{"id":3004,"date":"2011-11-01T05:28:28","date_gmt":"2011-10-31T23:58:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/calamur.org\/gargi\/?p=3004"},"modified":"2011-11-01T05:28:28","modified_gmt":"2011-10-31T23:58:28","slug":"quo-vadis-team-anna","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/calamur.org\/gargi\/2011\/11\/01\/quo-vadis-team-anna\/","title":{"rendered":"Quo Vadis Team Anna ?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This appeared in the <strong>DNA <\/strong>as <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.dnaindia.com\/analysis\/column_what-next-for-team-anna_1605294\">what next for team Anna<\/a><\/strong> ..a team that seems to be drowning under the weight of its own publicity ..<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The last fortnight has been an interesting time for Team Anna. A series of incidents has severely dented the image of the rainbow alliance, and caused confusion, consternation and a crisis of confidence amongst its core support base.<\/p>\n<p>First off the mark, there was Prashant Bhushan with his utterances on a referendum in Kashmir to sort out the issue of self-determination. While we may argue that in a civilised, democratic republic, one has the right to both free speech and self-determination that argument is, in this context, academic. What is real is the fact that a large portion of Team Anna\u2019s support base was from individual citizens who are on the right of the political spectrum. These were people, who turned up in large numbers at the Ram Lila grounds as volunteers and supporters . In advocating the plebiscite, Prashant Bhushan crossed a <em>lakshman rekha<\/em> by questioning the territorial integrity of India and betrayed a large chunk of the support base of the anti corruption movement. Anna Hazare himself spoke out against Prashant Bhushan\u2019s statement, but by then the damage was done.<\/p>\n<p>The Constituent Assembly that drafted the Indian Constitution, while enshrining our rights, duties and freedoms, left out key methods of Direct Democracy, namely, Referendum, Plebiscite and Right to Recall. Perhaps they felt it would be impractical as well as divisive in a large, diverse nation such as India with many interest groups. Team Anna, either deliberately or in ignorance, has let the genie of referendum out of the bottle. You would expect a team made up of former civil servants and practicing lawyers to know that no referendum is possible in India, under the Constitution.\u00a0 However, in setting themselves up above all other systems, they in their collective hubris have set a potentially explosive precedent. \u00a0If people have the right to vote for and demand a Jan Lok Pal directly, surely they have the right to vote and demand other things, such as independent states like Telengana or Vidarbha or even independent nations.\u00a0 Prashant Bhushan maybe persona non grata with the rest of Team Anna, but he just took the philosophy of \u2018referendum\u2019 one step further.<\/p>\n<p>No sooner had Prashant Bhushan become yesterday\u2019s news, than \u00a0came the revelation that Kiran Bedi had been over invoicing various NGO\u2019s that had invited her to participate in their programmes. She would travel economy class but charge business class to the concerned NGO. While it isn\u2019t illegal, it is definitely in the unethical space. If you worked for a company and overcharged on travel, and they found out, you would be, most likely, be asked to go. It would be perceived that you had integrity issues. Ms. Bedi, of course, vigorously defended her actions. Her claims that the money \u2018saved\u2019 by her travelling economy and charging business class \u2018went to her NGO\u2019 sounded like the defense of a politician. Most political parties in India have political machinery. They have volunteers and workers at the ground level who work with local communities. These volunteers and workers \u2018do good\u2019 for their constituency, be it helping people acquire ration cards, get children admission, or helping people find jobs. It is alleged that parties use the money made from \u2018kickbacks\u2019 to fund these \u2018good works\u2019.\u00a0 \u00a0Now, isn\u2019t the point of an anti-corruption movement to prevent leakages, no matter how laudable the end use?<\/p>\n<p>Finally, there is Arvind Kejriwal. Mr. Kejriwal is not only accused of not paying back dues worth 9.27 lakh to his former employer, the Indian Revenue\u00a0 Service, but also depositing cash collected by India Against Corruption into the Public Cause Research Foundation (PCRF), a private trust run by him. Mr. Kejriwal justified this by saying that the IAC cannot open a bank account because it is a movement not an organisation. While that may be true, people donated to IAC not to PCRF. Transparency, that is so required in public life to ensure a corruption free society, was sorely absent when it came to Mr.Kejriwal\u2019s own dealings.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>While Team Anna has been blaming the government for muck raking, the fact remains if there is no muck, it cannot be raked. Also, if you are going to abuse, revile and cast aspersions on people, they are going to return the favour. \u00a0It is human nature. Team Anna has hopefully realized what politicians have known for a long time. It is a bit difficult to take the moral high ground when you are sinking in the quicksand of ambiguous morality. Therefore it is best not to get sanctimonious, self righteous and personal. \u00a0Maybe it is time that corruption gets looked at as a systemic issue with systemic solutions rather than the magic wand of Jan Lok Pal proposed by Team Anna.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This appeared in the DNA as what next for team Anna ..a team that seems to be drowning under the weight of its own publicity .. &nbsp; The last fortnight has been an interesting time for Team Anna. A series of incidents&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[10,23,27,31,3,42],"tags":[159,187,905,1289],"class_list":["post-3004","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles-in-msm","category-india","category-media","category-news-media-2","category-politics","category-society","tag-anna-hazare","tag-arvind-kejriwal","tag-kiran-bedi","tag-prashant-bhushan"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.7 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Quo Vadis Team Anna ? - A PoV<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/calamur.org\/gargi\/2011\/11\/01\/quo-vadis-team-anna\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Quo Vadis Team Anna ? - A PoV\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"This appeared in the DNA as what next for team Anna ..a team that seems to be drowning under the weight of its own publicity .. &nbsp; The last fortnight has been an interesting time for Team Anna. 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