People power

It began in Tahrir Square in February 2011, when Egypt overthrew Hosni Mubarak. Actually, it began with the Jasmine Revolution in Tunisia in December 2010. Come to think of it, it began in the streets of Indonesia in 1998 that led to Suharto getting kicked out. No, it began with a little something in 1989 called Tiananmen Square (known online as Big Yellow Duck in order to evade Chinese internet censors). Well, to be fair, there was the Yellow Revolution that brought Cory Aquino to power in the Philippines in the early 1980s. And, of course, there was that business with the French Revolution in 1789...

These are not movements organised by political parties. Popular protests often do quickly find political backing, and often are quickly taken over by political parties, but the initial spurt of chaotic energy on the streets comes from ordinary people. It is easy to allege that the December 2012 protests in Delhi were politically motivated, but the profile of people first on the street - students, housewives, grandmothers, family men, professionals - told a different story.

Ever since the Arab Spring shook up complacent regimes all over West Asia, there's been a global flurry of street activity. From the anti-austerity protesters in Greece to the Occupy Wall Street movement in New York City, to the Gezi Park movement in Turkey, to street rioting in Brazil touched off by the cost of bus tickets, to the present political transition in Egypt, people are hitting the asphalt with remarkable regularity. It seems as if a world newly empowered by previously unthinkable communication tools is quickening once more to the power of street protest and the hope of determining their destinies.

Governments may not agree, and may respond with batons and tear gas, but they are forcibly reminded of the energy channelled by lots of angry people, and they are forced to engage - if only to beat everyone's brains out, which is bad for international business. They crack down on popular protest out of basic self-preservation. Crowds are scary. They're unpredictable, have a tendency to swell, tend to harden their stand, and, yes, they can get violent, especially if you provoke them with violence. Governments like to view them as a disruption - all that blocked traffic, all that police infrastructure diverted away from the main focus of daily security - and like to invoke the time-honoured red herrings of "national interest" and "national security" to divert attention from the point being protested, and the inconvenience of having to do something about it.

So they tighten the vise - close off sites of protest, and assume the largely unregulated power to pry into people's communications. Not only does that help avert acts of terrorism, it also keeps the ability to mobilise popular support on a keen electronic leash. That's a big bonus.

If you've tried to have a post-dinner ice cream at India Gate in Delhi in the last few months, you'll find the grand sweep of Rajpath, between Rashtrapati Bhavan and India Gate, chopped up into sections of police barricades that control both vehicular and pedestrian traffic. If you brazen it out and walk past the barricade, the policemen on duty will rush you as if you're about to murder babies. When you ask why you can't walk up to your own national monument without so much as a handbag or a phone on you, they will simply say, "Orders from very high up." (When you exit, however, young lads will approach you and whisper that they can sneak you in for Rs 500, shared with the policemen, between certain times of day. So much for national security.)

Much the same dynamic applies to the internet. There is, for instance, a furious online backlash against a new Scrabble application by Mattel, on Facebook. The replacement game wiped the history of game statistics and global friendships built over years of playing the old game. Players who have communicated their anger and bewilderment to the company have either gotten an anodyne acknowledgement of their message or been blocked from posting on the page. Online groups protesting against a game hardly have the same appeal as people standing against poverty or political oppression, but they do have a potent weapon: initiating real-life boycotts of company products. The more Mattel ignores them, the stronger their resolve.

Popular protest is on steroids. As much as they are beaten down, people taste invigorating shades of success. The world has a long history of not being quiescent - the more governments forget their place, the more people are inspired to remind them of it. Now, however, they have power tools. In the last few years, untrammelled power and money have been put on notice.