ANNA HAZARE READY FOR TALKS

ANNA HAZARE READY FOR TALKS

Fasting Indian activist Anna Hazare is willing to talk to "responsible government mediators" about an anti-corruption bill, his aides have said.  They said that Mr Hazare, who has been on a public hunger strike since last Tuesday, has lost more than 5kg.Thousands of supporters are at the Ram Lila ground in Delhi where Mr Hazare is fasting. Hundreds also protested outside the homes of ministers.. Prime minister has called an all-party meeting to discuss the issue. Manmohan Singh has invited all party leaders to meet on Wednesday,24^th August,2011, to find a consensus to deal with the demands of the anti-corruption campaigner. Mr Singh has maintained that his government is open to talks. On Tuesday Mr Hazare's aide Arvind Kejriwal said the activist was now ready to speak to "responsible people" from the government.

"We want a honest and serious dialogue with the government. I am confident that if it happens a solution could emerge in a few hours," he said.He said the talks should be over the differences between the government's anti-corruption bill, and the one that has been drafted by Mr Hazare and his aides. Mr Hazare says the government's proposed anti-corruption bill is weak and wants his own tougher version to be passed by parliament.

Following a hunger strike by Anna Hazare in April, the government agreed to draft the Jan Lokpal (Citizens' Ombudsman) bill. The final bill incorporates 34 of the 40 principles set out by Mr Hazare, but he and other activists have rejected it

Mr Hazare says the ombudsman should have the power to investigate the prime minister and senior judges. The government refuses to include them, saying their authority will be eroded

Mr Hazare wants the ombudsman to be able to investigate MPs accused of taking bribes to vote or ask questions in parliament. The government says such probes should be carried out by MPs

"There have been some informal feelers [from the government] but nothing concrete has emerged," he said. Mr Kejriwal also denied media reports that Mr Hazare was insisting on speaking only to the prime minister or Congress party general secretary Rahul Gandhi. The government has recruited a senior bureaucrat from Maharashtra state, Umesh Chandra Sarangi, to negotiate with Mr Hazare. Separately, hundreds of Mr Hazare's supporters held protests outside the residences of ministers and MPs on Monday. They also held a demonstration in front of a rented house of the prime minister in the north-eastern city of Guwahati. But Mr Hazare's hunger strike has also come in for some criticism, with some public figures saying it threatened democracy."While his means may be Gandhian, Anna Hazare's demands are certainly not," Booker prize-winning novelist and social activist Arundhati Roy wrote in The Hindu newspaper. "The [Hazare] bill is a draconian anti-corruption law in which a panel of carefully chosen people will administer a giant bureaucracy."  Former speaker of the parliament Somnath Chatterjee told the CNN-IBN news channel that Mr Hazare's protest had become a "crusade" against the government and the prime minister.  Activist Harsh Mander wrote in the Hindustan Times newspaper that Mr Hazare and his supporters' "distrust of parliament is hazardous and also unjustified by past experience of free India". The government's response to Mr Hazare's protest has also been criticised by many as heavy-handed. His arrest last Tuesday hours before he was to start his fast sparked mass protests across India. He refused the government offer to release him unless he was permitted to resume the protest which triggered his arrest. He was finally released from Tihar jail on Friday after he agreed to a police offer permitting him to go on hunger strike for 15 days.India has recently been hit by a string of high-profile corruption scandals which critics say is evidence of a pervasive culture of corruption in Mr Singh's administration.A recent survey said corruption in Asia's third largest economy had cost billions of dollars and threatened to derail growth.

                                                      Prof. John Kurakar