Anti-corruption rotestsn India I , th e people An anti-graftcrusadersteamrollsa haplessgovernment C'tQUEICHING arefoot n the sludge t JR-amlila tvtaidan, park central oilhi, a middle-agedma n praises he people's love for his guru,Anna Hazare.His eyes shine with zealand hunger. His Iegshave cramp romfasting,or overaweek, beside his 74-year-old eader. So what? We train or.rr odies o go without food or 3odays, he says. o ose lesh s to gainenergy. Mr Hazare, ho hashimself os t6kg, s prone on a platform nearby, ramed by a hugeposterof MahatmaGandhi,whose methods e ha sadopted. bankof televi- sion cameras nd a devotedcrowd, ensof thousands trong, watch him intently, day and night,cheeringand chanting n a sea of mud. Groups f uniformedschoolboys march about, lourishing he Indian tr ico- lour. Young men sport white Gandhi caps with"I am Anna"penned nthe sides. Trade s brisk n Hazarc osettes, ead- bands,-shirts,andbadges. ive upees ro cents) gets hree swipes of paint-saffron, white,green-onyour cheek. Evenpolice x-ray gateshave "corruption-free ndia" scrawledon them. Dozensof citieshave their own marches ndprotests. hecoun- try's thicket of excitablecable-news et- worksreportson nothing else. Mr Hazare's ampaign has urned him from a notedsocial eformernto a nation- alfigure. eha s demandedthat,ytheen d of the month, parliament passa bill his team has written settingup an anti-graft ombudsman, r Lokpal, o oversee very part of government ro m the serving primeminister and Supreme ourtdown, holdingeverygovernment ody account- able or corruption ndpotentiallybecom- ing a powerful new arm of the state. On Augustz4th,after alkswith Mr Ha- zare, he ruling Congress Party called an all-partymeetingat the primeminister's residence,hich agreedo resisthe activ- ist.A day earlier he prime minister,Man- mohanSingh, adbeen ebuffed fterbeg- ging Mr Hazare o call off the f ast or the sakeof his health and a "shared" goal of wiping out conuption. In the end the government may have little option but to give n to the street rot- esters, ut asof August 25th t was playing for time. Although one ageing ut spirited oppositioneader, .K.Advani,ha surged the government o quit and call a fresh election, obody else seemed een.Even Mr Advani's BharatiyaJanat a arty quickly said t did not want earlypolls. Quite how Mr Singh's overnment us - tifies tskeep,however, s growingharder to see. y urns t hasbeen neptand nde- cisive over this affair,while failing t o get anything else done either. Last week it briefly jailed and tried to muzzleMr Ha- zare, which guaranteed im wide publici- ty and sympathy instead.That was fol- lowedby a daftclaim by Congress hat he Americans were egging n the protesters. Rahul Gandhi. who with three others s supposedo runCongress hile hismoth- Also n this section 36 Violencen Karachi 37 NorthKorea'srain-lovingeader 37 Ye tanother rimeministerforJapan 38 Banyan: gainstthe ide for dailyanalysls nd ebaten Asia,isit EconomlsLcom/asi tfgorrunlst:coffl/lhgn/lianyrn,;: .''. "': , .' \ er, Sonia, getsmedicalcareabroad,ha s beendeafeningly ilent, absent rom Delhi an doffering o eadership. Thosedismayedby bothgraftandpoli- ticians'hopelessnessave elt ncreasingly inclined t o fall in behindMr Hazare.Prot- esters moved rom public squareso camp outside he Delhi homes of government ministers and urs, unsettling the occu- pants. On eprotester et ire o himself on August23rd. By mid-weekMr Hazare's upporters claimed hey were wit hin sight of a great triumph. They brushedaside questions aboutparliamentary democracy eingun- derminedby a minority of street rotes- ters.A bunged-up ystemneededa jolt, they retorted. A newly assertiveurban middle class ooks everreadier o push electedeaders an d unelected nes, ik e Mr Singh) o act n their nterest. Cooler heads,however, are wary. To craft a campaign against orruption nto a movementarounda single igure s faintly troubling. Theclaim hat"Anna s ndia,In- di a sAnna"sounds loseo cult-speak.s it happens, he Supreme Court, he audi tor-general, panoplyof civil activists nd a more assertive ress have all heloed t o hold the corrupt b accounthisyear.Sev- eral powerful igures avebeenailed. Other doubts exist about Mr Hazare. Some Muslim eaders re uspicious f the nationalist, and what they seeas at times Hindu-dominated,one an d imagery of his campaign. Low-caste Dalits, who ral- lied separately n Delhi on August z4th, also questionhis stand.They fret that if streetprotesters an, n effect,make one constitutional hange, n attackmight fol- low on a treasured ut controversial on- stitutional provision reserving obs and more or he owest astes. Mostly sceptics ristleat Mr H azare's methods. The most revered Dalit leader, r