Anna’s campaign is corporate sponsored: Arundhati Roy

January 21, 2012 14:54
Anna’s campaign is corporate sponsored: Arundhati Roy

Guardian on an earlier occasion quoted, Roy has important things to say, but her tone and bluster ensure the only people listening are those who already agree with her.

The Booker prize-winning novelist Arundhati Roy made scathing attack on Team Anna. She expressed outwardly in a lecture that the anti-corruption agitation by Team Anna is a ‘corporate-sponsored media campaign.’ Further the noted writer also criticized the Team Anna’s silence on corporate power and cross-ownership of business. This she said while addressing the gathering at the 4th Anuradha Ghandy memorial, at Mumbai on Friday.

"Their anti-corruption agitation was a corporate- sponsored media campaign and hence Team Anna chose to remain silent," she said adding that even though the movement was said to follow Gandhian principles, the law they advocate is highly "un-Gandhian".

"They want a centralized, draconian agency with powers to prosecute, investigate and punish," said Ms. Roy. Adding further "This movement did not say a word about privatization, corporate power and economic reforms. It did not demand end to cross-ownership of businesses or laws that could dismantle concentration of wealth and power," she said.

She went on to say that there was only public mauling of politicians. About media stands on the issue, she said media became travel agents for Anna Hazare. The whole idea of Team Anna about corruption, as per the writer, `was a leaf out of an accountant’s book.’

Ms. Roy concluded that the movement capitalized on genuine rage against corporate scams and fury of ordinary Indians. "A round-the-clock corporate sponsored media campaign proclaimed it to be the voice of the people," she said.

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