India Against Corruption - Who Killed The Crusade?

The legacy of the decade-old India Against Corruption campaign is a mixed bag. While it has had a profound impact on the country’s politics, the anti-corruption sentiment ignited by the movement has died down

- Soni Mishra

Smelling jasmine at India’s Tahrir Square—Jantar Mantar. I am going there. Are you?” This was one of the many social media posts that called upon people to join the agitation launched at Delhi’s protest hotspot a decade ago, to demand the enactment of the Jan Lokpal Bill.

Comparisons with the “Arab Spring” were apt, for Jantar Mantar saw a rare flood of people, especially the youth, bringing to mind the series of anti-government protests that had rocked the Middle East in the preceding months.

It became more appropriate as spring had arrived in India’s capital when veteran activist Anna Hazare took the stage at Jantar Mantar, demanding that a law be passed without delay for setting up an anti-corruption ombudsman. It was on April 5, 2011, that Hazare, who was till then not so well-known in Delhi, started his hunger strike. The timing was perfect as the Congress-led ruling dispensation at the Centre was struggling to free itself of numerous allegations of scams. In response to the pressure built up on his government by the civil society, the then prime minister Manmohan Singh had added to the season-inspired description of the situation to say, quoting English poet P.B. Shelley: “If winter comes, can spring be far behind?”

Singh’s response was misplaced since the all-too-brief spring is a season of transition, followed in the northern plains by a punishing summer. And, Anna Andolan, as the IAC movement came to be popularly known as, heralded a summer of discontent.