That is Anna Hazare

by Air Marshal Raghu Rajan

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I met Anna Hazare, in1998, during a visit as an Air Cmde from DSSC, alongwith my friends, Ravi Burli and Kalaichelvan.We were then in Ahmednagar at the Armd Corps Centre and school. Having arranged a veh to take us to Ralegaon Siddhi, we drove along the Nagar-Pune rd, till a friendly ex-army sub directed us. As we entered RS, the road was lined with trees on either side!

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The road then took a dip and we entered a verdant village, full of greenery. We met Anna rebuilding the temple with other villagers. My idea was to find out how a Naik ASC driver, could have transformed a village, steeped in the making of hooch, to this green village, and had been awarded the Padma Bhushan and the Padma Shri.

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When Anna arrived in his village, everything was in his words,imported. The villagers were busy collecting wood to burn and heat the still,and when they started removing the temple wooden beams, it was the last straw! He had Rs20,000/ as his commuted pension, and he used this to buy bricks to replace the beams and make the walls stronger. The villagers were ashamed at this, and joined hands. He identified water availability as the crux, and with the advice of the Irrigation dept, he made a series of check dams, using chain-link pieces and stones, to hold the small runoffs, till the base, where he built a concrete dam to hold the water during the rains.

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His efforts were so successful,that in one year,the water table rose by 12 ft, and water from then on was available to the village on a perennial basis. He then convinced the villagers to adopt-Nasha Bandhi, Nasha Bandhi, Chara Bandhi (they were to cut the grass and feed it to the cattle, instead of letting them roam at will and denude the hillsides of precious grass), 100% literacy, no caste discrimination and care for the girl child!Water made Ralegaon Siddhi self sufficient in grain, fruits (they started selling Mangoes, Chikoos, Bananas, Papayas etc) and in his words, the GDP of each villager increased to Rs 3000/.

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They built a double storey building for their residential school, were no student would be failed-a revolutionary idea!

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When an SC person was facing financial difficulties, he mustered funds, got the person out of trouble, and even collected funds to arrange for his daughter's marriage!

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When I asked why I did not see a domino effect, he put it to leadership. He told me that he did not marry, as it would have diverted his attention from bringing up the village-it took 20 years of hard toiling effort. He did not accept any financial help from my side, as he said that it would lower him in his eyes-he had refused to accept $ 1000 from a German TV unit for that same reason.

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When we left, I saluted him, as I felt deeply humbled in the presence of a man who had achieved so much, in his life