Anna redux, or the second wind for civil society activist Anna Hazare, began bright and early on Tuesday morning, when he was picked up by the Delhi Police from the East Delhi suburb of Mayur Vihar before he could undertake his programme of a hunger fast in Central Delhi.

The arrest, apart from making Mayur Vihar a real estate hot property after having been featured on television all day, brought out a large number of people on to the streets in protests, and more than that, there were dozens of TV crews, intent on capturing every facet of the event.

With Hazare lodged in one police accommodation after another through the day, some part of the action shifted to Parliament. Government managers realised, as the day went by, that they had committed a tactical error by the arrest.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh called a meeting of the Cabinet Committee on Political Affairs (CCPA) soon after, where government managers admitted that the issue had shifted from being about the Lokpal Bill to one related to the exercise of democratic rights. More than one senior minister concluded that the government had ?lost the media war? and a proxy political battle was now on. A second meeting between senior ministers and AICC general secretary Rahul Gandhi was held in finance minister Pranab Mukherjee?s room. The reticent Gandhi smiled at the media, but said little else: ?I have a meeting to attend, otherwise I would have chatted.?

Ministers called a hasty press conference, spending more than an hour explaining the reasons behind the arrest. Too much detail. Someone, somewhere had dropped the ball on the matter, explanations notwithstanding. To make matters worse, Hazare was remanded to seven days of judicial custody.

Telecom minister Kapil Sibal, the man who has been cast in the role of the ?anti-Anna? was greeted with black flags at a seminar. Proving the old adage that politics makes strange bedfellows, these flags were waved by the radical Left student outfit AISA, which otherwise would have run a mile before any suggestion of support to a movement backed by the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS). Now these are just the kind of niceties that get overlooked when larger questions of democratic rights arise.

Coming back to Anna Hazare, he threw another googly at the government by standing by his decision to go on a hunger strike, this time from within Tihar Jail where he was being held. The government?s actions, which were targeted at restricting the impact of the fast to a small park in Central Delhi now succeeded in spreading it all over the city: at Tihar Jail, where crowds surged, at Chattarsal stadium where over 1,200 people were held, at Pragati Maidan where people marched.

Maharashtra chief minister Prithviraj Chavan was hastily summoned to Delhi. Government managers, who understood the significance of a long standoff between protesters and the police in the capital city were exploring the possibility of quietly moving Anna Hazare to his village Ralegaon Siddhi in Maharashtra, quite in the manner Baba Ramdev was moved back to Uttarakhand, back to his ashram.

Chavan?s advice was to desist from such a move. The state would be going in for local body polls in a few weeks, so to shift the Lokpal ?problem? to Maharashtra would be politically unsound. ?If the party didn?t do well, Hazare?s presence could be construed as having affected outcomes, and the polls a kind of signal on the Lokpal Bill,? said a senior Congressman.

So Anna Hazare stayed where he was. The government, now desperate to get him out of jail, gave orders for his release, but it failed to move Hazare.

The next morning, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh gave the same explanation, trotted out by his ministers on Tuesday, for Anna Hazare?s arrest, and got roundly castigated by the opposition for his pains. As he walked out of central hall after the debate, he said, rather philosophically, ?we will find a way out.?

The ?way out? was to allow protests at the Ramlila grounds. But with the police still insisting on capping the number of days that permission to fast could be given, another site was added to the protests, this time at India Gate. As the government desperately tried to get a hold on events that had slipped from its grasp, ?face-saving measures? were being anxiously debated.

As corporate affairs minister Veerappa Moily said while exiting Parliament after the bruising the treasury benches got from the opposition : ?Every problem has a solution.? But why create the problem in the first place?

nistula.hebbar@expressindia.com