29 April,2011 08:53 AM IST | | Arindam Chaudhuri
A 73-year-old unassuming man by the name of Kisan Bapat Baburao Hazare got recognition for the first time when he tirelessly fought to develop a model village in the district of Ahmednagar in Maharashtra. As it happens to most in our country, for all the good work, Hazare was also factitiously arrested in 1998 and was released on account of a huge public uproar.
Incidentally, the Government of India also recognised his efforts by bestowing him with the Padma Bhushan. But amongst all his mini revolutions which have advantaged the smaller sections of society, this time Hazare is taking up such an issue which is probably the biggest malaise of our democracy and is a cause which affects every living Indian in some way or the other.
Our governments time and again have been corrupt and demonocratic! But in the present government's reign, the biggest of scams have surfaced. 2010 can safely be called the year of unparalleled and historic corruption.
The year of shame, in which media had a field year and ended up making a lot of people from the civil society very vocal. Amongst them were some people with honest backgrounds and with a spotless record of serving this nation like Kiran Bedi, Arvind Kejriwal and Anna Hazare himself.
It was time for the honest man to show his powers, and if necessary, arm-twist the government a little. They came out on the streets. And Anna took the lead. On a normal day, a man fasting at Jantar Mantar wouldn't bother many. But it was not a normal day. It was after a year of corruption being exposed one after the other.
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Media took up the job well to give enough coverage to the protest and sustain the momentum. The electronic media, rolled programmes and it grabbed eyeballs.
At the end, it's true that Anna led from the front and was ready to put his life at stake. But the fact is that the real support of this leader just did not come from the few men who went to Jantar Mantar. It came from the much criticised newsrooms of India's electronic media, which didn't care about their party alliances but came out all supporting the movement. And anything that makes the elected representatives of India budge is democratic.
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Every time governments across the world have taken their people for a ride, a people's movement has taken shape. And in modern days, it gets huge support by the online media in developed countries. But in India's case, that being ridiculously insignificant, it was the electronic media showing the way all through.
