India's anti-graft star Hazare fades after 'flop'

He was the unexpected political star of 2011 in India, but anti-corruption campaigner Anna Hazare has seen his lustre fade after his latest campaign failed to ignite.

The frail 74-year-old led countrywide protests in August against endemic corruption in India, channelling popular anger over a series of high-profile scandals that revealed the rot at the top of Indian politics.

During a 12-day hunger strike, he was feted as a national hero in the media and mobbed by supporters at a tumultuous procession through the capital New Delhi.

The outpouring of emotion caught the government by surprise in one of a number of humiliating incidents during the year for Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who promised to come up with a tough new anti-corruption law.

Hazare, a former army driver who models himself on Indian independence leader Mahatma Gandhi, hoped to repeat the trick earlier this week with a three-day hunger strike in Mumbai as parliament debated the legislation.

Organisers had predicted crowds of at least 40,000, but at times the 2,000 police at the open-air venue in Mumbai appeared to outnumber supporters.

Even before Hazare arrived at the protest site, demonstrators waving black flags stopped his cavalcade, accusing him of having no respect for India's democratic processes.

On Wednesday Hazare called off his fast early, laid low by a virus and stung by the poor public response and the change in sentiment in the media that had previously lionised him.

Tabloid newspaper Mail Today and the Hindustan Times called the protest a "flop show", while the Times of India said he had "retired hurt" and the campaign had ended with a "whimper".

"The Anna Hazare movement seems to have had its 15 minutes of fame," the Mail wrote in an editorial on Wednesday. "The poor turnout at his meetings in Mumbai and New Delhi indicates people are suffering from protest fatigue."

With fame has come scrutiny, as well as a sense of saturation. Hazare has rarely been out of the headlines since the beginning of the year.

Analysts say there are multiple factors at play, reducing the appeal of a man who emerged as a figurehead but whose conservative views and methods lie outside the mainstream of Indian public opinion.

"Earlier they (the Indian people) were in blind awe of Hazare," said Madhuresh Kumar of the National Alliance of People's Movement, a non-profit body working to raise awareness about corruption.

"People have now started looking at the bigger picture."

There is unease about some of his views -- on the flogging of alcoholics or the death penalty for corrupt officials, for example -- as well as his associates in "Team Anna", one of whom was caught up in an expenses scandal.

His image has also changed from a simple, principled campaigner dressed in white cotton clothes and cap who has devoted most of his life to fighting corruption.

He has since been drawn into India's murky politics and engages in frequent slanging matches with the government. Next year he will campaign against the ruling Congress party in state elections.

Sanjay Kumar, of the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, said the Congress and cabinet had wrested back some of the initiative from Hazare by drawing up a new law that would create a new anti-corruption ombudsman.

The Lokpal (Ombudsman) Bill was cleared by the lower house of parliament on Tuesday, but stalled in the upper house where lawmakers failed to endorse it, meaning the government will have to go back to the drawing board.

VG Verghese of the Centre for Policy Research said Hazare had surfed a wave of discontent with the government but had since overstretched.

"He initially tapped into public anger over corruption, unemployment inflation and many other such issues and he could garner symbolic support which went to his head," he told AFP.

Kumar from the National Alliance of People's Movement stressed however that Hazare was far from over as a force in Indian politics.

His core support was in the north of India, in the densely populated swathe of Hindi-speaking states that has New Delhi at its centre. He plans to hold further protests there early next week.

"You take any social movement, it relies on mass base. In the case of Anna, that mass base is in north India," he said, suggesting that the choice of southwestern Mumbai for the protest this week was a mistake.

But supporters of Hazare -- and there remain millions across Indian society -- believe he is still their best hope in the fight against corruption.

"The decision to call off the agitation (on Wednesday) may be unpopular but it's the right step," said Dhawal Shah, a 35-year-old software entrepreneur who divides his time between India and the United States.

"There's no point in fasting just for the heck of it. I'm sure people will re-align and get the right focus," he told AFP.

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