INDIA’S RENOWNED anti-corruption activist Anna Hazare yesterday vowed to usher in a countrywide “revolution” against graft as he began his 15-day public hunger strike at a New Delhi public park surrounded by tens of thousands of cheering supporters.
“We have to bring about a total change in this country,” the 74-year-old bespectacled, diminutive Hazare told the flag-waving crowd which ecstatically cheered his every word as he demanded stronger anti-corruption laws in a campaign that has seriously rattled prime minister Manmohan Singh’s graft-ridden Congress Party-led administration.
“The country’s youth has awakened and the whole world will see you as an example of how to bring about revolution with non-violence” he declared in his crusade to pressure the government into including his wide-ranging proposals to formulate an anti-corruption ombudsman legislation pending for over four decades.
“To the traitors who have looted this country, I say we will bear it no longer,” thundered Hazare at a time when Singh’s government is vulnerable, besieged by a succession of multibillion-dollar corruption scandals involving senior government officials.
“Hazare has emerged as an icon of change, determined to rid this country of corruption” fashion designer Rita Paul said. Everyone is tired of corrupt and greedy officials who dominate our lives and I hope Anna succeeds, she added.
Incessant live coverage of Hazare’s campaign by numerous 24-hour television news networks further fuelled public sentiment in Delhi and across the country.
Unmindful of the heavy monsoon downpour in the capital, tens of thousands of ecstatic, dancing supporters incessantly cheered Hazare believing him to be the person they trusted to end the national culture of bribery to secure everything from business permits to hospital treatment, school and college admissions and even birth and death certificates.
Earlier in the day, Hazare emerged from a Delhi jail – where he had been lodged since his arrest on Tuesday, cleverly turning it into his campaign headquarters much to the government’s discomfiture – to wild cheers of “Long live Mother India” and showers of rose petals before being driven to the fasting venue in a triumphal convoy that paralysed the capital’s streets.
Supporters threw garlands at Hazare in his open-top truck, assuring him of their support.
Although officially released on Tuesday evening, a few hours after being arrested, Hazare refused to leave jail until the authorities lifted restrictions on the “fast unto death” he had planned to undertake at a public venue in Delhi earlier in the week.
In an embarrassing climb-down for Singh’s government Hazare was eventually accorded permission on Thursday to fast for 15 days in a large open venue in central Delhi normally reserved for religious festivals.
Hazare’s popularity has panicked the federal government that has seemingly failed to anticipate the groundswell of public anger against unrelenting corruption. Its response to Hazare’s campaign has been widely criticised as the clumsy action of a nervous, unaccountable administration.