Anna stir: Covert war on Rahul Gandhi?

The Anna Hazare movement is not really against corruption. It is not even against the Congress. It is aimed at undermining Rahul Gandhi’s growing youth base, a Congress party office-bearer has alleged.

This is sure to appear as an extreme, and even an absurd, take on the Gandhian activist’s anti-corruption 12-day fast at Ramlila Maidan and his insistence on the Lokpal legislation.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, the party leader said the few thousands of youth who gathered in Ramlila Maidan and at other metros was projected as a nationwide youth rebellion by 24x7 television news channels. It was the Akhil Baratiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), the student wing of the BJP, that swelled the crowd of youth protestors in the national capital, he pointed out. And the effort was to make 74-year-old Hazare the icon of protest for the youth, a direct challenge to Rahul Gandhi, who is emerging the voice of the youth, the source added.

He pointed out that corruption is a serious issue, but it is greater on the corporate side, especially since the introduction of economic reforms in 1991. Hazare sidestepped the bigger problem and shifted the focus to the “smaller corruption” of the peon and the clerk, moving the attention cleverly away from the big corporations, he added.

He said the UPA government will last till 2014 and the attempt is to then make it a contest between Rahul Gandhi, who will lead the Congress, and Anna Hazare, who will be the ‘king-maker’.

The Congress office-bearer cited BJP president Nitin Gadkari’s declaration that his party would fight under the leadership of Hazare against corruption.

It seems the Congress’ cup of woes is full and brimming over, and that the party feels that all that can be done is to grin and bear it. A Congress general secretary said the party would suffer because of Hazare’s anti-corruption crusade, and that this was part of the big RSS-BJP plan to eject the party out of power.