Not to be moved,Anna starts second freedom struggle from Ramlila ground

Live TV images broadcast across the country showed people perched on electric poles and even traffic lights to catch a glimpse of him,and many chanted ‘Anna we are with you’.

In a sign of the deep anger at the government,one poster held aloft outside the jail showed cartoons of government ministers with fangs and looking like donkeys. They had dollar signs emblazoned on them.

“I am Anna,you are Anna. Now the whole country is Anna,” read another poster.

“(He) has come like a god to save this country,” said Asha Bansal,a homemaker. “Everyone is so sick of these politicians who are only out to make money.”

Hazare then led an over two-hour procession from Tihar to the Ramlila Maidan via Rajghat with a crush of supporters doggedly trailing him in the heavy rain,chanting their support for a strong anti-corruption law.

“We will not leave this ground till the Jan Lokpal Bill is brought,” Hazare said at the Ramlila grounds,the site of his public fast for the next 14 days. He is already fasting since Tuesday.

On the fourth day of his fast,the 73-year-old Gandhian looked totally fit when he ran a short distance in Rajghat to escape from the rain though he said he had lost three kgs since Tuesday.

Anna,clad in starched white and sporting his trademark Gandhi topi,repeatedly invoked Gandhi as he sought to wrap the halo of the Mahatma around his demands for a tough anti-corruption law.

“This is a new revolution. This is the new freedom struggle,” he said from the Ramlila stage,with an enormous portrait of Gandhi behind him. “We have lit the flame of a revolution. Don’t let the flame die out now.”

“There was a revolution in 1942 because of which the British had to quit India. But the loot and rowdyism have not stopped. That is why the second freedom struggle has begun.

“Do not allow this torch of struggle to be put out whether Anna is alive or not,” he told the cheering crowd at the spacious Ramlila Maidan.

Team Hazare has been campaigning for the adoption of its Jan Lokpal Bill that will police the Prime Minister,higher judiciary and conduct of MPs inside Parliament.

In a message that he would not make any compromise in his campaign,Hazare said,“You can sever my head but you cannot make me bow.”

The anti-corruption crusader said people’s struggle have taken a violent turn in many countries but the fight here has not. “Our protest is non-violent and the whole world will be inspired by it,” he said.

“We will have to think how to ensure justice to the poor people of the country,” he said adding youth power is his main strength.

“The youth of the country is my strength and they have just woken up,” he said adding his fight is not over till corruption in eliminated from the country.

After he came out of the jail a little before noon where he made a brief address,Hazare got into an improvised truck and led a procession for a short distance.

Hundreds of people greeted him with garlands and flowers which he accepted with folded hands and waved intermittently to his supporters gathered either side of the road.

From Mayapuri in West Delhi,he drove straight to Rajghat where he paid his respects to Mahatma Gandhi before heading for Ramlila Maidan.

Police briefly arrested Hazare on Tuesday after he declared his intention to hold a public hunger strike in defiance of their restrictions on the demonstration. He began his fast in jail anyway and then refused to leave when they tried to free him,demanding the right to hold a long public demonstration. A compromise was reached Thursday that would allow him to hold a 15-day protest,but Hazare opted to stay in the jail an extra day as the venue was being prepared.

On Friday morning,he stepped out of the jail’s gate to the applause of supporters,who climbed atop parked cars to get a glance of the activist before he climbed into the back of the truck to lead a slow-moving procession through the city to the protest venue.

Hazare’s protest is aimed at pushing the government to pass his version of a proposed Bill to create a powerful ombudsman to police top officials. Activists have criticised the current Bill tabled in Parliament as too weak to be effective.

Government officials have criticised Hazare in turn,saying he was twisting time-honoured protest tactics to subvert the legislative process and force elected officials to bow to his own agenda.

“The government will have to bend in front of this movement. This is just the trailer,the film is yet to start,” said Hazare supporter Prakash Khattar,a bank employee.

Hazare is a retired Army driver who transformed himself into the most prominent social activist in his home state of Maharashtra in recent decades. He has held a series of hunger strikes to force the state government to enact reforms and on at least one occasion forced it to capitulate by taking a vow of silence until he got his way.

He shot to national prominence in April when he held a four-day hunger strike to demand the government draft legislation for an anti-corruption watchdog.

But this week — though he was hidden inside a jailhouse and only seen in a brief YouTube video — Hazare turned into a symbol of the national anger over corruption.

Hazare’s support springs from a middle class fed up with corruption,from the lowest rungs of governance to the top where the government is fight a raft of scandals.

After his arrest Tuesday,thousands marched in cities across the country in support of him. With hundreds of demonstrators gathered outside the jail,authorities capitulated to many of his demands and granted him permission for a 15-day public protest. However,Hazare’s close associate Kiran Bedi said on her Twitter account Friday that the protest would be “indefinite” until the government caves in and changes the law.

Supporters said they had little doubt they would prevail.

“I have full trust in his ability to bring change,” said Khattar,the bank worker.

Others were less optimistic about the scope of the new movement’s power.

A new middle classe

Several scandals,including a telecoms bribery scandal that may have cost the government thousands of crores,led to Hazare demanding anti-corruption measures. But the government Bill creating an anti-graft ombudsman has been criticised as too weak.

Hazare’s initial demands then mushroomed to catch the imagination of millions of Indians,especially a new middle class angry at constant bribes,from getting a driving licence to winning a university place.

“We have not seen this kind of thing in the last 60 years in India,” said S K Sharma,48,a company executive,outside the jail as he waited for Hazare. “If this carries on in this way for the next four days,you will see a new changed India.”

A blundering official response has led the Congress party-led government to face one of the most serious protest movements in India since the 1970s,just the latest in a series of setbacks for Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s second term that have paralysed policy making and economic reforms. One banner outside the jail read ‘Wake up Manmohan Singh’.

Many critics say Hazare’s arrest only inflamed passions and galvanized thousands.

However,some commentators said his campaign may peter out now he is out of jail and,indeed,crowds were smaller than expected at the site of his public fast,an open ground caked in mud from the rains.

A medical team was on standby to monitor Hazare’s health as he began his hunger strike in jail. A sharp deterioration in his condition could further worsen the crisis for the government,although his supporters say it is not a fast-to-death.

A weak political opposition means the government should still survive the crisis,but it could further dim the prospect for economic reforms and hurt the Congress party in key state polls in 2012 that will pave the way for a general election in 2014.

The protests across cities in India,fanned by social networks,have not only rocked the ruling Congress party,they have sent shockwaves through the political class as a whole.

Hazare is not some out-of-the-blue phenomenon,however. Deep-seated change has been underway for years in India as its once-statist economy globalises,bolstered by a widely used Right to Information Act,aggressive private media and the election of state politicians who have rejected traditional caste-support bases to win on governance issues.

Students,lawyers,teachers,executives and civil servants have taken to streets in cities and remote villages stretching to the southern end of the country.

Social networks

One Facebook fan page for Hazare has more than 300,000 followers,while the India Against Corruption page on Facebook has more than 370,000 followers where links and messages of support are posted. Several Twitter accounts have been set up by supporters to send out messages of where and when to protest.

Prime Minister Singh,78,has dismissed the fast by Hazare as totally misconceived and undermining the parliamentary democracy.

Hazare became the unlikely thorn in the side of the government when he went on hunger strike in April. He called off that fast after the government promised to introduce a bill creating an anti-corruption ombudsman.

The so-called Lokpal legislation was presented in early August,but activists slammed the draft version as toothless because the Prime Minister and judges were exempt from probes.