Baba Ramdev, the saffron-clad yoga teacher-cum-herbal products entrepreneur whose television following is said to run into lakhs, raised a cloud of dust with his threat of an indefinite hungerstrike (to commence Saturday at Delhi’s Ramlila Ground) on corruption-related issues. He made the government scurry and negotiate. Right after the Manmohan Singh government had headed off pressure from the Anna Hazare Jantar Mantar movement by opening discussions with it on the proposed Lokpal Bill, it clearly had no wish to be ambushed by Baba Ramdev.
The reason is that, unlike Mr Hazare, a social activist, the yoga guru can potentially command street power. He is the putative beneficiary of support across the country of RSS cadres who are reportedly under their leadership’s instruction to back the yoga guru’s “movement”. While RSS activists can’t always make a political party such as the BJP win elections, they are said to be enough in numbers to dog a government through protests and street mobilisations. In spite of such support, however, Baba Ramdev, while addressing the faithful on Friday on the eve of his proposed protest fast, did not sound triumphant, acerbic, angry or bitter — in short, he gave no intimation he was in a mood to revolt to overthrow the constitutional order. This marks a sharp contrast with the progress of the Hazare bandwagon which, at one point, had held out a threat that the government would fall if he continued sitting at Jantar Mantar and the government allowed the fires of rebellion to spread.
Baba Ramdev held several rounds of negotiations on his key demands with senior government ministers. He gave a sense of this to the Ramlila Ground audience of a few thousand, going over points of agreement or disagreement with official emissaries, as if to pre-empt any future allegation of giving in to the authorities. In addition, he underlined that he would follow strictly constitutional methods but would continue his protest until all his demands were met to his satisfaction. Indeed, several of his demands will not be deemed unreasonable. He has sought fast-track courts in corruption cases, a public service delivery guarantee legislation, declaring as national assets the black money parked abroad by tax evaders, and allowing study in professional courses (engineering, medicine, agriculture sciences) in Hindi and regional languages, besides English. On his support to the demand for an effective Lokpal Bill, Baba Ramdev told his followers he would not get into details as the issue was sensitive and was delicately poised. (Unlike Mr Hazare, he did not announce his insistence on bringing the Prime Minister and the higher judiciary under the purview of the Lokpal). Clearly sounding pro-dialogue, the man who had not long ago threatened to field candidates in every Lok Sabha constituency in the country with a view to humbling the government told his audience that discussions with the government would continue until the latter accepted reasonable time-schedules to deliver on his demands.
For now, the UPA-2 government can breathe easy. But how easy and for how long? That might depend mainly on the kind of support Ramdev is seen to enjoy in the country. The yoga guru continues to stress that “crores” of people across the land are raring to go with him. If this is established through credible visuals of fasting people backing the Ramdev agenda in small-town India for a length of time, the Congress-led government might feel obliged to give legal and constitutional shape to some of his key demands, which might not be such a bad thing, come to think of it. But the government is certain to be politically wary if the yoga guru is indeed seen to command the support that he claims to have.