The social activist's call for stringent anti-corruption legislation has found resonance even in the state’s villages.
Social activist Anna Hazare’s call for stringent anti-corruption legislation has found resonance even in the state’s villages. In the past two days, 18 villages in Dakshina Kannada, 22 in Udupi district and 17 in Uttara Kannada saw anti-corruption gatherings. On Thursday, in 15 villages in three districts, meetings were held in support of Hazare and his team.
The mobilization in the villages is quite organised. Anti-corruption committees have been formed, in clusters of two or three villages, to plan the demonstrations and rallies that will be organised around this issue.
At one cluster in Moodbidri hobli, at Deregudde (45 kilometres from Mangalore), two villages, Kellaputhige and Penapila, joined to hold a meeting. Village elders said they would pledge their support to the fight against corruption.
“We have spent our whole life giving a part of our hard-earned money to get work done at different government offices. Why should we be paying, when those men earn more than us anyway?” asks Dejappa Poojary at the protest meet at Kallaputhige village.
Angara Shetty, a villager from Penapila village, said, “Now we know that if anybody asks for money for getting something done at a government office, we could get the Lok Ayukta to trap him.”
Jagadish Adhikari, a former member of the Zilla Panchayat who is also an anti-corruption activist, said, “The babus and politicians better start learning to live within their means. Families of politicians and government officials should tell their bread-winner that ill-gotten money won’t bring happiness. One day, such unaccounted wealth will just consume the officials and politicians, and their families will have to bow their heads in shame.”
Iruvail Yogish Prabhu of Moodbidri, a Gandhian, said, “In the early days of our nationhood, we had leaders like Nehru, Tilak and Vallabh Bhai Patel to guide us and offer us a moral compass. Even when Indira Gandhi or AB Vajpayee led the Union government, corruption had not become as all-pervasive as it has these days.”
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