Author: PTI
Publication: The Times of India
Date: August 30, 2011
URL: http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2011-08-30/india/29944675_1_anna-hazare-civil-society-hazare-led-movement
Writer Arundhati Roy on Tuesday cast doubts
over Anna Hazare's anti-graft campaign saying the civil society's Jan Lokpal
Bill is a "dangerous piece of legislation".
"I am skeptical about the legislation
(Jan Lokpal Bill) itself for a good number of reasons. I think the legislation
is a dangerous piece of work," Roy told CNN-IBN in an interview.
Alleging that the civil society used public
anger in their favour, the Booker Prize winner novelist said "You (civil
society) used the real and legitimate anger of the people against corruption
to push through this specific piece of legislation which is very regressive.
It could have turned from something inclusive to destructive and dangerous."
Calling the Hazare-led movement a "copy
book World Bank agenda", Roy said "It was an NGO-driven movement
by Kiran Bedi, (Arvind) Kejriwal and (Manish) Sisodia.
"Three of them run NGOs and all the
three core team members are Magsaysay Award winners... World Bank and Ford
Foundation fund the anti-corruption campaigns. This is copy book World Bank
agenda though they might have not meant it."
The writers said "Anna Hazare was picked
up and propped up as the saint for the masses. He was not the brain behind
the movement. We really need to be worry about it."
She also said the Hazare-led movement was
not the same thing as a people's movement and accused the media of engineering
it.
"Obviously people joined in but all
of them were not middle class and many came for a sort of reality show well
orchestrated by media campaigns," she said.
"For a nation of one billion people,
the media did not find anything else to report. Certain major TV channels
campaigned for said to be doing so. That's a kind of corruption for me at
first place," she said.
"If it was only for TPR then why not
to settle for pornography or something which gives more TRP?" she asked.
