What Anna Hazare does when he's not on stage?

NEW DELHI: Well before he comes before the people every morning at the Ramlila Ground, Anna Hazare locks himself in a 10x10 feet makeshift room backstage and writes in meditative silence for over two hours. It is an activity he's particular about.

Though the activist abstains from his routine yoga during fasts, writing is one thing he never compromises on, Suresh Pathare, a Hazare confidant who is from his Ralegan-Siddhi village in Maharashtra, said.

His schedule during his hunger strike, which entered the seventh day on Monday, goes something like this.

The 74-year-old wakes up at 6.30am in a room hidden behind the grand stage. He takes about an hour to get ready. Shaving is a must, "a habit from his military days", says Pathare, who has been with Hazare for about 10 years.

An hour later, he gets down to writing.

What does he write? "About little things, humanity, rights... He puts on paper a lot of internal thoughts," says Pathare, 31.

"Even in Tihar (Jail), he used to write a lot. In jail he used to read newspapers and watch news on TV, but here he just writes."

Pathare added: "In the village, he sometimes doesn't come out of his house for days. No one has the guts to knock on his door.

"If someone has to bring him food, he'll keep it outside and leave. No one can dare to disturb him."

Pathare first met Hazare during a rural development project in the village. He has since become his loyal aide.

It is only at around 10am that Hazare appears before the waiting crowd, which bursts into a prolonged applause on seeing the former soldier who ferried supplies to the frontlines in the Indian Army.

He stays on the stage till 9pm, sometimes sitting in an upright posture and sometimes taking help of the bolster to give his body some stretch.

The gathering keeps a steady chant of slogans hailing him. He faintly smiles. Occasionally that he picks up a mike and addresses the crowds.

A portable toilet is placed next to his makeshift room. Doctors check him every three hours.

At around 10pm, the activist calls it a day and retires to his room.

"Anna likes to sleep at the venue when he's fasting," said Pathare, who has been with Hazare during all his last 10 fasts in the past decade.

However, during the five-day fast at Jantar Mantar here, Hazare used fellow activist Swami Agnivesh's home nearby to get fresh.

Besides the multiple medical check-ups daily, a 24-hour ambulance is parked outside Hazare's night shelter.

Balram Gupta, a doctor from Medanta Medicity, told IANS: "His blood pressure, heart rate, everything is fine. He's a very tolerant man."

Volunteers are parked behind the stage.

Around 300-400 activists are deployed at the ground, which is bigger than a football field, apart from police force.

Hazare's meetings are restricted to close aides and special guests.

Pathare said that Hazare was very particular about time.

"If he has two back-to-back engagements and the first function stretches on a little and he gets late for the second meeting, he gets very angry," he said.

Aswathi Muralitharan, who has been with India Against Corruption (IAC) for two years, reveals another Hazare characteristic.

"He will never sign a document without going through it. He'd check it 100 times and make at least 50 changes. No one can impose anything on him."

Adds Pathare: "He writes, rewrites, improvising again and again, till he's satisfied. He's a perfectionist."

No single solution to tackle problem of corruption: Manmohan

The Prime Minister said creation of Lokpal as an institution would not solve the problem and reiterated that there was no 'magic wand' to remove corruption.


With Team Anna stepping up the heat on the corruption issue, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Monday said the government was open to reasoned debate on the Lokpal Bill but made it clear that there was no single solution to tackle the problem.

“We have introduced the bill in Parliament which is now before the standing committee. There are differences of views on details of the bill,” Dr. Singh said at the golden jubilee function of the Indian Institute of Management here.

“We have made it clear that all concerned individuals should convey their concern on different aspects of the bill to their representatives in Parliament and to the standing committee”, he said.

Dr. Singh said, “We are open to a reasoned debate on all these issues”.

Recalling his Independence Day address, Dr. Singh said, “I said (in my speech) that there is no magic wand that can solve the problem in one stroke. There is no single solution. We need to act on multiple fronts”.

He said that the creation of Lokpal as an institution would help but it would not solve the problem. “It needs to be supported by improvements in the pace and quality of judicial processes”.

He said that corruption has not disappeared from the system and it surfaces in many forms.

“The ‘aam aadmi’ faces corruption when he has to pay a bribe to facilitate ordinary transactions with the government”, the Prime Minister said.

