Story:
Anna Hazare Movement in India – Lesson for Leadership

In 1962, despite not meeting the physical requirements, 25-year-old Hazare was selected, as emergency recruited Indian Army. During the Indo-Pakistani War of 1965, Hazare was posted at the Indo-Pak border. On 12 November 1965, he was the only survivor of a convoy when Pakistan launched air attacks on Indian bases. This led him to dwell on the purpose and meaning of life and death. By reading a book of Swami Vivekananda titled "Call to the youth for nation building", he committed to work towards ameliorating the sufferings of the poor. He started to spend his spare time reading the works of Vivekananda, Gandhi, and Vinoba Bhave and took an oath to dedicate his life to the service of humanity, at the age of 38. He took voluntary retirement from the army in 1978.

Initiated in Small Level (Change for a small village):

In 1978 Hazare went to his native village Ralegan Siddhi which was one of the many villages of India plagued by acute poverty, deprivation, a fragile ecosystem, negligence, and hopelessness. He reinforced the normative principles of human development – equity, efficiency, sustainability and made remarkable economic, social and community regeneration in the village without any inputs of industrialization and technology-oriented agriculture.

Haraze identified the key problem among villagers is alcoholism. He understood that without solving the problem of the menace of alcoholism, no effective and sustainable reform would be successful in the village. He organized the youth of the village into a Youth Association organization and motivates them to take up the issue of alcoholism. Since these resolutions were made in the temple, they consider this as religious commitments. The villagers decided to close down the liquor shop and ban alcohol in the village. Over thirty liquor brewing units were closed by their owners voluntarily and other was forced to close down by youth group as the liquor businesses were illegal. In some case, he authorized the harsh punishment of some villagers when they were found to be drunk. He justified the punishment like mother administers bitter medicines to a sick child as she cares for the child. He motivates the youth to give up tobacco, cigarettes, and beedies (unfiltered cigarette). For the resolution, the youth group performed a unique Indian "Holi" ceremony to burn all the tobacco, cigarettes, and beedies from the shops in the village and burnt them in a ‘Holi’ fire.

Gram Panchayat (five constitutional members of a village who are elected for five years by the vote of villagers) is an important democratic institution for collective decision making in the villages of India. Gram Sabha (Village meeting) is a meeting of all adults who live in the area covered by a Gram Panchayat. Hazare used Gram Sabha as a platform for collective decision making process to discuss the issues relating to the welfare of the village. All these decisions were taken in a simple majority consensus. The decision of the Gram Sabha was accepted as final decision. Using the collective decision platform, Hazare made many decisions like bans on alcohol, bans on cutting tree, bans on drugs, etc.

He introduced Grain Bank, with the objective of providing food security to needful farmers during times of drought or crop failure. Rich farmers, or those with surplus grain production, could donate a quintal to the bank. Farmers could borrow the grain when they need but have to return the same amount of grain they borrowed, plus an additional quintal as an interest. This ensured that nobody in the village ever went hungry or had to borrow money to buy grain. This also prevented distress sales of grain at lower prices at harvest time.

Starting with small project, he solved many bigger problems in the village like water scarcity and made irritation possible. He persuaded the villagers to construct a watershed embankment to stop water and allow it to use for agriculture and increase the ground water level. The first embankment was built using volunteer efforts among villagers and later with the help of government funding. Cultivation of water-intensive crops like sugar cane was banned and crops such as pulses, oil-seeds, and certain cash crops with low water requirements were grown. In order to conserve soil and water by checking runoff, contour trenches and gully plugs were constructed along the hill slopes. Grass, shrubs and about 300,000 trees were planted along the hillside of the village. In this movement the irrigation land increased from 70 acres (28 ha) about 2,500 acres (1,000 ha) within 30 years. Government of India followed the development model and implements the concept in other villages of India. Many more project like improvement of education system, removal of untouchability due to cast system in India, collective marriage of the villagers (marriage incur heavy expenses in India and undesirable practice in India but has almost become a social obligation) and many more.

Movement on bigger prospective (State Level) - Anti-corruption protests in Maharashtra

In 1991 Hazare launched the People's Movement against Corruption, a popular movement to fight against corruption in the village, Ralegaon Siddhi against 40 forest officials and timber merchants. This protest resulted in the transfer and suspension of these officials. In May 1997 Hazare protested against alleged malpractices in the purchase of powerlooms by the Governor of Maharashtra. He was arrested in this movement and was released on later. In 2003 Hazare raised corruption charges against four ministers of the government. He started his fast until death on 9 August 2003 and ended his fast on 17 August 2003 after then chief minister formed a one-man commission to probe his charges. The commission report forced the ministered to resign from the cabinet in March 2005.

In the early 2000s Hazare led a movement in Maharashtra state which forced the state government to pass a stronger Maharashtra Right to Information Act as he believe all corruption can end only if there is freedom of information. He also opposed the government’s policy to promote making liquor from food grains in Maharashtra, argued the government that Maharashtra is a food-deficit State and there was shortage of food grains and it is not logical to promote producing liquor from food grains.

Biggest Movement (Country level): Lokpal Bill in country level

In 2011, Hazare initiated a Satyagraha (Fasting for a nobel cause) movement for passing a stronger anti-corruption Lokpal (ombudsman) bill in the Indian Parliament as conceived in the Jan Lokpal Bill (People's Ombudsman Bill). The bill is for a stronger anti-corruption bill with stronger penal actions and more independence to the ombudsmen in the states. He started hunger strike when the demand was rejected by Indian government. The movement attracted attention in the media, millions of supporters inside and outside of India, and also identified one of popular movements in India after independence. People have shown support in Internet social media such as Twitter and Facebook. Online Signature Campaigns like avaaz got more than 10 lakh signatures in just 36 hours. The middle class people and the youth power are participating voluntarily in this movement. The demand is propagated as a nation-wide general demand against corruption. In this movement he was arrested and didn’t compromise with his ideology of nonviolence by protesting against violent movement of his supporters. He became from a well-acclaimed social activist to the most powerful influencer and visionary leader of modern India.