A simple soldier combats corruption

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In late 1993, the then Army Chief, the late General B.C. Joshi, met Anna Hazare at his village Ralegaon Sidhi (Ahmednagar district) as part of his tour to the Armoured Corps Centre and School (ACC&S), Ahmednagar. Being a chief from the Armoured Corps, and having heard of the Ahmednagar-born Anna Hazare being an ex-

serviceman who had made a name as a social activist, who had reformed and motivated the people of his village, Ralegaon Sidhi, and made it into a model village, General Joshi expressed his desire to meet him during his tour of ACC&S.
Hazare, happy to hear about General Joshi wanting to meet him and see what he had achieved in Ralegaon Sidhi, invited him. This writer, then the Army spokesperson at Delhi, was part of the group of officers accompanying the Army Chief. At Ralegaon Sidhi, General Joshi was welcomed by Hazare to a rousing reception attended by a couple of thousand ex-servicemen, who had converged there from various parts of the district.
A tour of the village and interaction with “Anna”, other villagers and ex-servicemen turned out to be an eye-opener. Quite impressed, General Joshi expressed pride at Hazare’s efforts as a retired soldier and departed after wishing him all the best in his public service pursuits.
“Anna” was born as Kisan Bapat Baburao Hazare January 15, 1940 in Bhingar village in Ahmednagar to Baburao Hazare and Laxmi Bai. Owing to adverse conditions in 1952 their family had to move to their home in Ralegaon Siddhi. He was raised by his childless aunt in Mumbai but could not continue beyond Class 7 and had to quit school midway due to problems.
Reading an appeal to join the Army following the 1962 aggression by China, he applied and got selected for training as a driver in the Army Service Corps. During the India-Pakistan War of 1965, he was the only survivor in an exchange of fire while driving a truck. This incident had a profound impact on him.
After voluntary retirement from the Army in 1975, when Hazare came to Ralegaon Siddhi he found the village reeling under drought, poverty, debt and unemployment. The village had no supply of drinking water, no agriculture, no jobs, but illegal liquor stills were mushrooming all over the place, destroying peoples’ physical health and the social and moral fibre. Hazare renovated a dilapidated temple with his provident fund and gratuity. He realised that religion could be the medium of educating people, making them lead a more constructive life.
Initially, he led a movement to eradicate alcoholism from the village. Anna Hazare mobilised the village youth group to take up the issue of alcoholism. It was very clear that there could be no progress and happiness in the village unless the curse of alcoholism was completely removed from their lives. At a meeting conducted in the temple, the villagers resolved to close down the liquor dens and ban the drinking of alcohol in the village. Since these resolutions were made in the temple, they became in a sense religious commitments. Over 30 liquor brewing units were closed by their owners voluntarily. Those who did not succumb to social pressure were forced to close down their businesses, when the youth group smashed up their liquor dens. The owners could not complain as their business was illegal.
Next, he motivated the residents of the village into “shramdan” (voluntary labour) to build canals, small-scale check-dams and percolation tanks in the nearby hills for watershed development; efforts that solved the problem of scarcity of water in the village that also made irrigation possible. Thanks to this effort, the water table in this area rose considerably higher and the wells and tubewells which were dry began filling up, making it possible to raise three crops a year where only one was possible before. He organised the youth of the village into an organisation named the Tarun Mandal (Youth Association). He helped form the Pani Puravatha Mandals (Water Supply Associations) to ensure proper distribution of water. He also motivated the residents of the village to build a secondary school through voluntary labour.
Another major achievement in Ralegaon Sidhi is that of non-conventional energy. All the streets in the village are lit by solar lights, each with a separate panel. There are four large community biogas plants and one of them is fitted to the community toilet. There is a large windmill used for pumping water. A number of households have their own biogas plants. The village is self-sufficient. Today, Ralegaon Siddhi is being taken as a role model for other villages by the Maharashtra government and by other states too. Massive tree plantation has been undertaken, and hills have been terraced to check erosion. Large canals with ridges on either side have been dug to retain rainwater.
In 1991, Hazare launched the Bhrashtachar Virodhi Jan Aandolan (Peoples’ Movement against Corruption), an popular movement to fight against corruption.
In May 1997, Hazare protested against the alleged malpractices in the purchase of powerlooms by the Vasantrao Naik Bhathya Vimukt Jamati Vikas Manch and the Mahatma Phule Magasvargiya Vikas Mandal. These institutions were directly under the charge of then Maharashtra social welfare minister Babanrao Gholap of the Shiv Sena, since their managing committees were dissolved after the Shiv Sena-BJP government came to power in the state in 1995. Hazare also raised the issue of alleged massive land purchase by Gholap’s wife Shashikala in Nashik between April to September 1996. He forwarded the available documentary evidences in support of his allegations to then Maharashtra governor P.C. Alexander.
On November 4, 1997, Gholap filed a defamation suit against Hazare, accusing him of corruption. He was initially arrested in April 1998 and was released on a personal bond of `5,000.
On September 9, 1998, the Mumbai metropolitan court’s sentence of three months’ imprisonment to Hazare came as a huge shock to all social activists. Later due to public protests, the government of Maharashtra ordered his release from the jail.
In the early 2000s, Anna Hazare led a movement in Maharashtra state, which forced the government of Maharashtra to repeal the earlier weak act and pass a stronger Maharashtra Right to Information Act. This act was later considered as the base document for the Right to Information Act 2005 (RTI), enacted by the Union government. It also ensured that the President of India assented to this new act.
In 2003, the corruption charges were raised by Hazare against four ministers of the Congress-NCP government belonging to the NCP. He started his fast unto death on August 9, 2003 and ended his fast on August 17, 2003 only after then chief minister Sushilkumar Shinde formed a one-man commission, headed by Justice P.B. Sawant (Retd) to probe his charges. The P.B. Sawant Commission report, submitted on February 23, 2005, indicted Suresh Jain, Nawab Malik and Padmasinh Patil and exonerated Vijaykumar Gavit. Suresh Jain and Nawab Malik resigned from the Cabinet in March 2005.
On April 5, 2011, Anna Hazare initiated a movement for passing a stronger anti-corruption Lokpal (Ombudsman) Bill in Parliament and began a fast unto death at Jantar Mantar in Delhi. As a part of this movement, N. Santosh Hegde, a former justice of the Supreme Court of India and Lokayukta of Karnataka, Prashant Bhushan, a senior lawyer in the Supreme Court, along with the members of the India Against Corruption movement, drafted an alternate bill, named the Jan Lokpal Bill (People’s Ombudsman Bill) with more stringent provisions and wider power to the Lokpal (ombudsman) to press for the demand to form a joint committee of the representatives of the government and the civil society to draft a new bill with stronger penal actions and more independence to the Lokpal and Lokayuktas (ombudsmen in the states).
Quite obviously, New Delhi had not reckoned the kind of feeling and following that Anna’s fast unto death would generate. The unprecedented size of crowds from all over India, across all sections of society and age groups and their slogans at Jantar Mantar sent some equally unprecedented strong tremors a kilometre away to Raisina Hill and some of the Lutyen’s bungalows. While it remains to be seen what all callisthenics will be gone through till the bill is passed and how it will be implemented, Anna, the old soldier, has set Independence Day 2011 as the deadline and has assured a nationwide agitation if it is not passed.
Anil Bhat, a retired
Army officer, is a defence and security analyst
based in New Delhi