New Delhi: 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 sceptical about the legislation (Jan Lokpal Bill)
itself for a good number of reasons. I think the legislation
is a dangerous piece of work," Roy said a news channel 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.
PTI
First Published: Tuesday, August 30, 2011, 22:16