“There is also corruption on a larger scale. Large government contracts can breed corruption when government procedures are inadequate”, he said.

He said that strong procedures were needed to eliminate corruption and the government was serious to remove it.

“It is a mistake to see corruption as a consequence of economic liberalisation and reforms, Dr. Singh said, adding “any area which has actually seen systematic reforms has seen disappearance of corruption.”

'Need to strengthen regulatory institutions'

The Prime Minister said many of the controversies that have arisen in the recent past were due to inadequacies of our regulatory institutions.

“We need to strengthen this regulatory framework, including strengthening their technical capacity”, he said.

The funding of elections and of political parties was another area calling for reforms to reduce the scope for generation of black money, he said.

Stressing the need to thoroughly revamp existing government procedures to reduce discretion and to make the basis of decision making as transparent as possible, the Prime minister said, “I have asked a group of Ministers to look into this issue and I am confident we will come up with systemic solution“.

He urged the IIM students to contribute as managers to the process by suggesting mechanisms that would increase transparency.

Pointing out that many countries have a law to govern government procurement, he said, “We propose to introduce legislation along these lines. The United Nations Commission on International Trade Law has recently modified its earlier model procurement law. We can benefit from this latest model law and internalise international best practices.

“I would urge state governments to do the same”, he said.

He said, “A comprehensive restructuring of government system and procedures along these lines is necessary if we want to clean up the system. Clean it up we must“.

Observing that economic reforms were aimed at unleashing India’s enormous entrepreneurial potential to accelerate the pace of economic development, Dr. Singh said, “Along with the techno-economic issues which we deal with in our planning process, we also need to change our system of governance to eliminate corruption. It will take time and effort but it can be done”

Sarangi meets Hazare to find points of consensus and defuse crisis

Maharashtra Additional Chief Secretary (Home) Umesh Chandra Sarangi met social activist Anna Hazare in New Delhi to find points of consensus and defuse the situation in the face of the overwhelming support for the Jan Lokpal Bill.

Mr. Sarangi, who was called to Delhi on Thursday, met Mr. Hazare twice. He confirmed to a TV channel that he did meet Anna and enquire about his health. He did not elaborate about the talks. Mr. Sarangi, who shares a good rapport with Mr. Hazare, has dealt with him closely over the past decade.

A Congress party source confirmed the meeting and said that Mr. Sarangi was perhaps the best man to talk to Mr. Hazare since he was Principal Secretary to the former Chief Minister, Vilasrao Deshmukh, and had dealt with Mr. Hazare during that period. Prior to that, Mr. Sarangi was Commissioner, Cooperation and Registrar of Cooperative Societies, a subject against which Mr. Hazare has raised many issues of corruption and fraud, forcing the government to take cognisance of his complaints.

Mr. Sarangi was involved in talks with Mr. Hazare, mediating on several issues when he was the former Divisional Commissioner of Pune. Often he would be sent to understand Mr. Hazare's demands and place them before the Chief Minister so that a solution could be found.

A native of Orissa, Mr. Sarangi, with a 30-year career, also served as the former Chairperson of the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development. The Centre was looking for a person who could talk with Mr. Hazare and meet him on a one-on-one basis. There was a growing concern in Maharashtra about his health as well, said a political observer.

There is a feeling in the Congress that Mr. Hazare is a reasonable person and has, in the past, been open to discussion and negotiation. Mr. Sarangi will have to rely on his intricate knowledge about mediating in Mr. Hazare's agitations from the past to understand where some middle ground can be found.

The Congress also feels that the need of the hour is consensus and not confrontation and sending Mr. Sarangi to meet Mr. Hazare is a step in that direction. The Central government has already made a public announcement that any citizen can come before the Parliamentary Standing Committee on the Jan Lokpal Bill and offer suggestions, a move clearly aimed at involving the people.

However, there is a feeling within the Congress that Mr. Hazare is surrounded by a group which seems to be intransigent and even the National Campaign for People's Right to Information had expressed reservations about the methods adopted by Anna and his supporters.

Govt works hard to free Anna Hazare

The stalemate between the UPA government and Team Anna continued even 24 hours after Anna Hazare and his colleagues were formally “released” from Tihar Jail. But the “release” remained on paper as Anna refused to walk out unless the government accepted his demands unconditionally.

“We will only begin negotiating with the government after we get permission for Anna to continue his fast without any conditions,” lawyer Prashant Bhushan told DNA.

