Shell-shocked Indian govt braces for anti-graft fast

NEW DELHI: Indian activist Anna Hazare prepared Friday to embark on a two-week fast likely to fuel an explosion of public anger over corruption that has left a shell-shocked government grasping for a response.

Buoyed by an unprecedented wave of mass protests that followed his arrest three days ago, the 74-year-old, who has become a symbol of national dissent, warned he was ready to push his hunger strike to the limit.

"I will not stop fighting," he said in a video message to his supporters late Thursday from the cell in Delhi's Tihar jail that has become his de-facto campaign headquarters since he was taken into police custody.

His campaign, denounced as "totally misconceived" by an increasingly vulnerable-looking Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, demands the re-drafting of a new anti-graft law that Hazare insists is incapable of removing the blight of corruption that pervades all levels of Indian society.

Although officially released, Hazare refused to leave his cell until the authorities lifted restrictions on what he had originally planned as an indefinite "fast unto death."

In what was viewed as an embarrassing climbdown by Singh's Congress Party-led coalition, he has finally been given permission to fast for 15 days in a large open venue in Delhi normally reserved for religious festivals.

But in a fresh challenge to the authorities, Hazare said he was ready to push beyond that restriction as well.

"My health is fine," he said in the video. "I feel I can fast beyond the 15 days permitted by the government. I shall seek permission to fast for another week."

Once seen as little more than an annoying thorn in the side of the establishment, Hazare has transformed into a national figure whose popularity has destabilised a government elected in 2009 with a seemingly unassailable parliamentary majority.

His campaign has tapped into a deep reservoir of discontent -- especially among India's burgeoning middle-class -- with a culture of bribery that requires backhanders to secure everything from business permits to birth certificates.

The government's response, especially the initial arrest of Hazare and thousands of his supporters, was widely viewed as a clumsy knee-jerk reaction from an administration that has lost touch with its electorate.

And the timing could not have been worse for Singh, who is already under fire over a succession of multi-million-dollar corruption scandals that have implicated top officials.

The prime minister's former telecoms minister is currently under trial over a mobile phone licence scam that is thought to have cost the country up to $39 billion in lost revenue.

In an address to parliament on Wednesday, Singh attempted a reasoned argument against Hazare's campaign to amend the anti-corruption bill, saying it undermined the basic tenet of any true democracy that drafting legislation was the "sole prerogative" of parliament.

But that argument was blown away in a maelstrom of protest that saw tens of thousands of people march through the streets of New Delhi the same day with the message that corruption, not Hazare, was the problem Singh needed to address.

"The prime minister misses the point," the Times of India said in an editorial on Friday.

"Expectations in new, youth-driven India are higher than ever before -- on the street, in college campuses, in company boardrooms. The PM must respond, as the reformist he's known to be," the newspaper said.

Copyright AFP (Agence France-Presse), 2011