While Arab Spring is all about fighting the dictators, is India fighting for one?

Arab spring is a phenomenon of protests and revolutionary waves across several countries in the Arab world which started in December 2010. These protests were against the dictatorial regimes and to date the rulers have been forced out of power in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen. Civil uprisings have erupted in Bahrain and Syria; major protests have broken out in Algeria, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Morocco and Sudan; and minor protests have occurred in Lebanon, Mauritania, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Djibouti and Western Sahara.

There has been a parallel movement in India, the Anti-Corruption movement spearheaded by Mr. Anna Hazare. There are a lot of similarities between these two movements. Most notably the involvement of masses especially the youth, the use of social networking to mobilize the masses, the frustration & anger of the public at large towards their respective governing bodies. But, there is one fundamental difference between these two movements. While Arab Spring is the fight against the oppressive dictatorial regimes, the anti-corruption movement of India is against the inefficient and corrupt, but democratically elected government.

The ubiquitous corruption in almost every government sector in India is a matter of great concern. Various branches of the government: Judiciary, Executive, Civil Services have utterly failed the nation and its countrymen in terms of controlling the corruption. This has led to a simmering anger and frustration in the public. This anger and frustration demands radical and fast solutions.

Anna Hazare is a Gandhian (with beliefs of Gandhi) who is respected by public and administration alike for his contributions to the nation. He is a non-corrupt leader of the masses, who is regarded as an ideological figure by many. He seems like the leader India has been needing for over six decades. There is only one problem: history. History tells us that for someone to make radical changes as the anger & frustrations of this magnitude demand, one needs to have absolute power. And when you have the absolute power all of your energy goes into maintaining the power and not using it for the good intentions you had. Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini all started in a similar fashion. But when they achieved the power they were seeking to make the changes they wanted, they found themselves using all their power just to maintain it. All men are not corrupt but all men are corruptible and power corrupts the most.

When people live in Democracy, they start taking the freedoms the democracy provides for granted. As evidenced by history, challenging the democratically elected government by one man who millions idealize to be the fixer of all their problems has a great potential to be a threat on those freedoms. This becomes an even bigger threat in a country where a human being can effortlessly attain super-human tags and can be worshiped as someone divine. India has a choice here, to make it a Anna Hazare movement or a real anti-corruption movement? Thomas Jefferson (3rd president of USA) said, "Dissent is the highest form of patriotism", but we should dissent against the inefficient governance and not the existence of government at the first place. Indian public should meet with their representatives and let them know that they will not tolerate corruption anymore, so that in the next elections, corruption is at the centerpiece. Then India should vote for their representatives based on their record on corruption and give a clear message to our house of democracy that the whole of India rejects corruption. This will be democracy in action at its best, the real grass root democracy and not a one man show which can lead to, yes Dictatorship!

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