It’s strange what the weather can make a person do. This time in 2011, anti-corruption activist Anna Hazare and his supporters were spewing venom against the UPA government, fighting the Congress party’s fire with firepower of the India Against Corruption (IAC) movement’s artillery. The UPA-II, just over two years into warming its seat, did not hold back fire, with leader after senior leader pooh-poohing the antics of ‘anarchists’, as many had begun calling IAC’s pressure politics to get parliament to pass the Jan Lokpal bill: dharnas, rallies, fasts and other Gandhian means used by the Congress – oftener than not successfully – to call the Raj’s bluff in British India.

Fast-forward a couple of years, and Hazare today is cheering and lauding the government’s efforts to pass the Lokpal bill. “I am satisfied with whatever I have seen of the draft bill and so I welcome it," he said on December 14 – the fifth day of his latest fast at Ralegan Siddhi village in Maharashtra. The same day, Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi addressed the media, something he did not in 2011 and 2012 when the anti-corruption agitation was at its peak, and called the proposed law a "very, very powerful instrument" to combat corruption. Also, the same day, the government fast-tracked the process to get the bill passed.

And with that the entire government (read Congress) machinery came out to support the Lokpal bill, with the party fielding parliamentary affairs minister Kamal Nath to get a sulking Samajwadi Party on board.

The same day in Delhi, battling tens of other troubles, Hazare’s one-time protégé and now the chief of Aam Aadmi Party, Arvind Kejriwal, said he was surprised and shocked that the Gandhian had bought into the promises of the party run by the Gandhis, and all hell broke loose. There were positions to take, and vacancies to fill, and taken and filled up they sure were in no time. Kiran Bedi, a former IPS officer and key Hazare associate, launched what can be described as an assault on Kejriwal on Twitter, while Hazare scoffed at his one-time comrade. Both landed their jabs without naming Kejriwal.

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Both also retained their silence on what prompted the government to change stance, and heart to suddenly discover the power in what Rahul Gandhi now calls a “powerful instrument”. Which begs a few questions:

• Is it the post-election weather, with the Congress facing the heat in much of north India, and all indications pointing towards the road being bumpier ahead, that prompted the government to suddenly pick up the Lokpal bill from cold storage, dust it and put it up on the window shelf?
• Or is it the sudden popularity of AAP, and the equally dangerous indications that it could find support in other metropolitan cities as well?
• Is it the hint within the second indication that AAP’s support base comes from those who fell for the Congress in the last few years, with the core BJP support base remaining untouched?
• Or is it another of the party’s grand ideas that would be cleared just before the elections so that Gandhi can take more credit for bringing in transparency? Or, if it fails to enthuse enough men and women before the summer of 2014, to ensure the responsibility to implement the new law (once it attains that position) and the onus, if anything goes wrong, lies with the party/formation that forms the next government at the centre.

The UPA’s and Congress’s anticipatory gains from the Lokpal bill are understandable. What gets a jot too foggy to figure out in the misty Delhi weather is why Hazare and company are so desperate to discredit Kejriwal and (seemingly) cosy up to the Congress. As often happens in life, the good came with the bad. But after the fog lifted, you realised they were cross-dressers. Is that the new combo, then: Team Anna-Congress?