DTN News - ANNA HAZARE INDIA NEWS: Anti-Corruption Crusader Anna Hazare Team Gives Undertaking For Protests
(NSI News Source Info) TORONTO, Canada - August 18, 2011: India’s central government ignited a political crisis when it put the anti-corruption leader Anna Hazare in jail – and then, they couldn’t get him out.
Anna Hazare, a 74-year-old long-time activist who has become the face of a populist movement against graft, was ordered released Tuesday night. But he refused to leave the prison until the government withdrew restrictions on his planned protest. He remained behind bars Thursday morning, but he was reported to have agreed to a deal with police to allow him to stage a 15-day hunger strike in a public park. The government of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, meanwhile, was left fumbling awkwardly.
Anna Hazare, a social activist, is usually based in a village in the western state of Maharashtra, where he advocates living by Gandhian principles. He rose to his current prominence when he came to New Delhi in April to stage a “fast unto death,” unless the government created a lokpal, or ombudsperson, with sweeping powers to investigate corruption. Anna Hazare was angry, in particular, at what’s being called the “2G scam,” in which the former telecommunications minister held a corrupt auction for the country’s cellular network license and cost the treasury as much as $40-billion. The ex-minister, plus a handful of senior government figures and business people, are now awaiting trial, held in the same jail that Anna Hazare won’t leave.
The grand corruption cases anger many Indians, but it is the daily rota of bribes they must pay to obtain basic services that are the chief preoccupation of Anna Hazare’s largely middle-class, urban supporters.
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