Even as the government set up a team of five officers from the Intelligence Bureau to keep a close eye on Hazare’s movements, negotiations between the two sides continued late into the night, with everything hinging on the duration of the fast.

Team Anna wanted Delhi’s Ramlila grounds for 30 days, but the government wanted to keep it down to seven days with a possible extension of an additional week. The government was also firm that the electronic media would not be allowed to cover the agitation live.

And as the day progressed, crowds continued to swell across the national capital. Thousands were camped outside Tihar jail overnight while huge crowds congregated at India Gate and Chhatrasal Stadium. Earlier on Wednesday, director general (prisons) Neeraj Kumar told DNA that as Anna refused to move out of the jail he had been accommodated in the jail’s compound.

Inside Parliament, a furious debate between the government and the opposition raged with prime minister Manmohan Singh standing up to make a statement on Anna’s arrest that was immediately dismissed as “weak and ineffective”, designed to “protect the corrupt”.

Earlier, former IPS officer Kiran Bedi, who played a major role in the negotiations, told DNA that “Annaji has met the senior leadership of the Delhi police and the negotiations are on on the number of days the fast can go on.”

But the decision to arrest Anna and then take him to Tihar seems to have been the biggest strategic blunder that the UPA’s political managers committed. In a battle of perceptions, while the UPA was hell-bent on denying Anna space for the fast, they ended up giving him Tihar jail as a venue on a platter.

With Anna “in jail” the anger among his supporters spread quickly to other states.

“We made huge mistakes,” a senior Congress leader told DNA. “Had we allowed the protests, we would have probably tired them out without granting an inch. The protesters would have left after the initial enthusiasm. But with him in jail, the sympathy factor just galvanised the masses.”

This “blunder”, political and senior home ministry bureaucrats told DNA, was clearly an error of judgment by Union home minister P Chidambaram. There were three major mistakes that Chidambaram seems to have committed, they argued. His refusal to heed police commissioner BK Gupta’s pleas to avoid arresting Anna was the first mistake.

“There was a general consensus among the bureaucracy on this. The idea was to allow Anna to fast while the government hammered out an amicable solution,” a senior official told DNA.

The second mistake was the timing of Anna’s arrest. “It is a standard practice to arrest someone in the early hours and then extern him out of Delhi. But the government dithered and lost precious time and then failed to send him to Pune, as decided.”

The third mistake was to send Anna to seven days judicial custody that brought the crowds running to Tihar jail. People like Arvind Dhillon, (name changed), who is posted in Delhi with the Indian Air Force took leave to join the protests. “I took an off along with a friend from the Indian Navy,” Dhillon told DNA.

Manmohan, Chidambaram give different versions

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Home Minister P. Chidambaram on Tuesday gave two entirely different versions in the Lok Sabha on the reasons that prompted the police to move the magistrate to review his earlier order to remand social activist Anna Hazare and his supporters in seven-day judicial custody.

In his statement to the House, Dr. Singh said the police approached the magistrate on the basis of information ‘received' that Team Anna intended to move the Supreme Court challenging the police orders and the petition was likely to be mentioned before the apex court on Wednesday for urgent hearing.

Responding to the discussion on the Prime Minister's statement, Mr. Chidambaram conceded in response to a specific question by JD(U) leader Sharad Yadav that it was a “political decision” on his advice to the Police Commissioner. “When we heard that Shri Annaji has been remanded in judicial custody, I advised the Delhi Police Commissioner in the evening to go back to the magistrate to get the order reviewed,” Mr. Chidambaram said.

Dr. Singh in his statement said: “Late yesterday [Tuesday] evening, the Delhi Police received information that Shri Anna Hazare intended to move the Supreme Court challenging the orders of the Delhi Police. The Delhi Police also received information that the petition was likely to be mentioned before the Supreme Court on Wednesday, i.e. today, for urgent hearing.

“Since there were reasonable grounds to believe that Shri Anna Hazare had opted to seek legal remedies, the Delhi Police did not apprehend any imminent breach of peace or imminent disturbance to the tranquillity if the arrested persons were released. Hence, the Delhi Police moved the Magistrate concerned to review his earlier order and the Magistrate was pleased to release Shri Anna Hazare and the other arrested persons at about 7 p.m. on Tuesday.”