Anna Hazare Biography

Anna Hazare was born to an unskilled Ayurveda Ashram Pharmacy labourer Baburao Hazare and his wife Laxmi Bai in Bhingar village in Ahmednagar district of Maharashtra, India. Anna Hazare has six siblings and it was very hard for his poor parents to raise their children and so, he was raised by his aunt who stayed in Mumbai, but couldn’t continue his schooling beyond seventh standard due to some problems. Hazare had six younger siblings and the family faced significant hardships. He then searched for a job to support to his family. He first ventured into selling flowers at Dadar. He started his own shop soon and brought two of his brothers with him to Bombay. Despite not physically qualified, Anna Hazare joined Indian Army as a driver in 1962 as the recruiting was taking place in an emergency basis. Anna Hazare was at the age of 25 then. He got trained in Aurangabad and started working in 1963. He opted for celibacy and was a great admirer of Swami Vivekananda and his teachings. He is not living in his home instead; he opted to live small room attached to the Sant Yadavbaba temple in his village since 1975. His property, 0.07 hectares land in his village is now used by his brothers. He got two pieces of lands, one from Indian army and another from a villager. Anna Hazare donated these two lands for the village use.

He worked in Sikkim, Bhutan, Jammu-Kashmir, Assam, Mizoram, Leh and Ladakh confronting extremities of weather and also participated in Indo-Pak war in 1965. While working in Khemkaran border, during the Indo-Pak war, Anna Hazare confronted Pakistan’s attack and lost many of his comrades as war martyrs. Anna Hazare chose to resign from army life in 1978, after serving his mother land for 15 long years. He returned to his home village Ralegan Siddhi in Maharashtra after retiring from Indian Army.

Ralegan Siddhi, Anna Hazare’s home village was helplessly suffering from severe adversities like poverty, deprivation and neglect stepped up by a fragile ecosystem and poor environment. The village received only 400 to 500 mm of annual rainfall and there were no weirs to retain rainwater. The tankers that supplied water were the only source of water for the villagers. Lack of water affected agriculture and the people had to depend on the neighbouring villages for food grains.

Hazare, taking inspiration from the water management project of Vilasrao Salunke, implemented it in Ralegan Siddhi, educated the people about the need of water conservation and helped them to implement the project successfully by introducing 48 Nala Bunding works, contour trenches, staggered trenches, gully plugs, meadows development etc. and also achieved forestation of 500 hectares of land. Anna Hazare, along with the villagers constructed five RCC weirs and 16 Gabion Weirs. He implemented water shed development program in Ralegan to increase the ground water level. Thus Anna Hazare led the village from front to fight the adversities and made it a model village. Due to his constant and deliberate efforts along with the youngsters Anna Hazare managed to uproot alcoholism from his village and formed and Tarun Mandal or Youth Association for this purpose. As a solution for the food insecurity, Anna Hazare started a Grain Bank in his village in the year 1980, which was aimed to provide grain to needy farmers who lost their yield through drought or crop failure. The grains were collected from rich farmers and lent to poor farmers who, on getting a profit should return it to the bank. As a secondary source of income, Anna Hazare promoted milk production in his village. He promoted cross-breed cattle that yield more milk and also formed a milk society to co-ordinate the collection and sales of the milk. Under the leadership of Anna Hazare, the village which produced only about 100 litres of milk before 1975 started producing more than 2,500 litres of milk per day. With the surplus of the funds the society purchased a truck and thresher. The mini-truck is used to take milk from the village and bring vegetables and other things to the village directly from the market, thus avoiding the interference of intermediates. The thresher is rented out during harvest season.

Anna Hazare has contributed to the education of the villagers as well. He, by joining hands with the youngsters of the village, founded a pre-school in 1976 and also a high-school in 1979. He formed a charitable trust called Sant Yadavbaba Shikshan Prasarak Mandal and this trust and it received a grant of Rs.400000 from National Rural Education Programme of the Government.

Anna Hazare has also contributed to the elimination of untouchability which was a common practice among the villagers. He also advocated for the implementation of Gram Sabhas as the chief democratic institution for collective decision making regarding the development projects of villages. Though the government was not in favour of this, they had to enact it due to the public pressure generated by Anna Hazare through his campaigns done between 1998 and 2006 for amending the Gram Sabha Act.

