Anna and the Circus

My wife went to express support for Anna Hazare and the Jan Lokpal Bill today. She protested empty stomach for close to 3 hours in Bhubaneswar and also gave a speech to a gathering of few hundreds - all supporters. I will be joining the candle light vigil in the evening for the support.

I have been following Anna and the Jan Lokpal cause for some time now and have been into many arguments and agreements with friends, acquaintances, family, strangers. There have been people I regard as intelligent and incompetent. Some are people who can barely be regarded as people. Strangely the agreement and arguments are normally distributed. What seemed to make perfect sense to me is suddenly seeming debatable. So I thought let me summarize thoughts here.

Another Partition
The people of India have been divided into 4 clear groups due to the recent events

1. People who support Anna and his call for Jan Lokpal Bill
2. People who support Anna but think Jan Lokpal Bill is counter-productive or trivial
3. People who don't support Anna or the Jan Lokpal Bill but think suppression of protest is wrong.
4. People who neither support Anna nor the Jan Lokpal cause and think the govt. was right in arresting Anna and Anna is creating nuisance in fact Anna is stopping India's march towards development
5. People who think Anna is fraud. The Govt. is Fraud. No Lokpal is worth anything. If you are Indian your only hope is to migrate to some other country (aside from Libya, Egypt Kenya, Ghana, Ivory Coast...heck all of Africa maybe)

In summary:

	Support Anna	Support Jan Lokpal Bill	Support Govt.
Group 1	Yes	Yes	No
Group 2	Yes	No	No
Group 3	No	No	No
Group 4	No	No	Yes
Group 5	No	No	No

There are several arguments given by Leading Media personalities, self-styled Intelligentsia, self-styled patriots and other miscellaneous breeds.

1. Lokpal will be another layer of bureaucracy over the already all-pervading red-tape
   It might become that. Whatever be the bill that is presented and whatever be the bill that is made a law. This is a real danger.
   Excessive legislation is a bad thing, like anything else (in excess that is)
2. Jan Lokpal

What Pains me

1. The so-called intelligentsia question your intelligence if you support
2. Anna
3. The so-called intelligentsia question your intelligence if you have hope in anything are not cynical

Edit note - This was written a long time ago and not published till today.

Turns out Anna is a fool being played by another group of fools looking to change the lives of a billion fools.