The great Indian middle class has finally awakened. A miracle has been achieved. How many times have we wistfully said (or heard someone else say): “If only the people would unite, great things can be achieved” or “This government would be powerless if the people got together and rose up against injustice”, but did we for once believe that this would actually happen, in today’s apathetic times? And yet, it has. This fact speaks for the power and significance of the cause taken up by Anna Hazare.
He has his detractors, and their concerns may be valid, but no one seems to have any alternative solutions to propose. While we have seen demonstrations and rallies of every hue taken out for all sorts of causes (sometimes even without a cause), those have all too often been politically-sponsored and far removed from the genuine, everyday concerns of the common man. The anti-corruption movement, in contrast, addresses a real cause that touches the lives of people across caste, class and community. It has given people a legitimate avenue to express pent-up anger and frustration at the inefficiency and ineffectiveness of the system to which they are bound by law. No wonder they are taking to the streets by the thousands and feeling proud of it.
The online community is equally active. The comments I have read on newspaper websites are imbued with a sincerity and a passion never seen before. Even when communal or class-based divisiveness have been attempted by narrow-minded individuals whose motivations are inexplicable, people of all religions and from all parts of the country have expressed their support in words that could only have come from a sincere heart. It was enough to moisten my eyes today.
Emotions aside, the arguments raised by detractors of the movement have so far only served to increase the strength of its supporters. What alternative do we have really? This movement is not merely another protest – it is strong, affirmative action aimed at a positive result. Corruption is an evil that Indians have more or less learned to live with, like a hapless wife who resigns herself to living with her abusive husband. But the present government has plumbed new depths in corruption, and people seem to realise that they need to make themselves heard now, while they still have enough self-respect left to do so.
The other argument we keep hearing from the detractors and the fence-sitting intellectuals is that Anna’s method is wrong, that he is effectively resorting to blackmail. They seem to forget that in the democracy that is India, this method of making oneself heard is not unprecedented. When people threaten fasts unto death for a separate state, no one cries blackmail. But when one man takes up a genuine cause that receives immediate public support, our intellectuals find it convenient to accuse him of playing to the gallery.
The people who are part of what is known as Team Anna are an exceptionally competent group whose integrity has been above question – the Congress has unwittingly proved this by their misadventure in making ludicrous charges against this group and the way this has backfired on them. All they’ve achieved is to make themselves look like a bunch of desperate, shallow, incompetent fools. Anna’s simplicity, flawless record, and genuine connection with the common man make him the ideal figurehead for a people’s movement towards positive change. Arvind Kejriwal, Kiran Bedi, the Bhushans are all competent individuals who have proved themselves in their respective fields and earned their credentials through honest effort.
The Jan Lokpal Bill may not be the panacea for all ills plaguing the country, but it is one step that we need to take. Questions were also raised more than 64 years ago when another old man asked foreigners to leave his country – he was asked how the country will manage its problems without them. Said the old man, we will have problems like any other country does, but they will be our problems, not yours.
We do have a problem now, countrymen, and it is up to us to solve it.
