Over seven lakh calls to a phone number set up to register the number of supporters for an anti-corruption movement. Schoolchildren who have swapped their cricketing heroes for a 78-year-old Gandhian who is fasting unto death. Cries castigating Manmohan Singh's effeteness being greeted by a roar in the swelling crowds. And a mostly-out-of work Uma Bharti scouting for a photo-op but barely managing one. At Jantar Mantar, the site of Anna...

Anna Hazare’s fast puts into focus the government’s attempts to protect politicians India Against Corruption, a group formed by Anna Hazare and other social activists and former judges, has given 17 reasons why the jan lokpal bill drafted by former Supreme Court judge Santosh Hegde, now the Karnataka Lokayukta, is far better than the Bill prepared by the union government. The jan lokpal bill, hailed as a civil society initiative, provides for...

As noted social activist Anna Hazare started his fast-unto-death in the national capital, there is a need to take a look at his draft jan lokpal bill and the government's Lokpal Bill. The government proposes to set up Lokpal to check corruption at high places and salvage its image. But there are stark differences between the government's version of the Lokpal Bill and the civil society's. The government Bill, actually, seems to...

Veteran activist Anna Hazare's fast-unto-death gathered steam on its second day as he pressed for a stronger anti-graft Lok Pal Bill through greater involvement of civil society - a protest he has dubbed as the second Satyagraha. Hazare wants equal representation from civil society in drafting the Lok Pal Bill. The debate on some of the proposals put forward by both Hazare and the government on the contentious bill that has been...

As Anna Hazare’s fast entered its second day today, the first cracks in his coalition surfaced with criticism over provisions of the jan lokpal bill and the method being used by activists to try and push it through. Karnataka Lokayukta Justice Santosh Hegde (retd), part of the group that finalised the activists’ version of the Bill, acknowledged he had “objections” to certain clauses. “I would not like to say much else. While...