2,000 strong crowd gathers at Jantar Mantar to support Anna Hazare

NEW DELHI: How much resonance has social activist Anna Hazare's demand for enacting a 'tough' anti-corruption law found resonance in the society? Quite a bit, it looks like.

As the septuagenarian activist's fast entered the third day on Thursday, a melange of people from different age groups and professions came to lend support. Jantar Mantar, the centre of the protest, was chock-a-block with a 2,000-strong crowd. Eight-year-olds to octogenarians waved placards and shouted slogans incessantly. "The crowd has almost doubled from yesterday," said a policeman on duty.

Students from institutes such as Vasant Valley School, Pearl Academy of Fashion, YMCA and Lakshya Academy in Delhi were present in large numbers. And taking a cue from the protests in autocratic Libya and Tunisia, Facebook seems to have had a hand in drawing people to the fast with a page on the social networking site devoted to the protest.

Many came from other parts of India. Pranab Doley and Krishan Takhar, students from Mumbai's Tata Institute of Social Sciences, have been at the protest site since Tuesday. "The corrupt roam free and those fighting graft are behind bars," said Krishan, whose group drew a separate throng of protesters. Yogesh Sharma, 27, a security engineer, was in Bangalore when he heard about the protest, but returned to support the protest after taking leave.

As slogans of Inqalab Zindabad reverberated in the air, it was as if the youth had taken over the protest. Registers at the information centre were manned by students and professionals. In no time, a huge number of people filled details. There were numerous boxes to accept donations for which receipts were handed out.

Many of them could be seen taking periodic food breaks. The stalls near Jantar Mantar did brisk business on Thursday. Most of the attendees had encountered some form of graft earlier. And a few like Takhar have had some experience in demonstrations, having attended rallies demanding Binayek Sen's release. There were also people from other walks of life. Eight-year-old Disha and Nandini, 11, were accompanied by their parents. They carried a placard that said, "We don't want to grow up in a corrupt nation". Bollywood was represented by Madhur Bhandarkar and Raza Murad.

The disabled were there too. Bhupender, 46, from Muzaffarnagar, was on a wheel chair screaming slogans along with thousand others at Jantar Mantar.