The Importance of being Pissed Off

"I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!"
- Howard Beale, Network (1976)

The nation is talking about one man today, and his name is not Tendulkar or Dhoni or Rajanikanth or Chetan Bhagat. No, it's a frail 71-year-old from Ahmadnagar in Maharashtra who has captured everyone's imagination by deciding not to eat until a law drafted by five people - eminent citizens, but none of them a legislator (some would say that follows) - is adopted by Parliament. The law isn't perfect: it has a number of loopholes - some real, some invented by its opponents - and therefore requires further discussion and debate before it can be ratified. Neither is it revolutionary: an authority independent of governmental intervention to investigate governmental corruption is the first logical step for any democracy to take. India's usually not particularly kind to people who go on indefinite hunger strikes, as frailer men and women fasting for much longer have been met with contempt (Medha Patkar) or indifference (Irom Sharmila Chanu) from a jaded public. What is it about Anna Hazare, then, that causes a billion people to support him with such vehemence?

The answer, I'm certain, does not lie in the law that he is championing. With all due respect to the protestors, if a poll were to be taken of all the people taking part in the agitation at Jantar Mantar or the various spinoffs in Mumbai, Chennai and other places, I dare not speculate what proportion will know the ins and outs of the proposed Jan Lokpal Bill, or what an ombudsman really does. No, the law is merely a symbol. As Beale said in Sidney Lumet's masterpiece, Network, first, you've got to get mad. India is not taking to the streets because it cares about empowering five Magsaysay Award winners to choose an independent ombudsman; India is on the streets because India is mad. It's mad at the way corruption has been dealt with in this country. It is mad at the politicos, it's mad at the police, it's mad at the judiciary, it's mad at the whole goddamn system. India is mad as hell, and it's not going to take this anymore.

It is a heady sight, indeed, to watch India mad. Like all other communal emotions we feel in this country, the deluge of our collective rage washes away innocent bystanders, just like our collective triumph last Saturday engulfed everyone who bore witness to it. This agitation is the perfect storm: free (or at least, freed) of nuance, iconoclastic and impossible to oppose. Who, after all, is going to dissent against protests against corruption? It is a rage that does not require original thought, only catchphrases and slogans. It is revolution that can be condensed into 140 characters or less. It carries a credo of change from outside the Establishment; a pseudo-anarchy that has always been in vogue with the youth. It's come after a year of scams beset by scams, in which Parliament couldn't function because the two major political parties couldn't decide which ineffectual body to use to investigate a trillion rupee scam that a Cabinet Minister insisted was purely notional. No political party or celebrity or unpopular social activist has been allowed to hijack the protest, much to the delight of the common man. This is our war against corruption, and by God di kasam, we're not going to let them make it about them.

Popular protests have been on my mind a lot recently. This is the third consecutive post about them, what with all that's happened in the Middle East this year. Students in IIIT-Allahabad are demonstrating - albeit with atrocious grammar - against a corrupt director and his acolytes after the tragic death of a student. Yesterday was the second anniversary of our own culinary revolution here at BITS-Goa. There is one unifying regret I have from all these protests (except for the IIIT one, which, obviously, is still on): that the people gave up after the first sniff of victory. They took the smallest of concessions and went home. Egypt rid itself of a dictator, but the military remained in power; BITS-Goa rid itself of a Chief Warden, but students still have very little say in the arbitrary running of this campus.

The powers-that-be rely on this tendency to keep the status quo. The government can just wait for a bit, then pass a watered-down Lokpal Bill that they can get around in the future. The people and the media will be fatigued of all this protesting: there will be an IPL to watch. They'll take what they get and celebrate it as the triumph of the people against the State. The politicians will distract us by debating minutiae. By uniting against corruption, we have finally got the government on the mat. We have an opportunity to change this system that we've loathed for decades. One law isn't going to change that, we need serious structural change. We need to decide what we're for, not just what we're against. For that we need mature public debate - one that does not dismiss alternate views as anti-agitation, and therefore blasphemous - along with all the bargaining chips we hold only if we care about the issue enough to come out on the streets together for it. To give up now, to continue with the status quo would be the most unkindest cut to not only Anna Hazare, but to everybody who's ever hoped for an India we can be proud of.