Anna Hazare started a hunger strike on 5 April 2011 to exert pressure on the Indian government to enact a strict anti-corruption law as envisaged in the Jan Lokpal Bill, for the institution of an ombudsman with the power to deal with corruption in public offices. The fast led to nation-wide protests in support of Hazare. The fast ended on 9 April 2011, the day after the government accepted Hazare's demands. The government issued a gazette notification on the formation of a joint committee, constituted of government and civil society representatives, to draft the legislation.
Anna has been featured as the most influential person in Mumbai by a national daily newspaper.He has faced criticism by political commentators for his authoritarian views on justice, including death as punishment for corrupt public officials and support for forced vasectomies as a method of family planning.
Early Life
Kisan Hazare was born on 15 June 1937 in Bhingar, a small village near the city of Hinganghat, in Bombay Province (present-day Maharashtra). Kisan's father, Baburao Hazare, worked as an unskilled labourer in Ayurveda Ashram Pharmacy. Kisan's grandfather was working for the army in Bhingar, when he was born. The grandfather died in 1945, but Baburao continued to stay at Bhingar. In 1952, Baburao resigned from his job and returned to his own village, Ralegan Siddhi. Kisan had six younger siblings and the family faced significant hardships. Kisan's childless aunt offered to look after him and his education, and took him to Mumbai. Kisan studied up to the seventh standard in Mumbai and then sought employment, due to the economic situation in his household. He started selling flowers at Dadar to support his family. He soon started his own shop and brought two of his brothers to Bombay.
Military Service
In 1962, events in South Asia meant that large-scale army recruitments were being undertaken. Despite not meeting the physical requirements, 25-year-old Hazare was selected, as emergency recruitment was taking place in the Indian Army.After training at Aurangabad in Maharashtra he started his career in the Indian Army as a driver in 1963.During the Indo-Pakistani War of 1965, Hazare was posted at the border in the Khem Karan sector. On 12 November 1965, Pakistan launched air attacks on Indian bases, and all of Hazare's comrades were killed; he was the only survivor of that convoy. It was a close shave for Hazare as one bullet had passed by his head.He was driving a truck.This led him to dwell on the purpose and meaning of life and death. He came across a small booklet titled "Call to the youth for nation building" by Swami Vivekananda in a book stall at the New Delhi railway station.He realized that saints sacrificed their own happiness for that of others, and that he needed to work towards ameliorating the sufferings of the poor. He started to spend his spare time reading the works of Vivekananda, Gandhi, and Vinoba Bhave.During the mid-1970s, he again survived a road accident while driving.It was at that particular moment that Hazare took an oath to dedicate his life to the service of humanity, at the age of 38.He took voluntary retirement from the army in 1978.
In 1978 after a voluntary retirement from the Indian army, Hazare went to his native village Ralegan Siddhi, a village located in the acute drought-prone and rain-shadow zone of Parner Tehsil of Ahmadnagar district, in central Maharashtra.It was one of the many villages of India plagued by acute poverty, deprivation, a fragile ecosystem, neglect and hopelessness. Hazare made remarkable economic, social and community regeneration in Ralegan Siddhi. He reinforced the normative principles of human development – equity, efficiency, sustainability and people's participation and made Ralegan Siddhi an oasis of human-made regeneration in a human-made desert without any inputs of industrialisation and technology-oriented agriculture.
Activism
Right to Information movement
In the early 2000s Hazare led a movement in Maharashtra state which forced the state government to pass a stronger Maharashtra Right to Information Act. This Act was later considered as the base document for the Right to Information Act 2005 (RTI), enacted by the Union Government. It also ensured that the President of India assented to this new Act.Law professor Alasdair Scott Roberts said:
The state of Maharashtra – home to one of the world's largest cities, Mumbai, adopted a Right to Information Act in 2003, prodded by the hunger strike of prominent activist, Anna Hazare. ("All corruption can end only if there is freedom of information," said Hazare, who resumed his strike in February 2004 to push for better enforcement of the Act).On 20 July 2006 the Union Cabinet amended the Right to Information Act 2005 to exclude the file noting by the government officials from its purview. Hazare began his fast unto death on 9 August 2006 in Alandi against the proposed amendment. He ended his fast on 19 August 2006, after the government agreed to change its earlier decision.
Lokpal Bill movement
In 2011, Hazare initiated a Satyagraha movement for passing a stronger anti-corruption Lokpal (ombudsman) bill in the Indian Parliament as conceived in the Jan Lokpal Bill (People's Ombudsman Bill). The Jan Lokpal Bill was drafted earlier by N. Santosh Hegde, former justice of the Supreme Court of India and Lokayukta of Karnataka, Prashant Bhushan, a senior lawyer in the Supreme Court and Arvind Kejriwal, a social activist along with members of the India Against Corruption movement. This draft bill incorporated more stringent provisions and wider power to the Lokpal (Ombudsman) than the draft Lokpal bill prepared by the government in 2010.
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