Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
could be a massive public backlash if her seemingly inevitable death happened in India un-
der the questionable care of Delhi doctors.
The day before I was caught in the police charge, thousands of demonstrators had staged
unprecedented mass protests and had reached the gates of Rashtrapati Bhavan, the presid-
ential palace on Raisina Hill that marks the other end of the grand processional Raj Path
from India Gate. Tear gas shells werefired in the afternoon on the Sunday, and trouble-
makers in the crowd managed to advance a few yards along Rajpath, smashing police bar-
ricades, pelting stones and pushing back a paramilitary force several lines deep. Later the
rioters lit bonfires with wooden media observation towers and fencing and smashed metal
barricades. This enlarged the area engulfed with violence, but the incidents were isolated,
and involved just a few dozen of the several thousand people there who were basically
peaceful protestors and sympathetic spectators.
A Frightened Government
The unnecessary water cannon and lathi-charging - and sending Jyoti Pandey to die in
Singapore - were the actions of a frightened government after three years of growing street
protests and unrest. This came around the time that the Arab Spring uprisings were evict-
ing regimes in Tunisia, Egypt and other Middle East (West Asia) countries. There was, of
course, no risk of India's government being unseated, but ministers and officials were be-
coming aware that the complaints had a wider base than the immediate cases of rape and
widespread, endemic male cruelty towards women.
The middle class was beginning to demand a voice that had not been heard before. There
had been mass middle-class demonstrations against corruption in the previous 18 months,
led by the veteran and publicity-savvy social activist, 74-year-old Kisan Baburao 'Anna'
Hazare and Arvind Kejriwal, the politically ambitious anticorruption campaigner who be-
came the chief minister of Delhi in December 2013. These protests also carried a wider
message that the tide was turning, particularly among young people in their 20s and 30s,
against both rampant graft and poor governance. For decades, people had tolerated petty
corruption in their daily lives, paying for minor government services. But in 2011, the
protests erupted over delays in the creation of a Lok Pal, an anti-corruption ombudsman, at
a time when the government was blatantly corrupt to an extent not seen before, condoned
by an apparently 'clean' prime minister and Sonia Gandhi.
The motivation of the crowds was to target an indifferent and inactive government, a
desperately slow legal system that failed to administer justice, and inhumanly violent po-
lice and security forces that mostly saw it as their job to beat, hurt and exploit the weak and
defenceless, including women, instead of protecting them. The social media played a key
