Giri at 1630 hrs on 21st August 2011
Why is it important for a civil rights protest to be carried out only from a certain place and for a certain time period? Will the protest lose its power otherwise? These are some of the questions that have been tormenting me (and I am sure a few others, including the organisers of the protest against corruption and the law-enforcing bodies) since August 16th, when Indian urban middle-class started rallying together for the second time in the last six months, behind Mr Anna Hazare.
And I am not going to fall prey to answering these questions. But what I would like to think about are the following scenarios:
(a) Mr Anna Hazare and the organisers of the India Against Corruption movement celebrated Independence Day by hoisting the tricolour at Indira Point in Kanyakumari (far away from New Delhi) and exhorting all sympathisers to their cause (and supporters of the Jan Lokpal bill) to send exactly Rs. 1/= by cheque or by mobile payment to the Prime Ministers’ Relief Fund and an SMS to them with cheque /mobile payment reference details before end of August. They could have used viral social media networks to spread the message. This could have been the best Gandhian way to let the government and Parliament realize the extent of support their cause has. Oh, by the way, does the PM’s Relief Fund accept mobile payments?
(b) The India against Corruption organisation commissions a reality show on prime TV called “Indians are Not Corrupt”. The reality show could be themed around three converging series of events – the first is series of debates for 13-19 year olds on what aspects on India’s constitutional, legal, judicial and administrative systems (in their current forms) tend to facilitate corruption – the second is a hunt for examples around the country (in each of the debate themes of the first part) wherein there is exemplary evidence of how citizens have not only fought corruption but have followed up with attempts to change systems that facilitated long-entrenched corrupt practices – and the third will be a debate between the leaders of the first stage along with the “hunted” exemplars of non-corrupt individuals on the one side and senior representative spokespersons of India’s current constitutional, legal. Judicial and administrative systems. The finale of the third stage could be in front of an invited audience of all parliamentarians. Sponsorship for the show could come out of the CSR budgets of India’s corporate houses and from all national political parties.
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