Indian corruption activist, declared fit, returns home

Activist Anna Hazare, 74, was declared fit despite a 12-day hunger strike to force India to create a powerful anti-corruption agency, and returned to his village in Maharashtra, the Hindustan Times reports.

To avoid the public rush and media glare, Hazare made his departure from an emergency gate of the hospital and was seen off by Dr Trehan and his team. The waiting television vans and his supporters did not come to know when he left.

Hazare is likely to stay in his village till the core committee meeting of his team on September 10 and 11, which he convened to chalk out the future strategy on the Lokpal issue. His team is also expected to begin deliberations on electoral reforms.

Meanwhile, pundits continue to debate the impact of the Hazare movement, which has now moved on to pressing for a change that would allow voters to recall serving politicians and reject all candidates standing for elections.

In an excellent and (as usual) entertaining explainer for the New York Times, Indian author Manu Joseph writes:

The way most Indians react to their political leaders, it is as if the politicians had fallen from another world. The fact is, although many members of Parliament do behave as though they have fallen hard on their heads, they have been chosen by the people of India in a genuine mass movement many times larger than the crowds Mr. Hazare has drawn, either in flesh and blood or on social media sites.

The government led by the Indian National Congress party was voted into power in 2009 by more than 150 million people, or nearly 40 percent of the Indians who cast their votes in the general elections that year. The simple fact is that in a democracy, the largest mass movement is democracy itself.

…

Most Indians vote because they are too poor not to. They need a favorable government to subsidize their lives, to provide them with jobs, keep food prices low and build free schools for their children. In election season, many of them are successfully bribed by politicians with money and goods, including color television sets.

They also vote to empower their own castes and communities and to protect themselves from the political supremacy of other castes and communities. In the process they choose to overlook the incompetence, corruption and even criminality of many of their politicians. At least 70 men accused of murder and rape, and several others with criminal charges pending against them, became members of Parliament in 2009. They achieved this not by stealing the ballots or intimidating voters, but through the complicity of the Indian electorate, by legally winning hundreds of thousands of votes.