Tuesday, December 20, 2011

Hazare’s stir ranked among top 10 stories of 2011 – The Pioneer – 9.12.11


Anna Hazare’s anti-corruption movement that saw Indians rally in support has  been named among the  op 10 news stories in the world this year by Time magazine, which listed the Arab Spring and killing of  sama bin Laden as the top attention-grabbing headlines. Time magazine compiled 54 wide-ranging lists  f the top 10 happenings in 2011 in the field of politics, entertainment, business, sports and pop culture. Among the ‘Top 10 WorldNews Stories’ is “Anna Hazare’s Hunger Fasts Rock India” with the magazine  aying that “in a year with more than its share of protests worldwide, perhaps the  most striking act of  issent took place in India, where the country’s ruling coalition took flak for a host of corruption cases  mplicating a number of leading politicians”. Hazare’s “fasts — even the threat of them — triggered mass  emonstrations of support across India’s major cities and heaped pressure on the government to create  n independent ombudsman body capable of investigating the nation’s political elites — even the Prime Minister — and bringing the corrupt to justice”. It said the mass support 74- year old Hazare  ommanded, particularly from India’s burgeoning middle class, is a “sign of the growing frustrations and aspirations of those in the world’s largest democracy”. The top news stories of 2011 were the Arab  pring that spread to a number of countries and the killing of bin Laden in a covert US raid in Abbottabad, besides the famine in the Horn of Africa, fall of longtime Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi and Europe’s  inancial crisis. In a different category, Time magazine said the death of  religious leader Sathya Sai Baba was among the top 10 ‘Religion Stories’ of 2011.  Given that the spiritual leader was one of the “most famous gurus” in India, Baba’s f  u n e r a l   w a s   a t t e n d e d   b y    hundreds of thousands of  people  nd the “pomp wasn’t  surprising”.

No comments:

Post a Comment