Anna is only playing one of the roles, perhaps not even the lead, in the drama unfolding at the maidan, reports VANDITA MISHRA in The Indian Express after spending the first night of the protests at the venue
It’s past midnight on Day 1 of Anna’s fast at Ramlila Maidan, he has retired for the night. Away from his stage, groups of young men dance to their own frenzied beats, waving the Tricolour, Main hoon Anna caps tilting precariously on their sweat-drenched foreheads. Roam around the Maidan throughout the night of Day 1 and the most visible presence is of the young, the urban and the restless.
They have gathered for Anna’s fast, full-throatedly chime Vande Mataram and Inquilab Zindabad and Bharat Mata ki Jai and slogans more specifically targeted: Sonia jiski mummy hai, woh sarkar nikammi hai; Manmohan jiska tau hai, woh sarkar bikau hai; Desh ka yuva jaag gaya, Rahul Gandhi bhaag gaya.
They get soaked in the rain that comes and goes after the ebb of the post-dinner family rush to the Maidan.
More than Anna’s first fast at Jantar Mantar in April, or Ramdev’s show in June, Anna’s second fast appears to have drawn young men who shout their anger in the manner of a first-time outpouring in a public space: “Desh ke gaddaron ko, goli maaro saalon ko” (kill the traitors), while another warns “hamse jo takrayega, choor choor ho jaayega”.
They photograph and videograph themselves compulsively on camera phones held aloft, glimmering in the dark. For many in the crowd, this is indeed a moment to be recorded. For the first time, they are part of something larger. “I am 32 years old and I have not seen a moment like this”, says Sunil who works in a Delhi BPO. “What’s the point of voting?” asks Rahul who works in a telecom company. “You can bring people into power, but there is no right to recall, no retirement age, no qualifications to be a politician”, he says. The only other rally that several young men admit being part of is the anti-reservation stir.
A group of three IT engineers from Delhi, Ravi, Rahul Kumar and Gaurav say they had joined the anti-reservation stir at the capital’s AIIMS. Chandramani Mishra, an engineer, now a “social worker”, who has come in a group of 15 from Gwalior, was coordinator of ‘Youth for Equality’ that spearheaded the anti-quota stir in 2006. “There is a link between that agitation and this campaign” he insists. “Anna wants social welfare and we want progress. We are connected”, he says. About “200-300” members of Youth for Equality have participated in the vigil outside Tihar and at the maidan in the past few days, Mishra says.
For many at the Maidan, anger at the shrinking of opportunity of education and employment appears to have overtaken and relegated concerns of representation and justice.
Dikshit Sharma, who works at a BPO in Delhi, and who bought the Anna T-shirt he is now wearing outside Tihar jail, believes caste-based reservations have lost their need and rationale. “Now I know so many people who are OBC or SC and who are richer than me”, he says. For Dimple, who works in an event management firm, “Everyone should be treated equally. They may have suffered historically but now they can stand on their feet”, she says. Neither Sharma nor Dimple has heard of the NREGA.
The failure of the political class is framed overwhelmingly in terms of the betrayal of the bargain between tax payer and government. “It is our money, you tax us over and over again, and we cannot even ask where the money goes?” asks Ravi, IT engineer who works in Delhi.
Anti-Congress voices are loud in the maidan. Kapil Sibal appears to be the Congress politician the gathering loves to hate the most, but slogans are also raised against Sonia Gandhi, Manmohan Singh, Rahul Gandhi and Manish Tewari.
Few women or older people are to be seen, except when they come as part of entire families of four members or five who flock briefly to the Maidan after the work-day is over.
In the crowd that stays back are students, young professionals, “IAS-aspirants”, call centre-workers who have come straight after their latenight shift, and “techies” with backpacks from Delhi and Gurgaon. From small town Haryana and Rajasthan have come beaten down government servants and weary older men who run small businesses, each bringing with him his own story of corruption and bitter memory of bribes paid.
They raise their voices for TV crews splayed across the maidan. “How can I pay a bribe when my shop was sealed a year ago?” says Pradeep Kumar. “The schools are theirs (the politicians’), buses are theirs, and all the hospitals”, he says.
In contrast, Anna cuts a picturesque figure. “This man (Anna) doesn’t look bikau (someone who can be bought over)”, says Rajinder Dagar, a property dealer in Delhi, who has brought with him computer generated cartoons lampooning the government. “Just look at him” exhorts Garima Sen from Vikaspuri, who describes herself as someone with “four first divisions and yet no job” because, according to her, politicians were too preoccupied with making money to open new colleges. “He has so much of truth and no self-interest... we have told our children he is doosra Gandhi. We want to associate with him”, she says.
It is 6 am on Saturday, and the maidan is slowly coming back to life. Apparently, Anna is still asleep, yet to get back on stage. But the young man in the incongruously formal black suit and mauve shirt with a striped tie standing astride one of the TV platforms won’t wait any longer. He has begun his piece to camera, a prepared script flutters in his hand. His impatience to get started, make the show begin, even before Anna takes the stage, seems apt. After all, Anna is only playing one of the roles, perhaps not even the lead, in the drama unfolding at the maidan.
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