Kejriwal must thank the alleged 2 G scam for being heads of Government of India and Delhi respectively.