Lessons I Learnt From Anna Hazare’s Campaign

I may not be competent enough comment on the merits of any national level campaign but everything happens of that or even lesser magnitude does leave a string of lessons for me to learn. It has been around two year now, when Anna Hazare and his team started a civil movement under the banner of ‘India Against Corruption’ to end corruption in the country with the support of common people’s movement. This campaign was launched with the objective, or at least we were made to believe, to bring in ‘Jan Lokpal’, who will have investigation as well as prosecution power to try and punish the corrupt. ‘Jan Lokpal’ is nowhere in the picture but this entire civil movement has now become political with Arvind Kejriwal and few others has started their political journey with naming and shaming the big and mighty in political power circle leaving Anna Hazare sulking in his village Ralegaon Siddhi. Despite knowing the fact that this ‘Jan Lokpal’ can’t solve the problem of corruption in the country, or can’t be created at the first place, I was supporter to it, because there were people on the streets demanding justice for themselves and fighting to limit the malice of corruption. Very soon, this entire campaign evaporated like thin air and so does the people’s interest. Why it happened; I learned following points:

1)      Objective: Whenever we embark a journey to achieve something, we should put all our effort to achieve that ‘something’, and it shall remains constant till the end. Rule of game should not change en-route to give a confusing outlook to other stakeholders and diluting the targeted result. This entire campaign started with the objective of bringing in ‘Jan Lokpal’ and Anna Hazare and his team pretended to stand firm on this point till penultimate moment but they changed it at last moment and brought it three point agenda of brining lower bureaucracy under lokpal, appointing lokayukts in every state and citizen’s charter. Though all there point are quite strong and valid and would have gone a long way in reducing the common man’s problem with government departments, but it was a huge letdown for the mass who were braving all rough weather across the country in support of this campaign.

2)      Plan: It is rightly said that game is half won if planned well. So, planning is the key of success and it should be done with all due diligence. Every step should be carefully planned to achieve end objective, role of every individual in the set up should be clearly defined with a ready fall back plan or Plan B. Not everyone in the team should be doing the same thing or one person doing something and other going on correcting or modifying it. This was case during Anna Hazare’s fast last year in August, where every member of his team was vying for the spotlight and was trying to prove themselves better than each other. Further, there was no indication till the end that what will be their plan B, in the case of failure of plan A. So, whatever they ended with seemed to be big climb down for the entire campaign.

3)      Team: A good team is crucial part of every business, be it business, game or campaign, we all know but I learned something more from this campaign. You need a good team, but you need not to have everybody good in doing only one thing. In the team Anna, everybody seemed projecting themselves to be expert in making strategy. With no worker or may be just one, whose name I will take in next point, this entire campaign looked like all word and no action. So, while forming team, we need to have workers as well along with the leaders, otherwise our effort will also yield the same result, which India Against Corruption’s campaign has yielded.

4)      Leader Should Lead, not work: It is often said that leader should set the example, walk the talk. But I understood that he or she should stick to that only and let the workers to do the rest. Anna Hazare was the supposed leader of this campaign, but he was the only one working (read fasting) and rest were feasting on coffee, biscuits in ministry offices. Had others played their role with honesty to the objective, result would have been something different and better than what it is today.

5)      Negotiation: Negotiation is science, art or both; I don’t know, but one thing I learned here it requires goal setting, proper planning, role play, practice and coordination. What I saw during this campaign that all the above mentioned points were completely missing. While Anna was saying something, his team was something else. They started to go to east but ended up circling one point mid way. And the end result is before everyone to see.

A task is not complete until it is complete: When we set the objective, do the planning and start the work, we must ensure not to lose focus in the middle itself and digress towards something else. Otherwise first task will remain unaccomplished. I won’t go into the details of good or bad ‘Jan Lokpal’, but Anna Hazare and team abandoned the campaign just after getting the assurance from the government. They started talking about ‘electoral reforms’, ‘judiciary reforms’ and ‘graam sabha’ without taking their original campaign to the desired result.