Watching the Anna Hazare story unfold, the Mad Hatter is reminded of an old chess dictum - "sometimes the point of an opening is unclear till the middlegame commences".
Mad though he is, he doesn't believe that it's all really about the Jan Lokpal. Neither does Firstpost, apparently. They have an interesting backstory to the current Janlokpal agitation.
So where do we go from here if Jan Lokpal doesn't happen? What good could come of all this?
Well, what if it does happen, you ask? may I request a drag from what you're smoking before I answer that?
What IAC has managed to do is to get a whole bunch of middle-class Indians to actually get their backsides off their ergonomic office chairs and on to the streets. If this movement peters out, what good will that do?
Here's a possible scenario: Let's say the Jan Lokpal movement dies down as the government expects, are quiet for a while, but anger simmers. Let's also say IAC is able to awaken that anger to mobilize the same middle-class to extract electoral revenge in 2014 (or whenever the next substantial election is). That will not be easy, but is just about within the realm of possibility. Especially since 2014 is expected to be a close election, any new vote bank could actually matter well in excess of their numbers.
Perhaps, just perhaps, if this can spark the first organized middle-class vote bank in independent India, some long-term good will come of it. Because if someone proves that the middle class can be made to vote en bloc, the game of Indian democracy changes for ever.
Perhaps the middle class is Kejriwal and Bedi's middlegame. Anna is just the gambit pawn. And the Mad Hatter, a compulsive player of gambits, approves.
