Indian Revolution Born in Farce Ends in One NEW DELHI - Last week in Mumbai, an old man accepted defeat. Anna Hazare sat cross-legged on a stage, enduring yet another fast and staring bleakly at a massive public ground that can fit 100,000 people but was not filling up with supporters as he had expected. Just a few thousand had turned out to watch, a small fraction of the numbers the 74-year-old man had attracted during his earlier fasts in New Delhi to demand the creation of a powerful anti-corruption body called the Lokpal that would primarily roast politicians and bureaucrats. The news media, too, had grown tired of his fasts. All this and poor health forced Mr. Hazare to end his demonstration just a day after he had begun his three-day fast. As his nine-month-old revolution floundered, the government presented its Lokpal bill in the upper house of the Parliament, where it was defeated by members citing its various provisions and technicalities. For more than four decades, Parliament members have been trying to create a Lokpal, and they have, not surprisingly, failed, because it would be suicidal for them to succeed. Mr. Hazare has promised to return and fight another day on the streets, which he certainly will do, but with diminished halo and media support. The self-styled revolution of the urban middle class against the corrupt political class elected by the masses appears to be over. It is over not for want of ideals or self-righteous rage, but because of the way it began, last April, as a spectacle on television news channels. The news anchors projected a man with outdated rustic ideas, including flogging as a cure for alcoholism and chopping off limbs as a punishment for corruption, as the new hero of the middle class. The Indian news media generate public interest through two distinct kinds of stories - the reporter's story and the editor's story. In 2005, when Parliament passed the Right to Information Act, which gave any Indian citizen access to most government documents, it was the result of a long and difficult process of influencing public opinion by reformers and persistent reporters. It was never a sexy story. Beat reporters kept pushing the many aspects of the idea of right to information, and the story slowly made its way from the inside pages to the front pages, from the periphery of television reportage to prime-time discussions. It was the reporter's story, and at the end of it, all the public was reasonably well informed about the act, why it was important and how they could use it. The anti-corruption movement, on the other hand, was an editor's story from the very beginning, from the moment Mr. Hazare arrived in New Delhi in April, sat on a wayside with his supporters and threatened to starve to death if the government did not create the Lokpal.