The largely urban, middle-class agitation led by “Team Anna” Hazare for the acceptance of a particular version of the Lokpal bill in order to end corruption in India, has raised several questions regarding the scope, legitimacy, credibility and sustainability of such protests. It has also led to some rather hasty comparisons with powerful movements in the past — including, quite unbelievably, India’s freedom struggle, arguably the biggest mass movement in...

Mahesh Kundu paid 2,500 rupees for a driving licence, Rupam Bhatia 5,000 rupees to be admitted to hospital and Vishrant Chandra 6,000 rupees for a marriage certificate. These are the commonplace bribery stories experienced by middle-class Indians who have poured into the streets to say "enough is enough". Corruption in India is as old as the Ramayana, when the evil demon Ravana bribed a guardian of hell to avoid punishment in...

-Agence France-Presse He may dress, talk and fast like his hero Mahatma Gandhi, but critics say anti-graft activist Anna Hazare has only managed to co-opt the style, not the substance, of India's independence icon. The figure of Gandhi looms large - and literally - over Hazare's anti-corruption campaign, with a giant photograph of the apostle of non-violence providing the backdrop to the 74-year-old's public hunger strike. Hazare's speeches are peppered with Gandhian references...

Anna Hazare's agitation in defence of his version of the Lokpal Bill seems to have revived public memories of the 1974-75 Jayaprakash Narayan-led anti-corruption mass agitation, especially among the new generation of technology-driven middle class youth in metropolitan towns of India. But can Anna Hazare's anti-corruption crusade become a benchmark comparable with the historical mass mobilisation movements launched by Gandhi from 1920 to 1947 or the one popularly known as the...

While his means maybe Gandhian, his demands are certainly not. If what we're watching on TV is indeed a revolution, then it has to be one of the more embarrassing and unintelligible ones of recent times. For now, whatever questions you may have about the Jan Lokpal Bill, here are the answers you're likely to get: tick the box — (a) Vande Mataram (b) Bharat Mata ki Jai (c) India is...