The government, no doubt, has been rightly accused of mishandling the Anna Hazare protest and, worse, of misjudging the public mood. But it is equally true that even the worst critics of the government in Parliament want nothing to do with the central demand of Team Anna: Parliament must consider their ‘Jan Lokpal Bill.' After Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's statement on the emotive subject of Mr. Hazare's arrest — and the...

Until about a year ago, the number of Indians who knew the name of Kisan Baburao Hazare, popularly known as Anna Hazare, ran into a few thousand -- small change in a country of a billion people. The former army driver was known for his peculiar experiments of social reform in a village in Maharashtra, in western India. He had received national awards for his social work. By the end of...

An anticorruption protest leader whose arrest on Tuesday morning reverberated across India, inciting outrage at the government, ended the day with a very different twist: He refused an offer to be released from jail. By late Tuesday, the scene outside Tihar Jail was playing on all-news channels across the country. More than 1,000 supporters waved flags and banners, chanting slogans, as the protest leader, Anna Hazare, rejected a police release order...

Anna Hazare's so-called "second freedom struggle" raises questions, one, about how long the protests can be sustained, and, two, on the merits of the protesters' demands and methods. But before that, Team Anna should be given credit for reviving long-somnolent mass politics in this country, something beyond the Opposition that has been reduced to activism on the idiot box. It shows how much anti-government political space had been abandoned by the...

-The Business Standard   The controversy surrounding the arrest of Anna Hazare and his team has generated more heat than light about the issues at stake. Mr Hazare and his supporters not only insisted that their views be taken on board in drafting a Lok Pal Bill, but also demanded that only their version of the Bill be accepted and, in fact, placed in Parliament by the government. No government can accept such...