Open letter to Anna Hazare

To,
Mr. Anna Hazare
Village and post: Ralegan Siddhi
Taluka Parner, District Ahmednagar
Maharashtra
Dear Anna Hazare,
We respect your concern for society and problems common of people. Whole nation is well aware of your anti-corruption movement. Government has accepted your demand of Jan Lokpal Bill which you claim will put a check on corruption of political leaders, bureaucrats and judges. A good fraction of literate people has called it a beginning of new revolution. But there are some questions in our mind. The fundamental of these questions relates to problems of life of working class.
First, corruption is just not bribing. In a country where 40% children and 70% mothers suffer from malnutrition, ‘body mass index’ of 40% people is lower than normal, 18 crore people live in slums and 18 crore don’t have roof to cover their head, then after 60 years of republic if the government does not take responsibility of basic requirement of life (irony is that it actually sells it to blind forces of market), then what else can be a much bigger legal corruption than it? The biggest corruption is that the rights that crores of workers have in form their labour laws are sham; they are limited to files only and are getting meaningless day by day.
Second, the decision of corruption cannot be taken on basis of being legal or illegal, but by counter or pro political behavior with people’s interest. In the current system a capitalist with power of his capital buys labour power at cheap price and earns profit of by selling the processed commodity containing the labour at higher price in the market. This is the root of every kind of exploitation. This is the biggest corruption. Anna Ji, you never point at this corruption, at this polarization of rich and poor.
In every capitalist democracy governments basically play role of managing committee of capitalist plunderers. The opera of election and democracy is there to create illusion among people. Armed forces are ready to crush every movement of people calling it anti-nation. Some people from group of managers and servitors of capitalists earn benefit from inter capitalist house competence. They pocket heavy amount of money by broking for them or by pocketing bribes of capitalist houses. But when this competition goes uncontrolled and severe the truth of system precipitates out (like 2G spectrum, Adarsh Society scam, common wealth scam… etc) and suddenly capitalist lawmakers, social activists become active and start to think over “damage control’. Suddenly there appears a Messiah who can sometimes be a political leader, some officer, and sometime some social activist as ‘whistle blowers’ with his/their anti-corruption campaign. He starts to blame corruption rather than this system for all evils. These people are ‘safety valve’ of the system, shock absorber of the people’s anger. We certainly do not doubt your personal hatred towards corruption. Let us also give a look at drafting committee of Jan Lokpal Bill. Let’s have example of Shantibhushan-Prashantbhushan. We are not talking about uncertain truth or false behind the CD scandal. But it is true that Shantibhushan was lawyer of Mulayam Singh in a case against him on trying to polarize candidates of BSP. It is also true that Shantibhushan charges Rs. 25 lakh for each court appearance. Even Prashantbhsuhan charges in lakhs. Same is the case of Ramjethmalani who came to support you on your forum. The question here is that how can largest portion of our population, the poor people buy justice from these expensive lawyers? In a country where 77.5% of population lives under Rs 20 per day and is scrapped of all basic needs of living then isn’t the wealth of 1 arab 36 crore(wealth of Shantibhushan) and 8 immovable properties corruption? These lawyers lobby for those capitalists who earn profit by squeezing the working class population. Does the institution controlled by Baba Ramdev provide all facilities to workers according to labour laws? The two NGOs of Arvind Kejriwal are funded by ‘one of the boss’, Ratan Tata, of the ‘crony capitalism’. The drafting committee is full of such civilians. All these middle class activists, so called civilians of ‘civil society’, and their NGOs are funded by trusts of national capitalists and multinational companies who loot raw material globally and earn profit by squeezing even the last drop of blood of working class and by selling war machines and medicines. In their society and concerns the 70 crore working class people doesn’t occupy any place. These activists actually help in building hegemony of this system over common masses. We don’t have any distrust over your commitment to make this society ‘corruption-free’. But let us have a look at concept of Lokpal as well. Even if prime minister, supreme court and others are brought under regime Lokpal and even if he be given a sufficiently big staff how can he stop corruption from highest to lowest level, from parliament to block house? It is impossible. The corruption check by Lokpal is an illusion. The thought of checking corruption by such mechanism is like that of bringing society on path of progress by a “enlightened despotic” ruler. But Anna Ji you are a Gandhian. Gandhi himself was supporter of decentralization. Another important point, in your anti-corruption movement media played a very big role in building your miraculous image. But this capital controlled media sells crime, robbery, pulp and cheap stories to earn money. This media also sells sham ideals, pseudo heroism and anti-people utopias. It plays a great role in establishing hegemony of state in people. It is not without reason that it is called as the forth column of ‘republic’. Your movement has played role of safety valve for this system instead of hitting at the roots of the system.
At Jantar-Mantar, in your movement the participation of nearly 1 crore working class population of Delhi was nil. But how could it have been there? You were not at Jantar-Mantar for that population. Dear Anna ji we have strong belief that instead of plucking leaves we should cut the roots of this tree of injustice, exploitation and corruption. Which however was absent in your whole movement. We have some more doubts. Please do reply to the letter or if you want to ask us to come in any open forum we will be very eager to come. We are also publishing this open on notices, if any one has any doubt or disagreement then we will be happy to involve in a discussion.
With Due Respect
Students of Delhi,
Labour activists, (Mazdoor Bigul)
Delhi

The letter is a part of letter posted to Anna Hazare and published in Mazdoor Bigul.