Anger of the masses is on the boil

Unmistakable evidence is piling up pointing to the conclusion that worldwide, established authorities — governments, banking and financial institutions or even familial setups — whose diktats were once accepted as beyond question are coming under the relentless and unforgiving scrutiny of the societies amidst which they are situated.

In olden times, the pent-up fury of the people against injustice and oppression used to take a long time to erupt in the form of bloody revolutions, and there was relative calm once the fury was spent. The 21st Century has already become a marked contrast in defying this trend. If the turmoil engulfing the world in recent years is any guide, it may well come to be called the Century On The Boil.

The reason is simple: There has been an awakening of the people brought on by the spread of education, and the impact of the communications revolution resulting in vast numbers of people of different countries exchanging information and experiences in real time. They are able to come to instant judgment as to what is good or bad for them, and where outfits meant to serve their interests are betraying them — be it because of mismanagement, misconduct or a rapacious mindset.

GRAVE MISTAKE

The world woke up to the fact with the series of upheavals starting from Tunisia, sweeping tsunami-like across Egypt, Yemen, Libya and Syria, and showing all signs of continuing in the near future.

If armchair analysts and those in politics and running governments in the so-called democracies view this phenomenon with a sense of apathy or complacency, they would be committing a grave mistake.

The outrage felt by the persons in the street, the aam aadmis , has little to do with the nature of politics or ideology and a lot with the failure of governance and the callousness of the governing class towards the grievances and sufferings of the people whose servant it is. It looks like it will not take long for the Arab Spring to replicate itself in other countries as well.

The mass upsurge against corruption India has witnessed has given it a taste of the shape of things to come, if the Government does not mend its ways and respond with sensitivity and speed to the people's insistent demand to get black money back and visit with condign, and summary, punishment the corrupt blackguards in high places.

The Government has had plenty of warnings to make it realise that it cannot get away with playing blind man's buff with the people. India being a notional democracy will not save the Government from the people's wrath.

CRY FOR TRUE DEMOCRACY

Britain's ordeal by fire in August is yet another example of a Government — a democracy of thousand years to boot — being taken unawares and paying heavily for taking the people for granted.

As a perceptive commentary put it at the time, the week-long riots that broke out in London and in the interior cities were not about race.

They were “defined by a more disorganised class politics of reaction, propelled by huge inequalities and a perceived injustice and indifference by the state to the fate of those involved…. (in) the backdrop of Britain's ongoing fiscal and sovereign debt crisis and the coalition government's politics of austerity.”

Now we have the siege of Wall Street. It has been described as the crisis of capitalism caused by “greedy capitalists, craven politicians, scheming bankers, dispossessed masses.” It started as the indignado (indignant) movement in Spain, and has spread like forest-fire to more than 900 cities in Europe, Africa, Asia, and North America.

In the US, for instance, a small minority of the rich has cornered almost the entire financial cake, misusing trillions of dollars of bail-outs and tax reliefs, leaving the poor, numbering one in six, to face unemployment and cutbacks.

Everywhere, among the masses as well as the classes below the top crust, the cry is for “true democracy”. The political and governing coteries stand in danger of being swept off if they do not heed the cry soon enough.

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