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Thousands Back Antigraft Hunger Strike in New Delhi
A girl waves an Indian flag and another sings a patriotic song beside India's anti-corruption crusader Anna Hazare, right, on Sunday
NEW DELHI — Sunil and Suman Wadhwa dressed their 4-year-old son in a crisp white shirt and checkered shorts on Sunday for the blisteringly hot trip into New Delhi. They had never participated in a political rally, but after watching the anticorruption campaigner Anna Hazare on television, they wanted to do more than watch.
“We have come here to make change,” said Suman Wadhwa, 36, holding her small son, Gagan, after traveling from the eastern edge of the city. “If we had not come today, we would have felt that we didn’t contribute to the freedom struggle.”
The Wadhwas were far from alone. On Sunday, tens of thousands of people streamed into Ramlila Maidan, the public ground in the heart of New Delhi, the capital, where Mr. Hazare, 74, marked the sixth day of his anticorruption hunger strike.
Despite boiling temperatures, people came by car or by rickshaw, by subway or by foot. Faces were painted with the tricolors of the Indian flag. Many people wore the white Gandhi cap — the topi — now suddenly back in vogue.
Anyone traveling through New Delhi would have most likely bumped into some expression of support for Mr. Hazare, large or small, including a late afternoon march by several thousand people from the city’s historic India Gate to the mass gathering at Ramlila Maidan. In Mumbai, the country’s financial capital, large crowds marched through the city, while peaceful demonstrations were held elsewhere across the country.
“He has some X-factor,” Sumit Khanna, 21, a student, said of Mr. Hazare. “He is fighting for us. He is fighting for young India.”
It speaks to the unexpected ways that Mr. Hazare’s campaign has shaken Indian politics during the past week that a septuagenarian Gandhian is now described by a college student as having an X-factor.
Ordinarily, Mr. Hazare’s campaign might seem too arcane to stir such deep public passions: his standoff with the government is over competing pieces of legislation to create a national anticorruption agency. He has vowed not to break his fast until the government accepts his legislative proposal. Even many people now protesting admit to knowing only the basic differences about the rival proposals.
Yet Mr. Hazare has tapped into a deep public frustration with corruption and with the political class, demonstrating an appeal that has attracted college students, young professionals, doctors, teachers and families toting children, all of them members of a middle class long dismissed as politically apathetic in India. His critics have derided Mr. Hazare’s description of the anticorruption campaign as a “second freedom struggle,” yet many people at the Ramlila Maidan repeated the same phrase, proudly.
“This is for the whole of India, for the people of India,” said Amar Singh, 22, another college student. “This is not political. He doesn’t belong to any political party. All political parties are corrupt.”
For several months, India’s political landscape has been dominated by government corruption scandals that have fueled public outrage. But it is the smaller, more personal brushes with official graft that have motivated many people to turn out for Mr. Hazare’s movement. Vinay Mishra, 33, a mathematics tutor, said his family had to pay numerous bribes before they were granted the necessary permits to renovate their home. At one point, he said, an official from a local electricity board threatened a work stoppage unless he received a small payment.
“They kept raising unnecessary objections,” Mr. Mishra recalled. “Every time we had to do something with a government agency, we had to pay a bribe. The officials are not willing to do their work unless you pay them money.”
Dr. Ashwani Kansal, 43, brought his wife, Tanu, and their two children to Ramlila Maidan on Sunday, despite the heat and huge crowds. Dr. Kansal said his patients often had to pay a $10 bribe at a government office to get a birth certificate for a child. He said police officers demanded bribes if a person tried to file a complaint for a missing wallet or cellphone.
“Corruption is in the roots,” he said. “Everyone wants big money.”
Mr. Hazare has lost more than seven pounds since beginning his fast and spends much of each day sitting on an elevated platform as his advisers, known as Team Anna, make the rounds on television programs or make speeches to the crowd. On Sunday night, Indian news media reported that channels of communication had opened between Team Anna and the government, even if Mr. Hazare hardly seemed to be softening his insistence that Parliament pass his legislative proposal, known as the Jan Lokpal bill.
“Even if the prime minister comes,” he told the crowd at one point on Sunday, “I will not withdraw my hunger strike until the Jan Lokpal bill is passed in the Parliament. I can die but I will not bend.”
Mr. Hazare’s professed unwillingness to compromise, as well as his occasionally belligerent tone, has attracted criticism as government officials have cautioned that any legislation must reflect a broad national consensus. Others have accused him of trying to hold the parliamentary process hostage with his hunger strike, rather than participate in it.
Yet out on Ramlila Maidan, Mr. Hazare seems to have inspired mostly hope. Sunil Wadhwa, the father who brought his 4-year-old son, said many people felt powerless to influence the government and blamed corruption for all sorts of problems, even rising inflation. If politicians did not steal so much money, he argued, more of it would trickle down to the people for whom it is intended.
“We feel angry but we can’t do anything,” Mr. Wadhwa, a teacher, said. “Now we have this platform to show our anger.”
He said he felt that Mr. Hazare understood the travails of the ordinary man. Indian politicians, on the other hand, did not, he said.
“You can’t connect with them,” he said. “You just can’t go to them. They have become an elite class. They are just different.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/22/world/asia/22india.html?_r=1&ref=asia
