Kisan Bapat Baburao Hazare (Marathi: किसन बापट बाबुराव हजारे) (born 15 January 1940), popularly known as Anna Hazare (Marathi: अण्णा हजारे), is an Indian social activist who is especially recognized for his contribution to the development of Ralegan Siddhi, a village in Ahmednagar district, Maharashtra, India and his efforts for establishing it as a model village, for which he was awarded the Padma Bhushan by Government of India, in 1992.
Anna Hazare was born in Bhingar village in Ahmednagar district of Maharashtra state in western India to Baburao Hazare and Laxmi Bai, an unskilled labourer family who owned five acres of land. He has two sisters. Due to adverse conditions in 1952 they had to move to their family home in Ralegan Siddhi. He was raised by his childless aunt in Mumbai but could not continue beyond VII standard and had to quit midway due to problems.
Anna Hazare started his career as a driver in the Indian Army. He spent his spare time reading the books of Swami Vivekananda, Mahatma Gandhi and Acharya Vinoba Bhave that inspired him to become a social worker and activist. During the Indo-Pakistani War of 1965, he was the only survivor in a border exchange of fire, while driving a truck. During the mid-1970s he was involved in a road accident while driving.
After voluntary retirement from the army, Hazare came to Ralegan Siddhi village in 1975. Initially, he led a movement to eradicate alcoholism from the village. 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 possibile. He also motivated the residents of the village to build a secondary school in the village through voluntary labour. He helped farmers of more than 70 villages in drought-prone region in the state of Maharashtra since 1975.
Anna Hazare was arrested in April, 1998 during Shiv Sena-BJP rule in Maharashtra when a defamation suit was filed against him by then Maharashtra Social Welfare minister Babanrao Golap of Shiv Sena. This happened after Hazare forwarded documentary evidence to the then Maharashtra Governor P.C. Alexander about the alleged amassing of wealth by Golap who, as per Hazare, was a cinema black ticket tout before he became a minister in the Shiv Sena-BJP alliance government. He alleged corruption to the tune of 6 crore rupees in power loom purchase and the land deals by his wife and lashed out at the saffron alliance by pointing out a similar rags-to-riches story of Shashikant Sutar, another Shiv Sena minister. Hazare was released on bond of Rs 5000. In Oct 1998 he was sentenced to three months imprisonment by Mumbai Metropolitan court in this defamation case. This came as huge shock at that time to all social activists. All political leaders cutting across party lines (except by BJP and Shiv Sena) - in particular V.N. Gadgil, spokesperson of the Congress party and former Member of Parliament (MP) from Pune - came in support of him.
In the early 2000s, Anna Hazare led a movement in Maharastra state, which forced the Government of Maharashtra to repeal the earlier weak Act and pass a stronger Maharashtra Right to Information Act, which 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 2011, Anna Hazare led a movement for passing a stronger anti-corruption Lokpal (ombudsman) bill in the Indian Parliament. 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 as the Jan Lokpal Bill (People's Ombudsman Bill) with more stringent provisions and wider power to the Lokpal (Ombudsman). Hazare has started a fast unto death from 5 April 2011 at Jantar Mantar in Delhi, 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), after his demand was rejected by the Prime Minister of India Manmohan Singh Before commencing his 'fast unto death' he stated, "I will fast until Jan Lokpal Bill is passed".
The movement started due to the resentment because of the serious differences between the draft Lokpal Bill 2010 prepared by the government and the Jan Lokpal Bill prepared by the members of this movement, which has received significant public support:
The movement attracted attention very quickly through various media. It has been reported that thousands of people joined to support Hazare's effort. Almost 150 people are reported to join Hazare in his fast. He said that he would not allow any politician to sit with him in this movement. Politicians like Uma Bharti and Om Prakash Chautala were shooed away by protesters when they came to visit the site where the protest was taking place. A number of social activists including Medha Patkar, Arvind Kejriwal and former IPS officer Kiran Bedi, Jayaprakash Narayan of the Lok Satta have lent their support to Hazare's hunger strike and anti-corruption campaign. This movement has also been joined by many people providing their support in Internet social media such as twitter and facebook. In addition to spiritual leaders Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, Swami Ramdev, Swami Agnivesh and former Indian cricketer Kapil Dev, many celebrities showed their public support through micro-blogging site Twitter. As an outcome of this movement, on 6 April, 2011 Sharad Pawar resigned from the group of ministers formed for reviewing the draft Lokpal bill 2010.
The movement gathered quite a significant amount of support from India's youth visible through the local support and on social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter. There have also been protests in Bangalore and Mumbai.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Hazare
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