Anna Hazare Is Big News

Anna Hazare is big news. Yesterday, on the way to work, I walked through the underground passage to Azad Maidan (Azad Ground). I was accosted by these enthusiastic gentlemen to turn around and go home, or, join them in protest. Quite frankly, I am not a big fan of Anna Hazare. But he is fighting for a good cause and I think he needs our support. So I stood by unable to decide. It was then that this man caught my eye. I clicked his picture. He had a slogan written and bound on his chest with threads. The slogan read, "Please arrest me." 

What? Whoever would like to be arrested? But then I remember Gandhiji had used the same tactics. I was reminded of the "Jai Bharo Andolan" (Fill the Jail Movement). I don't think one man can fight a big establishment and the true onus is upon us citizen to prove that we are honest and not corrupt. We live in certain degrees of dishonesty all our lives. We make promises. We break them. We pay taxes. We hide them. We bribe clerks to get our work done. We deride them for accepting bribes. We give donations to get our children into English-medium schools. We curse the schools. We pay tutors a huge amount to get our children to earn a good percentage of marks to get into professional college. Then we criticise the college for taking bribes. After that we pay to get our children into masters of business administration. There, too, we bad mouth the colleges. If they don't get a good job we again criticise the education system. We are facing systemic corruption in our lives, which will not go away by shouting a few slogans.

So, tell me, please. Who is corrupt? We or them? What's one man when it's a whole way of life that we are against. I took the narrow cracked road cutting across Azad Maidan to my place of work, still undecided. I didn't bother with Anna Hazare, though I know he is fighting for a worthy cause. 

I am @johnwriter on Twitter and John.Matthew on Facebook. I blog here.