No surprise need be occasioned by Anna Hazare’s decision to campaign against the Congress in the byelection for the Hisar Lok Sabha seat in Haryana on October 13. The basic tenor of his campaign from the beginning has been corruption in the context of the Congress Party being in office.
Although no government in India has been free from the blight of corruption, which has assumed a systemic form thanks chiefly to the absence of reform in our election laws, Mr Hazare and his acolytes have throughout sought to give the impression that the Congress Party was coterminous with corruption and that this was its unique feature, subtly allowing the assumption that corruption may not always ensue if another party held the reins of government. The corruption-related controversy concerning the BJP’s then Karnataka chief minister, B.S. Yeddyurappa, was high on the national agenda when Mr Hazare’s campaign was gathering steam, but he made only tangential references to it. He also went to the extent of extolling the Narendra Modi government in Gujarat and retracted only when many raised objections.
Given this backdrop, it would not be misplaced to think that Mr Hazare’s preference — as well as that of his team — would be to campaign against the Congress in the five Assembly elections due in 2012. Fearing ridicule if he were to say this up front, the social activist has declared that he would campaign against the Congress in next year’s state elections if the party did not pass the Jan Lokpal Bill in the Winter Session of Parliament. The rural reformer from Maharashtra knows full well that the Manmohan Singh government is committed to passing the Lokpal legislation in the Winter Session, and not the specific proposals advanced by the so-called Team Anna. (Indeed, endorsing the latter wholesale would be a travesty of the parliamentary process as it would mean ignoring all other proposals.) Therefore, as matters stand, Mr Hazare’s anti-Congress campaign can be taken to be a fait accompli, although he is likely to cloak it in the garb of an anti-corruption agitation.
It is to be seen if Mr Hazare’s undoubted success as a social reformer can be replicated when he takes to the political street and sheds the trappings of impartiality. People vote in a certain way for myriad reasons, only some of which are explicit — and they don’t vote the same way each time. It would be surprising if a single issue — say corruption — dominates the voting intentions of millions.