Anna Hazare Essay

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Anna Hazare: How an army truck driver became Gandhian activist | | | | Mohan Sivanand | New Delhi, April 8, 2011 | Updated 13:20 IST | | | UTILITIES | | | | GET SOCIAL | | | Buzz | | Anti-corruption activist Anna Hazare during his fast unto death at Jantar Mantar in New Delhi.Khemkaran, September 1965. An Indian military convoy rumbles towards the fighting zone. Suddenly, two Pakistani Sabre jets drop out of the sky and scream in to attack. As bombs begin exploding around him, Kishan Baburao Hazare, driving a truck full of soldiers, speeds up. But when a splinter grazes his forehead, he ducks below the dashboard and jams on the brakes with his hands. The windscreen shatters and bullets riddle the man sitting next to Hazare. The 25-year-old driver tumbles out of his truck and prays fervently as the two Sabres strafe the convoy again. When they finally disappear, dozens of jawans lie dead. Of the few survivors, only Hazare escapes serious injury. "You saved me, God," Hazare says, over and over again. "But why?"At the village of Ralegaon Siddhi, I discovered why God saved Baburao Hazare. In the 1970s, Ralegaon Siddhi wasn't very different from hundreds of other villages in this arid part of Maharashtra's Ahmadnagar district. With water available only during the monsoons, its farmers could barely grow one crop a year, and 70 percent of the village's 315 families lived in abject poverty. Indeed, Ralegaon Siddhi's most distinctive feature was its 40 illicit distilleries that made the village a popular haunt for drunks and gamblers. Thefts and brawls were commonplace.Since he returned to Ralegaon Siddhi in 1975, Hazare has spearheaded a movement that has changed all this for ever. Today, Ralegaon Siddhi is brisk and prosperous. Signs of rural modernity abound. Its fields are heavy with grain; there's a bank, a boarding school, biogas plants;
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