Anna Hazare begins hunger strike in Mumbai

GlobalPost

Indian activist Anna Hazare began a hunger strike in Mumbai Tuesday as the country's parliament began debating an anti-corruption bill.

The bill would create an anti-corruption agency known as the lokpal, but Hazare has said that the bill does not go far enough to fight corruption in the country.

Hazare, 74, is staging a hunger strike to pressure the government to enact his version of the law, the Times of India reported. Hazare wants a strong ombudsman that has the power to fully fight corruption.

This is Hazare's third fast since April.

The New York Times reported that Hazare paid his respects to a Gandhi statue in the Mumbai suburb of Juhu and then went to the Bandra Kurla Complex to hold his public hunger strike.  It stated that the activist did not draw the same kind of crowds in Mumbai today as he did during his August fast in New Delhi.

In Mumbai today, the ground was divided in two, with one section reserved for women and the other for men. The section for men was about half full when I arrived in the early afternoon and proceeded to fill up over the several hours I spent there, with a few thousand protestors. The women’s section, however, had few people and many of them were men and boys.

In August, Hazare succeeded at bringing tens of thousands of supporters on to the streets and focusing the country on the need for an anti-corruption authority, the Guardian reported.

Some of Hazare's supporters said he has already accomplished his goals.

"He wanted to get corruption debated in every nook and corner of the country, and he has succeeded in that already," Pankaj Vohra, the political editor of the Hindustan Times newspaper, told the Guardian.

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