Middle-class urban India is seething with righteousness once again. Social activist, Anna Hazare's fast unto death has caught its imagination. Candle-lit vigils, street plays, singing and dancing, all the usual trappings of moral indignation and fervour are on parade. Why now and why not earlier? Would Mr Hazare have drawn the same response had television not been there or, if even if it had, he had started his fast during the cricket World Cup or in late May when temperatures in Delhi seldom fall below 44 degrees Celsius during the day? Everyone knows the answer. So, little niggles of doubt about its sustainability are understandable. As both Gandhiji and Jayaprakash Narayan discovered, the urban, middle-class has never been known to give up its creature comforts for long.
That said, the fact remains that the huge response has taken everyone, including the activists who started the fast, by complete surprise. And none has been more surprised than the Government, which thought India winning the World Cup and the soon-to-be-held elections in West Bengal and Tamil Nadu had drawn public attention away from the barrel of corruption in which it had been found floating. The ridiculously technical responses of its spokesmen on Day One of the fast showed how unprepared the Government was. Since then, an urban, upper middle-class Minister, Mr Kapil Sibal, was pressed into the breach to negotiate with the activists. The Government agreed to set up an informal committee to draft the Lok Pal Bill. Even Ms Sonia Gandhi has issued a statement. That latter alone speaks for how rattled the Government is. The Prime Minister is probably quietly gloating having said “I told you so” several times.
What next? Most probably, a long interregnum while the Bill is being drafted. The Government will try to wear the activists down and get them to quit the Committee. So, there can only be a distant hope that the Bill will be introduced, let alone passed, during the monsoon session of Parliament. Nor can the Government's point of view be dismissed summarily. Such enormous power cannot be placed in the hands of an agency. There seems to be an impression that a Lok Pal, even with very long teeth, will ensure the elimination of corruption immediately by striking fear in the hearts of the corrupt. But as the sages have pointed out, if wishes were horses, beggars would ride. This is not to say that there will be no effect. Some of the more blatant extortion, especially at the administrative level, will certainly go down. But political corruption will simply burrow down even further. In effect, we will revert to Spartan jurisprudence where a theft was not crime until it was discovered and even when discovered, the punishment was not for stealing, but for the lack of skill in stealing.