Everyone is wondering how this Anna Hazare thing is going to work itself out. His last declaration — that he will fast on till he dies if his version of the Lokpal Bill is not passed, that too by August 31 — has made even his most ardent supporters to do some pranayam .

That he is clear in his mind about what he wants is not in doubt. But the way he has gone about, it is beginning to create serious doubts. His tactics have been successful so far. But they do not quite add up to a strategy.

He seems canny enough to have realised that it is a mistake to get his Bill into Parliament. Once it gets there, it can be rejected, and that will be the end of it.

Indeed, once it gets there, he himself could become quite irrelevant because Parliament takes over then.

That could explain his threat of “my way or highway”.

In short, although the Government appears to have mishandled the whole affair, it has, in fact, got Mr Hazare exactly where it wants him to be — between a rock and a hard place, as the Americans so delicately put it.

Bat in the air

How did Mr Hazare allow himself to be run out with his bat in the air?

Readers will forgive me for harking back to game theory but it does often offer the best explanations.

One of them can be found in something I have written about before, namely, the Grim Trigger Strategy. It describes a situation where cooperation between the players suddenly turns into non-cooperation.

Thus, the game between Mr Hazare and the Government started off as a cooperative game. But at some point in the ‘game', one of the players decided to stop cooperating.

When this happens, the other player decides to do the same — but forever. This forever part is completely non-negotiable. It defines the grim part of the strategy.

That, too, seems to have happened between Mr Hazare and the Government, although it is hard to say who decided to stop cooperating first. But the reason is clear enough: The insistence by the Government that the serving Prime Minister and the Judiciary will not come under the Lokpal, as being demanded by Mr Hazare.

But who stopped cooperating first, and why, doesn't matter for analysing what the outcome will be.

What matters is the credibility of the threat.

In Mr Hazare's case, for example, the threat is a fast unto death. How credible is this threat?

Not very, when you recall the lady in Manipur, Irom Sharmila, who has been on a fast unto death against human rights abuse by the police for a decade now. Or, as the Gestapo would say to its prisoners, “ vehafthemeans to keep you alive , ja ?”

The moral is very clear: Cooperation will leave everyone better off and non-cooperation will leave everyone worse off.

But the problem in this sort of game is that once trust is broken, there is no going back.

In, if you will, Hazare vs Union of India, we are now seeing attempts by both sides to revive that trust.

Sideline Mr Hazare?

Whether or not these attempts will succeed depends on whether Mr Hazare can be sidelined. Before there are cries of outrage, let me remind readers about at least two honourable precedents: The Congress party sidelined Gandhiji in, and after, 1940; and the Janata party sidelined JP after 1977.

There were good reasons in 1940 and in 1977; and there is a good reason now. As mentioned above, Grim Trigger strategies depend on the credibility of the threat and, as Mr Prakash Karat discovered in 2008, his threat to bring down the government by withdrawing support after the nuclear bill was passed just wasn't good enough.

In the process, he got sidelined.

Many people are beginning to sense this in respect of Mr Hazare as well. It is beginning to look as if he may have threatened once too often, not in the sense that he cannot carry out the threat but that he will be prevented from doing so. Either way, the result would be the same.

After zero corruption what?

But let us assume that his version of the Bill is passed and, therefore, let us also assume that corruption is eliminated completely.

Has anyone given any thought to how we are going to finance this wonderful democracy of ours after that?

An economist friend of mine says we should make donations transparent. But I don't think he knows the scale of funding needed.

In a year, with an electorate of 700 million, at least six national parties and four layers of elections, the sum needed runs to around Rs 30,000 crore in a five-year cycle to finance politics and elections.

Now, if that much is needed anyway, and has to be raised anyhow, it seems unavoidable that those who raise it will skim off the top.

What lies at the heart of the problem of political corruption. What is the acceptable level of skimming?

If the Lokpal can define this, we would have made some progress.

blfeedback@thehindu.co.in

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