Campaigner and his team say proposal to create anti-corruption ombudsman will not stamp out endemic petty bribery
The veteran Indian campaigner Anna Hazare has started a three-day hunger strike while parliament on Tuesday passed the first stage of controversial legislation designed to crack down on corruption.
Hazare is protesting over a government bill that would set up a new anti-corruption ombudsman.
The 74-year-old activist and his team say the proposed law does not go far enough, and will not stamp out the endemic petty bribery which accompanies even the most mundane of dealings with officialdom in India.
The lower house of India's parliament passed the bill on Tuesday but faces several more tests before it becomes law. In the upper house, the ruling coalition is in a minority, so the bill – known as the lokpal bill in Sanskrit, meaning "protector of the people" – is likely to be watered down further.
In August, Hazare led a campaign calling for a powerful independent anti-graft authority and brought tens of thousands on to the streets.
The protests destabilised the ailing administration of Singh, which imprisoned more than 1,000 activists.
Corruption scandals have tainted Singh's second term, with a multibillion dollar telecoms scam landing a former minister and other officials in prison.
The issue of corruption has focused on a range of general grievances and mobilised broad dissatisfaction with a government that, after seven years in power, has failed to solve many of India's deep problems.
Most of Hazare's supporters come from the newly wealthy Indian middle classes. However, turnout at demonstrations in Mumbai and Delhi looked relatively low on Tuesday, prompting some commentators to speak of how the campaign had "lost its connection with the public at large".
But others said Hazare had already achieved many of his aims.
"He wanted to get corruption debated in every nook and corner of the country, and he has succeeded in that already," Pankaj Vohra, political editor of the Hindustan Times, said.
In Delhi, the junior parliamentary affairs minister, V Narayanasamy, moving the legislation in the lower house, said the government's proposal maintained the "fine balance" between the powers of the legislature, the judiciary and the executive branch.
However, Sushma Swaraj, leader of the rightwing Bharatiya Janata party, argued that although the country needed a "strong and effective" anti-corruption watchdog, the government was offering a bill that was "so full of holes and flaws that it has disappointed all of us".
A key area of disagreement is the future role of India's central bureau of investigation, which normally conducts big corruption inquiries. Senior elected officials or bureaucrats would come under the new body's authority.
The BJP, the biggest opposition party, has backed Hazare's protest in part because of the discomfort the activist has caused the government, a coalition led by the Congress party.
Hazare, who claims inspiration from Mahatma Gandhi, has described his protest against corruption as India's "second freedom struggle".
A controversial figure, the former soldier has been accused of links to rightwing Hindu nationalist organisations and of subverting democracy by using street protests to force an elected government to revise proposed legislation.
"I will live and die for India … bigger than the parliament at Delhi is the parliament of the people," he told protesters gathered in Mumbai on Tuesday.
Hazare's health was called into question on Tuesday, just hours after he started his latest fast, with television reports saying that he may need to be hospitalised to treat a high fever and control his blood pressure.
Around India, scores of people were jailed for taking part in "unauthorised" demonstrations in support of Hazare.
More than 50 were detained in the northern city of Chandigarh alone, the Times of India reported.