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Day 4 of the Indian Protest....

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India protests enter fourth day
The World Today - India protests enter fourth day 19/08/2011

BRENDAN TREMBATH: In India mass anti-corruption rallies are entering their fourth day.

Activist Anna Hazare has become a rallying point against corruption which is rampant in India's emerging economy.

The 74 year old has been officially released from Delhi's Tihar jail where he's been held since Tuesday but he's refused to leave his cell.

India correspondent Richard Lindell reports.

RICHARD LINDELL: The government had hoped the arrest of anti-corruption campaigner Anna Hazare on Tuesday would prevent a mass rally in the capital.

(Sound of protesters)

Instead it's triggered outrage and days of mass demonstrations across the country. Fourteen hundred people were arrested.

While all have now been released, what started as an anti-corruption rally has deepened into a fight for basic democratic rights.

VOX POP: Where is the government? Are they blind? They are not seeing how people are protesting for them. They want it and it is a democracy.

RICHARD LINDELL: Just two months ago police used tear gas to end a hunger strike and anti-corruption rally by yoga guru Baba Ramdev and 20,000 of his followers.

Harsh Mander advises the government on social policy and says the use of police force is a blow to democracy.

HARSH MANDER: What is special about India is the way people keep organising themselves to put pressure on government in many ways. And I think the enrichment of a democracy through forms of dissent and protest need to be preserved.

RICHARD LINDELL: Anna Hazare is a follower of Gandhi and says he'll remain on a hunger strike unless his demands for strong anti-corruption laws are met.

Harsh Mander also campaigns against corruption but he's uncomfortable with the 74 year olds' methods and says Hazare is distorting the Gandhian tradition.

HARSH MANDER: See we have the tradition of Gandhi. But his hunger strikes were largely not to put pressure on government, on the colonial government. It was to put pressure on his own followers.

RICHARD LINDELL: But to many of his followers Hazare is a modern day Gandhi and many are vowing to join his indefinite hunger strike.

VOX POP 2: See, anyways we are going to die. Because of corruption we are going to die. So I think you know this is the better way to die, you know, for our country. Yeah, so we'll die this way rather than die every day.

RICHARD LINDELL: The government has tried negotiation and repression. It's now back on the offensive.

Earlier this week prime minister Manmohan Singh argued that hunger strikes amount to blackmail and undermine the democratic process.

MANMOHAN SINGH: The path that he has chosen to impose his draft of the bill upon parliament is totally misconceived.

RICHARD LINDELL: A Lokpal or ombudsman bill has been debated for 42 years. The latest version is now before a parliamentary committee.

But Anna Hazare says the proposed law is weak as the ombudsman would not have the power to investigate the prime minister or senior judges.

Corruption infects every part of daily life - from the highest levels of government to low level bureaucrats.

And while Anna Hazare is fighting for an ombudsman social policy advisor Harsh Mander says it's the daily graft, the daily bribes for public services that's brought many of India's youth onto the streets.

HARSH MANDER: At a time when you have a large youthful population India is the youngest country in the world, many of whom are educated, many of them who are aspirational, are unwilling to tolerate and to accept this.

BRENDAN TREMBATH: Social policy advisor Harsh Mander ending that report from India correspondent Richard Lindell.

The protest might go on to day5, day6 ....day-Nth....
 

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