There are many people who have already lost their patience with Anna Hazzareji and there are many nowhere close to that sentiment. However, personally I lost my patience with Anna Hazzareji’s ideas after his comments on the Republic day of India. The defiance of logic and respect, in his idea of empowering the Gram Sabha above the Lok Sabha, has the potential to convince many that just as his methodology even his motive is lost now. A movement that was supposed to have been an anti-corruption, has now become an anti-government movement specifically, anti-union government movement. However my contentions with the movement are not based on that issue, for in a democracy everyone has the right to voice their opinion regarding the government and their own elected representatives. Yet, I lost my patience when it came to empowering the Gram Sabha above the Parliament.
26th January- the Republic Day of India; a commemoration of the day on which our Constitution came into action, is the day Anna Hazzareji chose to blatantly disrespect it. The first feature we learn about our constitution is that the Republic of India is ‘federal in form but unitary in spirit’ and in case of conflicts ‘the union shall prevail’. Hence, the very idea of empowering approximately 265,000 Gram Sabhas, over the directly elected Lower House of the Union Parliament shows utmost disrespect towards the Constitution and the spirit of India it thereby tries to establish. Furthermore, the head of the drafting committee of the constituent assembly, Honorable Dr. B. R. Ambedkar while presenting the constitution to the people of the Republic of India, stated his views as to what he thought would hamper the democracy in India. Use of unconstitutional methods was his biggest fear for India’s democracy. He urged the people to abandon bloody as well as coercive methods to bring about change. This means abandoning methods of civil disobedience, non-cooperation, coercive forms of satyagraha and fast. The usage of such methods, since the implementation of the constitution is according to him “nothing less than the Grammar of Anarchy.” What defies logic the most is Dr. B.R. Ambedkar is talked of as an inspiration by the members of the Anna Hazzare Movement.
Anna Hazzareji’s major contention with the Lok Sabha lies in its inability to pass the Lokpal bill through both the houses during the winter session. He says “550 people were giving their own suggestions” and there was no conclusive action taken. So to overcome the indecisiveness of one institution of 550 people, we must empower to 265,000 Gram Sabhas with a minimum numerical strength of 7 and maximum of 17, with each of the 265,000 Sabhas having a regional interest to further prior to anything else. I wonder what an IIM graduate would have to say regarding managerial diseconomies arising from such an arrangement.
