There is little doubt that but for Anna’s campaign, the government would not have bestirred itself to undertake these steps. The issue of criminal elements entering the legislatures in ever larger numbers has been around for a long time. The Election Commission and the Law Commission had even suggested several measures to deal with the problem, such as not allowing anyone to contest if he had been charge-sheeted.

But the government routinely refrained from taking any action on the plea that political rivals may take advantage of such provisions by filing false cases. The result has been that the number of MPs with a criminal past has gone up from 128 in a House of 543 members in 2004 to 162 in 2009. It will take time to be certain as to how serious the government is about checking this unholy trend, which has lowered parliament’s reputation in the public eye. But, even if the government drags its feet, given the role which the bahubalis or muscle men have long played in intimidating voters, the very fact that it is bringing the issue before parliament is an act of genuflexion towards Anna.

Evidently, after the initial attempt to pooh-pooh him with the Congress dismissing his team as a “motley” group, the government has conceded that he has touched a chord in the public mind. Ironically, however, even as Anna has compelled the government to become proactive in the matter of tackling corruption and criminality in public life, the motley nature of his team has become more apparent than ever before.

If its heterogeneity was the talking point earlier in view of the diverse, even conflicting, background of the father-son duo of the saffronite Shanti Bhushan and the pro-Maoist Prashant Bhushan, the uprightness of either these two or others like Arvind Kejriwal or Kiran Bedi was not questioned. The scene is somewhat different now. While Shanti Bhushan has been accused of benefitting from the generosity of the U. P. Government in securing a plot of land in a prime locality at a throwaway price, his son has faced the wrath of saffronites for favouring a plebiscite in Kashmir.

Anna lost no time, of course, in dissociating himself from Prashant Bhushan’s pro-separatist comments, while the latter has ceased to be as voluble as before. But what the episode showed was that the earlier aura surrounding Anna, when he was asked by the Kashmiri separatists to probe the issue of unmarked graves in the valley, has dissipated. Given this decline in stature, it is unlikely that Irom Sharmila would now request him to take up her cause of fighting police atrocities in Manipur. Instead of being someone above party politics, who apparently looked at issues with an unbiased mind, Anna is now seen as a player among players – of slightly better calibre perhaps – but a player all the same.

One reason why he is no longer regarded as a man of principle who can be trusted in all circumstances is probably his earlier disinclination to take the charges against his team members seriously. Although he distanced himself from Prashant Bhushan, he was rather casual about the allegations of tax evasion against Kejriwal and the fudging of travel accounts by Kiran Bedi. Anna’s view that the government’s dirty tricks department was targeting these two might be correct. But the fact that they have exposed themselves by not following the straight and narrow path in their professional lives, as befitting moral crusaders, cannot be denied.

Another reason for Anna’s fall from grace is his increasing involvement in politics. It is because his team campaigned against the Congress in the Hisar parliamentary by-election that several of his supporters walked out on him. But that doesn’t seem to have bothered him. Instead, he has claimed, first, that it was because of his team’s electioneering that the Congress lost its security deposit. And, secondly, he has now announced that he will ask the people not to vote for the Congress in the five states going to the polls next year if the Lokpal bill is not passed during parliament’s winter session.

Considering that there is little likelihood of the bill being passed during the winter session and that the draft will be the government’s own and not Anna’s, the chances are that his team will have no option but to embark on a hectic election campaign next year. But, the impact on Anna’s image may not be praiseworthy. (IPA Service)