Responsibility of challenging the status quo

Its  been the year of super hero movies, so why not!
Uncle Ben once said, "With great power comes great responsibility". Oh, how right this old man was!

As India welcomed its thirteenth President in July 2012, Anna Hazare and team were back in New Delhi to salvage renewed support for their crusade against corruption. As team Anna (or Team Kejriwal as it has now turned out to be) resorted to their characteristic rhetorical nonsense, oddly, the populace that had poured onto the streets during earlier protests seemed to have vanished. So, what caused this absenteeism that would have been unfathomable during the protests last year? An inherently indifferent civil society who just got jaded of an unnecessarily loud-mouthed brigade, or a realization of the realities of actually transforming a country beyond their then new-found patriotism, or the inadequacies and arrogance now apparent in the path of the messiah?

At the height of its campaign last year, any and all views against the Anna movement were dismissed as balderdash and downright cynical. If one wasn't part of the battalion stomping across the major cities of the country, it suddenly seemed to reflect an absolving of one's responsibility towards the nation. The maidans of the country became a stage for instant gratification to a civil society that hitherto had nourished the demon of corruption across the echelons of power. The entire country was buoyant with a sense of unprecedented fervor to kill this demon and the Jan Lokpal Bill was hailed and vehemently proposed as the only route to redemption. The media, unsurprisingly, jumped on the bandwagon and fed the public with what it wanted to hear. As propagated continuously by Team Anna, the time for change had arrived, the liberator had risen, the status quo had been challenged!

A year later, amidst a realization of the ineffectiveness of his, almost extortionate, fasting escapades masqueraded under the facade of Gandhian-ism, Anna deals not just with a fractured purpose, but also a fractured team. The lack of consensus, over diving into the very system that they had distastefully abused when they enjoyed blind public support last year, has alienated Anna from his trusted aides. During the course of their directionless revolution, not only has Anna and team succumbed to jokers to garner inconsequential footfall to conform relevance, but have inflicted a greater disservice to this nation by cementing a thick layer of skepticism against any real messiah, if we are ever destined for one.

The circumstances under which thousands flocked toward an 'India Against Corruption' campaign last year made it especially unique. Unique, because this revolution was not born out of strife, was not forced out of despair or was not coerced out of some sort of continued intolerable subjugation. Team Anna had managed to inspire a relatively comfortable, often passive, inherently indifferent section of the Indian civil society to rise. Perhaps, this outpouring was not just inconceivable for an initially dismissive political class, but was also entirely overwhelming for Team Anna to provide direction for. The taste of power that paralyzed an entire Government not only turned poisonous, but, as is most often with clueless leaderships, derailed a cause through the imposition of egoistic and unreasonable expectations. Team Anna went from being entertainers disgracefully abusing members of parliament, to whimsical egoists refusing to participate in dialogue, to impractical strategists laying nonsensical deadlines. Not only did they show utter contempt for the democratic setup of this country (however corrupt it was/is), but destroyed the most sacrosanct of human emotions that fuels any revolution - a sense of Hope!

Team Anna with an almost callous negligence, disregarded this responsibility and destroyed the hope of a nation for a reform that, for once, transcended over the quotidian politics of roti, kapda aur makaan. While it is certainly not polite to doubt the intentions of any of its members (yet), Team Anna has shown a serious lack of judgement and a lust for limelight through sensational, often ballistic, displays of criticism. The exhibition of brash, hotheaded defiance towards the establishment that a power-drunk, immature Team Anna irresponsibly practiced has inspired yogis and cartoon(ist)s, while pushing 'that' inspired civilian society back into a shell of indifference and hopelessness. In a country where hope is seldom inspired, Team Anna has left an entire, and perhaps the most significant, segment of the population dejected, betrayed, skeptical and foolish on introspection.    

PS: This article, in no measure, is meant to defend the imperfections of a democratic society or to deny the urgent need for corrective reparation. It is only meant to advocate the need for more reason and less rhetoric when undertaking the responsibility of inspiring a nation and for a recognition of the paucity in the capabilities of self-proclaimed Gandhians and their corrupt implementations of a powerful tool called Satyagraha.