Disturbed by the growing corruption in India, anna Hazare launched an Anti-Curreption Movenent called Bhrashtachar Virodhi Jan Aandolan (BVJA) in the year 1991. Anna rightly thought that Development is marred by corruption and started a new venture in 1991 called Bhrashtachar Virodhi Jan Aandolan (BVJA) or public movement against corruption. In the same year he launched another protest against the collusion between some forest officials and timber merchants and as an impact of this protest, 40 officers were suspended.

Anna Hazare protested against the corruption regarding the purchase of power looms by the Vasantrao Naik Bhathya Vimukt Jamati Vikas Manch and also by the Mahatma Phule Magasvargiya Vikas Mandal, which were directly controlled by Babanrao Gholap, the Social Welfare minister in Maharashtra government. His complaints submitted with well-furnished documentary evidence, were forwarded to then Maharashtra Governor P. C. Alexander. As a result of the defamation suit filed by the minister, Anna Hazare was sentenced to serve three-months of imprisonment but, was released soon owing to strong public protest. But this didn’t stop Anna Hazare from protesting against Corruption. He drafted a letter to then Chief Minister Manohar Joshi demanding Gholap’s removal and as a result of all these protest, Gholap resigned from his role as a minister of Social Welfare in 1999.

In 2003, Anna Hazare raised some corruption allegations against against four NCP ministers in the Congress-NCP government. He started to fast unto death on 9th of August 2003 and ended it on 17th of August 2003 as then chief minister Sushil Kumar Shinde formed a commission headed by the retired justice P. B. Sawant to probe his allegations. As per the P. B. Sawant commission report submitted on 23rd February 2005 three ministers namely Sureshdada Jain, Nawab Malik, and Padmasinh Patil were found guilty while the forth minister, Vijaykumar Gavit was freed from charges. This led to the resignation of Suresh Jain and Nawab Malik resigned from the cabinet 2005.

In the year 2000, Anna Hazare launched a Movement that forced the Maharashtra state government to enact the Right to Information Act. Based on this act, the Union government also enacted the same in the year 2005. Anna Hazare fought for enactment of another Act “Regulation of Transfers and Prevention of Delay in Discharge of Official Duties Act” that ensures a government servant clears a file within a specified time and also that transfers must take place only after three years.

Owing to the massive corruption allegations against the Ministers in the Union Ministry of India, Anna Hazare demanded for a strong Lokpal Bill but, his demands were rejected by the Prime Minister Man Mohan Singh. He then launched a Satyagraha movement on April 2011 at Delhi for passing a stronger anti-corruption Lokpal (ombudsman) bill in the Indian Parliament, based on the Jan Lokpal Bill (People's Ombudsman Bill) drafted by N. Santosh Hegde (former justice of the Supreme Court of India and Lokayukta of Karnataka), Prashant Bhushan (a senior lawyer in the Supreme Court) and Arvind Kejriwal (social activist) along with members of the “India Against Corruption” movement. This draft bill incorporated more stringent and wider power to the Lokpal (Ombudsman) than the draft Lokpal bill prepared by the government in 2010. His fast grabbed the attention of the whole country and media. People from all over the country supported Anna Hazare in this movement. He ended his hunger strike on 8th of April 2011 as the Government of India accepted all demands of the movement.

He has got many awards whose collective value is above 25 lakhs. He had donated the entire amount to Swami Vivekananda Kritadnyata Nidhi and is being utilize to carry out Mass marriages every year.

Indira Priyadarshini Vrikshamitra Award from the Government of India, 1986

Krishi Bhushana Award from the Government of Maharashtra, 1989

Padmashri Award from the Government of India, 1990

Padmabhushan Award from the Government of India, 1992

Shiromani Award, 1996

MAhaver Award 1997

Care international Award from a relief agency called CARE, 1998

Integrity Award from Transparency International, 2003

Honorary Doctorate from Gandhigram Rural University, 2005

Jit Gill Memorial Award for Outstanding Public Service from World Bank, 2008

1940: Born in Bhingar, Maharashtra

1962: Joined Indian Army As a Driver

1965: Participated in Indo-Pak War

1976: Anna Hazare along with the Younsters of Ralegan Village started a per-school in the village

1978: Resigned from Army

1979: They started a high-school

1979: Sant Yadavbaba Shikshan Prasarak Mandal Cahritabl etrust was registered in Ralegan

1980: He started A grain bank in his village

1991: Launched Bhrashtachar Virodhi Jan Aandolan (BVJA, an Anti-curreption movement.

2003: Protest against corruption of NCP ministers