Between two PMs

One elderly man held the gun and another took it away. The 73-year-old Anna Hazare orchestrated a non-violent agitation to force the government to agree to a Lokpal. The 75-year-old Mr Pranab Mukherjee once again steered the Government out of crisis.

Mr Mukherjee, burning the mid-night oil and missing his favourite afternoon nap, also found a way of not compromising the supremacy of Parliament.

When Mr Mukherjee took command, not just the Government's negotiating team saw a makeover. So did the Anna team. The Government replaced Mr P. Chidambaram and Mr Kapil Sibal with Mr Salman Khurshid and Mr Sandeep Dixit. Another surprising inclusion was Mr Vilasrao Deshmukh.

Mr Dixit's inclusion might have surprised people, but his NGO connections helped. He runs an NGO in Bhopal. Most of the Team Anna members also run NGOs.

Team Anna brought Medha Patkar in for Kiran Bedi and Prashant Bhushan replaced Arvind Kejriwal.

We asked some UPA allies what they thought of it all. Some Congress MPs replied, sotto voce of course, that they were appalled.

But only a few like Sandeep Dixit, Sanjay Nirupam and Priya Dutt, made bold to express solidarity with Anna's movement.

Amongst the UPA allies, the Rashtriya Janata Dal criticised the Government. The DMK took a diplomatic stand by saying both parties (the Government and Hazare) could have relented from their rigid positions. The TMC kept quiet. The Nationalist Congress Party privately conveyed its anger to the Congress.

An ally and senior Cabinet Minister testily pointed out that the Government had never bothered to consult the key allies about how to deal with the Anna crisis, instead wasting crucial time in tackling Anna on its own.

Hazare had gone on the warpath nearly three months ago and had been in his village away from the limelight. The allies feel that this time could have been used to make some attempts to negotiate with him.

Also, the blow hot and blow cold method of the Government has upset the allies. They maintain that the approach of first “abusing him by calling him a fascist” and then putting him in jail only to release him suddenly was not the right one.

Going into overdrive to create proper infrastructure at the Ramlila Maidan for him to fast was again a wrong move. “What political message are you sending,” they are asking.

One more message seemed to fail. It was bringing Mr Rahul Gandhi to break his silence during Zero Hour on Friday. The leader of opposition, Ms Sushma Swaraj, took a dig by calling his speech as “Pravachan”. Then a senior MP termed this as an intentional yorker turned into full toss and finally sent over the boundary.

But the real question to be answered is why Mr Rahul's speech had no effect on the Government and the Congress. Mr Gandhi absented himself from Parliament on Saturday. The Baba Brigade was seen encouraging Opposition MPs like Sharad Yadav.

One positive to emerge for the Congress from the episode is Mr Salman Khurshid, who managed to smile even when Team Anna was accusing the Government of taking it all back to square one. He skilfully managed all the backend negotiations.

Mr Khurshid's stature as a national leader has grown at a time when Uttar Pradesh is getting ready for big election. But is the Congress ready to play this up in UP?

COMMENT NOW