Who is this Anna? What has she done?

"Who is this Anna, Anna everyone is talking about?" the young woman asked, looking around the room. "Does anyone know who she is or what she has done?"I swear I am not making this up. This was a fashion journalist at one of our leading publishing houses asking the question when the Anna Hazare agitation was in its third day. But though her obliviousness to the world around her must be extreme, there is something in what she says. Who is Anna Hazare? What has he done so far? I don't mean it in any derogatory way, but Hazare's claim to fame is that he has lived a lifetime in Mahatma Gandhi's footsteps. Vinoba Bhave was Gandhi's best known disciple because he worked on a large national canvas. In the case of Baba Amte, the scope of activism was reduced while the ideas and methods remained the same. Anna Hazare worked on an even smaller scale, ensuring clean water here, going after corrupt Maharashtra MLAs there. All the while he lived a very frugal life, with no material possessions and no family to "distract him" (his words) from his mission to "serve humanity" (his word again).Apparently at a very young age he tried to commit suicide because he despaired of the futility of life. When he failed to kill himself, he enlisted in the army. In one of the Indo-Pak wars he became a driver of a military vehicle. In a recent interview, he talks about deliberately exposing himself to all kinds of dangers on the battle field but surviving, while his more careful colleagues got killed. God wants me to live, he thought, and it must be to serve my fellow beings.

There are echoes of Gandhi in his perceptions of a family as a distraction, his ultimate resolve to serve people and the extreme frugality of his life. But there the resemblance ends: Anna Hazare swam in a very small pond, and there he would have remained if it hadn't been for this uncharacteristic move to Jantar Mantar in Delhi. He did what great men do through history: he seized the moment. What made him do it no one knows. Why someone else – say a Swami Agnivesh – didn't do it too no one knows.If Anna Hazare had tried to launch the same agitation a year ago, it would have flopped in a couple of days. But now, with scam after enormous scam grabbing our headlines and rattling our brains, the nation was at a point of complete and utter helplessness coupled with a seething anger. On one hand, most of us worked hard and honestly to make a living while on the other, there were these scum bags for whom a crore was small change.We were a nation also at a strange intersection: on one side there was Shining India now talked about with awe in every country in the world, while on the other side there were people whose venality knew no bounds and whose greed and contempt for rules brought our country down in the eyes of the world.In other words, we were ready to explode. And, who knows, the Jasmine Revolutions of the Arab World, while seemingly so distant, had a subconscious effect on us, which is why, equipped with the modern weaponry of tweets and e-mails and texts, we entered the battlefield, a battlefield made even more attractive because the enemy went into hiding.I mean no disrespect to Anna Hazare when I say that anyone coming out at this point to lead the battle would have had the same success. But it was he who saw the opportunity and took it with both hands, and for that we should forever be grateful to him.Now, of course, the real war begins.

PS: This post is written by Mr. Anil Dharkar named "Anna anna pe likha hain". Very crisp in his points and sharp and intutive outlook. Loved it.

So long........