Team Anna advocating un-Gandhian law: Arundhati Roy

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Noting that the anti-corruption agitation by Team Anna is a ‘corporate-sponsored media campaign’, writer Arundhati Roy on Friday said that the law (Lokpal) they are advocating is ‘un-Gandhian’.

Roy also criticised Team Anna for keeping mum on corporate power and cross-ownership of business.

"Their anti-corruption agitation was a corporate- sponsored media campaign and hence Team Anna chose to remain silent," she said, adding that even though the movement was said to follow Gandhian principles, the law they advocate is highly ‘un-Gandhian’.

"They want a centralised, draconian agency with powers to prosecute, investigate and punish," she said, while delivering the 4th Anuradha Ghandy memorial lecture.

"This movement did not say a word about privatisation, corporate power and economic reforms. It did not demand end to cross-ownership of businesses or laws that could dismantle concentration of wealth and power," she said, adding that there was only public mauling of politicians.

Roy said that Hazare's definition of corruption came from an accountant's imagination.

She also said that the media, ‘which is hostile to people's movement, became travel agents for Anna Hazare’. According to her, the movement capitalised on genuine rage against corporate scams and fury of ordinary Indians.

"A round-the-clock corporate sponsored media campaign proclaimed it to be the voice of the people," she said.