The seeds of Revolution

I am now nearing the Gurgaon Toll gate. I can see the twenty one gates. A constant stream of cars and vehicles strugge to get in by day and out by night

as the twilight of the evening sinks towards pitch- black darkness.

As my car glides past the Gurgaon toll in the night, I see huge highrises with lights burning on all the floors. I drive through the roads in darkness passing Islands of splendor and light amidst a sea of squalor and darkness.

Gurgaon is a suburb perpetually under construction. Well planned and landscaped gardens, office complexes and gated communities on the one side and hutments and pavement-dwellers on the other. The rich and affluent have their own lawns, walkways and shaded nooks. Just across the road, the poor li

ve in makeshift houses shaped out of the sides of wooden crates.The ge

neral indifference of people to this obvious contradiction is so pathetic.

Gurgaon is arguably a personification of India at the dawn of the new millennium. Extreme wealth flaunted blatantly alongside extreme poverty and a patent apathy of the elected democrtatic government to provide even a modicum of civic amenities or infrastructure. The main highway heading west is spotless. But any road cutting

across the median highway and leading into Industrial or residential Gurgaon is pitted and full of potholes. In many places there are huge holes where there should be a road. The roads are, no doubt, wide, but they are dusty and have very few lights. The malls and office complexes as well as gated communities have their own cement roads leading from the main road. If I am painting a dystopic vision, believe me it is from real life and not from imagination.

The furore and public participation in the movement spawned by Anna Hazare is a direct response to the vague sense of incompleteness and unfulfilled potential. At present, it is only the educated elite and the middle classes that are protesting. But, when the battle cry is taken up by the truly deprived who have nothing to lose but their freedom to die a miserable death, there will be, or should be a revolution of a different kind. Hopefully, Anna should be able to control it and steer it out of extreme violence or extreme compromise.