How UPA bungled on Anna
Embedded in Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s get-well-soon message to Anna Hazare, who is recuperating in a Gurgaon hospital, was a tacit admission by the UPA government that Gandhians should be won over with flowers, not force.
A witch hunt has already begun in the government and the Congress party on who bungled on Anna, but the answer is not at all complicated and does not lie on the doorsteps of the legal luminaries in power. The fact is that the UPA government and the Congress had forgotten to handle one of their own — a Gandhian.
To understand the state of play one has to go back to the Congress Core Group meeting in the first week of August to decide what the response should be to Anna’s warning that he would go on a hunger strike from August 16 in demand for implementation of the Jan Lokpal Bill.
While the PM over-ruled Team Anna’s demand that they be allowed to protest at Ramlila Maidan on grounds of communal sensitivities, the apex group decided that the activist be allowed to fast as much as he wants and lifted to a hospital in case of a life-threatening condition.
The meeting broke up with all convinced that the government and Parliament could not be held hostage by Anna, as giving into one Gandhian once would lead to a permanent headache for the rulers. However, the situation changed at the Cabinet Committee of Political Affairs (CCPA) meeting on August 11 as Anna Hazare movement started to gain traction.
Contrary to public perception, it was decided at this meeting by both the PM and finance minister Pranab Mukherjee that Anna should only be allowed to fast for just three days despite being told in the meeting that this was a harder line and that the Gandhian would reject this demand.
The position of other CCPA members was : Farooq Abdullah advocated the hard line; Sharad Pawar, Azhagiri, AK Antony kept quiet; P Chidambaram warned that Anna may not accept the government’s offer and new entrant Kapil Sibal said that Anna should not be allowed to fast within Central Delhi but on the outskirts of the city like Burari. To which Sibal was reminded that Team Anna had already rejected Burari, Ajmal Khan Park and a park in South Delhi. He was told that Team Anna was negotiating on either Samtha Sthal or JP Park near the Indian Fleet Street.
At this point, the CCPA discussed whether Anna could be picked up on August 16 and flown to PGI hospital in Chandigarh. The answer was that Anna could only be sent back to his state Maharashtra and then to his village Ralegan Siddh. The CCPA then asked Sharad Pawar to check up with Maharashtra home minister RR Patil. Separately, chief minister Prithviraj Chauhan was approached by the UPA on the same issue.
Thus, the critical CCPA ended with the UPA firm on not allowing Anna to fast more than three days in Central Delhi. Inbuilt into the CCPA discussion was the confidence that Anna would back down in the face off with the State and its law enforcement agencies. This was a strategic mistake and foundation for Anna’s victory had been laid.
On a rainy August 15, sincere Manmohan Singh made a plea to the nation that his government was committed to fight corruption but did not have a magic wand to wish it away. Without taking Anna’s name, the speech was directed at him with the assurance that the UPA would root out corruption. But all that fell on deaf ears and the Delhi Police withdrew the JP Park permission given to Team Anna. A police team reached Mayur Vihar in east Delhi to warn Anna that he would be violating the law.
The police was forced to take this step as neither RR Patil, according to Pawar, nor Prithviraj Chauhan were willing to take Anna back in Maharashtra at that moment.
Now Anna is no Ramdev or Swami Agnivesh and he candidly admitted to Delhi Police that he would violate the law. The Gandhian spoke the truth and made it clear that he was not afraid to go to Tihar Jail. To complicate matters further an executive magistrate remanded him to seven days in judicial custody.
Between 4.00pm to 6.00pm on August 16, the telephone wires burnt between North Block and Prime Minister’s Office as both the PM and home minister realised that seven days was a bit too much. It was at this time that the Delhi Police Commissioner BK Gupta was told to move a counter application and withdraw charges in effect against Anna. But the Gandhian again outwitted them by refusing to move out of jail and thus becoming the fulcrum of the anti-corruption movement sweeping among the Indian masses.
The fact is despite the writing on the wall that the UPA was facing a fearless activist in Anna, the Manmohan Singh government still tried to run rough shod over the movement as was evident from PM’s statement to Parliament on August 17.
The statement was apparently intended to be more hardline but his key advisors prevailed. While the government fumbled on and the movement gathered steam, the truth dawned on PM on Sunday morning of August 21 as he summoned all the top officials of his government. It is at this moment that Singh realised the gravity of the situation and he aptly summed up by castigating key PMO officials for not keeping him directly informed.
It is from this moment that the PM realised the power of the Gandhian and took the matters in his hands directly and resolved the issue within a week by bringing Parliament on his side. While many in the government believe that Anna’s movement is over, the PM knows that it has only begun as the re-energised Gandhian will fight for what he believes is just cause to the end.
