Hazare sees popularity fade

India’s anti-corruption movement seems to face public apathy

NEW DELHI // The anti-corruption movement that seemed to energise India’s middle class just a few months ago, led by a once-obscure social activist who defied the government with public fasts and mass rallies, is facing a new enemy: apathy.

Anna Hazare’s supporters, some of whom had pledged their lives to his cause, barely bothered to show up at his last month’s fast, which was called off after less than 36 hours. Government officials speak of him derisively.

Mr Hazare’s ultimate goal, legislation to create a powerful anticorruption watchdog organisation, has stalled in parliament. Mr Hazare is in hospital, with doctors insisting on rest. The man who dominated Indian television news for much of the year now seems like an afterthought, raising questions about whether his following was ever as large as it was portrayed. “The movement has run out of steam,” said Sidharth Mishra, a columnist for The Pioneer newspaper who has written extensively about the anti-corruption campaign.

At its August peak, tens of thousands of middle-class protesters turned out in New Delhi to support the former army driver, often wearing paper hats proclaiming “I am Anna”.

But in a country of 1.2 billion people, where protests that large are fairly commonplace, many now wonder if the Hazare phenomenon was more about television than reality.

“The media made it look very big,” Mr Mishra said. “It provided for a lot of discussion on television but nothing beyond that.”

In the end, the movement had only one weapon: an elderly man who portrayed himself as a near-saint, compared himself to India’s greatest hero, Mahatma Gandhi, and threatened to die for his beliefs. For a time, those threats terrified the government, suddenly giving Mr Hazare immense political power.

“His willingness to say he would die for this cause is what was so startling,” said Mukul Kesavan, a professor at Jamia Milla Islamia university in New Delhi. “But how often can a 74-year-old man starve himself to death?”

He believes, though, that the movement will not disappear.

“I think they live to fight another day,” said Mr Kesavan. “It will be interesting to see how they fight.” he said, and whether Hazare’s fasts remain the centre of the campaign.

Many observers were surprised at how quickly the movement faded last month. Mr Hazare promised an enormous rally in Mumbai, with a three-day hunger strike. Instead, the rally was a flop. At times, only a few hundred supporters were at the park where Hazare was fasting, a park that can hold up to 60,000 people.

The watchdog legislation passed Parliament’s lower house, but got stuck in the upper house. The bill is in limbo until Parliament reconvenes in March.