Anna Hazare and me

Well I keep promising to write my blog regularly with the humorous happenings in my life but this time I write to honor a man who is an inspiration to the entire nation not unlike the original Father of the Nation but only difference is the youth doesn't mind him.

I first came across him along with all my other ninth standard class mates, in our environmental education books. that's right, this esteemed activist which the whole country is currently in awe of was given about fifteen lines of lime light in an environmental course book.

I knew of his humble origins and how he rose from being a truck driver in the army to a man who changed the fate of a wasted village (Ralegon Siddhi). And that is all my text book told me. Yes there was also something about watershed development. It told me nothing about the fact that he had taken people who could barely keep their flesh to their bones due to high level alcoholism, to become voluntary workers building small water check dams and canals e.t.c.

I was never told that he was the one who began the Right to Information movement in Maharashtra which later became the base of the famous Right to Information Act (RTI) which the union Government passed and is seen as one of the greatest examples of peoples right in our country and India's proof of being a democracy.

I was never told that this man, in his relentless fight to give the common man his rights, has done all that our freedom fighters did. It began with reforming the people around him, fighting for the people, being arrested by the 'ruling party' and now the fast unto death. Why should he go through all this when we have already achieved freedom? Well because we have lost our freedom. After almost 64 years of Independence we have been made slaves to the greed of some of those who we choose to call our leaders.

I don't think I need to mention anything about the Lok Pal Bill because all the information is a news channel or a click away but since I titled this piece Anna and I, I should mention where I come in. I remember whining endless times that I wish I was a part of the freedom movement and when I turned the television on two days ago I thought that this was yet another useless protest but I was wrong and I continue to hope I am wrong about that because now I am a part of what I believe is my chance to fight for my country under the leadership of a man I was never told about but has the strength to churn a nation of sufferers into that of survivors.