Hindustan Times


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Satish Chandra Reply:
August 31st, 2011 at 10:36 am
HAZARE’S FAKE FAST: A story in Hindustan Times begins: “Brahmacharya now a fad among young Anna supporters: Ever since Anna Hazare revealed that the practice of brahmacharya (celibacy) gave him strong will power …”. I posted the following comment on this story:-//
———-START OF COMMENT—————————//
Hazare may be a Brahmachari but M. K. Gandhi was not. Just as cricket fever sweeps India and makes no difference to any thing, the Hazare fast is entertainment, sponsored by CIA-RAW to keep India ‘Gandhian’ — and so poor, weak and enslaved — due to the recent disclosure that M. K. Gandhi, a lifelong British agent, was a homosexual who wrote to the white man “How completely you have taken possession of my body. It is slavery with a vengeance”. India has said that its nuclear warheads have been emplaced in various cities/countries such as New Delhi, Washington and New York. The nuclear destruction of these three cities, with a warning that additional U.S. cities will be destroyed if there is any retaliation, is the first step in the implementation of India’s National Security Doctrine. The only way the United States will be able to keep two to three additional cities from being destroyed is by doing nothing in return. Five years later India can finish the job with its coast-to-coast destruction. With the impending nuclear destruction of New Delhi, Washington and New York, nothing else matters. I am India’s expert in strategic defence, the father of India’s strategic program including the Integrated Guided Missile Development Program, the world’s greatest scientist (my biography is in Marquis’ Who’s Who in the World, 2011 and earlier editions) and India’s legitimate ruler and my blog titled ‘Nuclear Supremacy For India Over U. S.’, which can be found by a Yahoo search with the title, answers all questions.//
By emplacing its nuclear warheads in U. S. cities as I urged some time ago saying “Compare the infinite ease, speed and economy of pre-positioning India’s nuclear bombs in U.S. cities to any other method of getting them there” (see my blog), India has realized the folly of waiting for “Nau Man Tel” (as in “Na Nau Man Tel Hoga Na Radha Nachegi”) in the form of missiles that can reach the continental United States before destroying the enemy. India must not fall into the error of waiting for its nuclear warheads to be emplaced in more and more U. S. cities before destroying Washington and New York; so long as they have been emplaced in just two or three additional cities besides Washington and New York — just one twenty kiloton warhead in each city will do the job — the destruction of Washington and New York should proceed with the warning that additional U. S. cities (two or three additional cities, or more if warheads have already been emplaced in more than two or three cities in addition to Washington and New York) will be destroyed if there is any retaliation. The destruction of Washington and New York will enable India to build missiles to finish the job of the coast-to-coast destruction of the U. S. five years later. Nor should India wait for the Army to destroy RAW despite the Army chief’s recent reference to the “morass” India is in in which some people have sought to see a ray of hope; it will be an endless wait; India’s nuclear weapons program will flourish after the nuclear destruction of New Delhi and so will India.//
Satish Chandra//
In my press release dated November 8, 2008 I said (see my blog):-//
PRESS RELEASE NOVEMBER 8, 2008 The Aim of the Nuclear Destruction of New Delhi//
A few years ago in a statement to the press saying how Yoga should be the central part of Indian educational curricula and the degree of proficiency in it should be the criterion for hiring and promotion in government jobs for example, how the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), the production of food, clothing, etc., are irrelevant for India “because advanced Yoga practitioners who control their breath live on a handful of rice a day and have the bodies of perfect athletes at a very advanced age“, I said ‘Nothing said above frees India from the obligation to dominate, rather than be dominated by, the intellectually and morally inferior ‘mlecchas’ of the West and do whatever is necessary to enslave and, if necessary, exterminate them. And it WILL be necessary’.//
This is what India’s nuclear supremacy over the United States is about for which New Delhi/ Delhi has to be destroyed with a nuclear explosion.//
Do not for a moment believe the propaganda about equality in the United States. If India is to emerge from slavery, it has to have nuclear supremacy over the United States.//
Satish Chandra//
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As soon as I posted this comment, RAW removed it. Let this message be carried to everyone in India.//
Satish Chandra
[Reply]
Rajan Alexander Reply:
August 31st, 2011 at 10:50 am
Open letter to Ford Foundation and Arvind Kejriwal on charge of US bankrolling anti-corruption agitation
Business Standard published this morning an interview with Arvind Kejriwal and Steven Solnick, India country Rep of Ford Foundation in an article titled Claims that Hazare’s movement is US-funded baseless: Arvind.
They confirmed Arundhati Roy’s charge that Kabir, a Kerjiwal NGO received $ 400,000 during the last 3 years as funding from Ford Foundation. On the broader allegations whether the US steamrolled the Anna Hazare anti-corruption agitation, they drove themselves further to a corner. We send them an open letter as a reaction to their interview.
Read more: http://exitopinionpollsindia.blogspot.com/2011/08/open-letter-to-ford-foundation-and.html
[Reply]
Rajan Reply:
August 31st, 2011 at 11:08 am
Great Inside Story.