Indian Anti-Corruption Activist Continues Hunger Strike
Corruption in India (oyetimes.com)
Anna Hazare, a 73-year-old former soldier and anti-corruption activist, announced he would not cancel his “fast until death,” known all over the world as hunger strike, in spite of the fact that the government promised to take some provisions to control corruption.
The protest Hazare has launched has tens of thousands of supporters all over India, with some 80,000 followers on the Facebook page.
The people who support him have taken up different ways to protests, from the radical hunger strike to lighter ways like lighting candles in vesperal observances in the cities all over the country.
He even drew support from a few Bollywood stars who embraced his cause and joined different ways to protest with him.
Anna Hazare (guardian.co.uk)
The people in India perceive that corruption in their country has gone beyond any limits, and it engulfed all sectors of public life.
From seeing the action of the government, perceived as utterly corrupt, down to the every day forms of petty corruption such as paying a little fee to avoid a fine, Indians seem to have had enough of corruption in their country.
One of the most delicate matters that places India in the spot is the way the 2010 Delhi Commonwealth Games were handled, given that they left behind serious accusations of corruption.
The people protesting want the adoption of a law that would create an anti-corruption ombudsman capable to easily and rapidly prosecute corrupt people, with the authorities themselves placed under such authority.
Corruption in India (vinodvv.wordpress.com)
They also reject the current act proposed by the government, considering it two weak given that it gives ombudsman, called in India Lokpal, only recommending authority but no prosecuting one.
This kind of law has been proposed many times in the parliament but has never had any chance to pass, because many lawmakers in this huge country are considered to have made their fortune by illegal ways.
The wealthy usually succeed in escaping prosecution in India because they prolong processes until their crimes are no longer punishable.
Hunger strike is a well-known means of political expression in India and reminds of Mahatma Gandhi, who brought a religious rite into the political landscapes by using it to put an end to domestic violence and religious cleansing in the wake of the proclamation of independence.
If Anna Hazare succeeds in vesting Lokpal with the power to cut down corruption, his action could go down in history as the most important such action next to the one of Gandhi himself.
If the effort pays off, the law draft must be exported immediately in countries all over the world, even in Europe, where former Soviet countries and even EU members such as Romania or Bulgaria are being sistematically destroyed by a corruption that keeps their nations trapped into the most despicable hell ever imaginable.
