One thing is certain, the people of the country are becoming more aware about rights, corruption, right to information based on transparency, activism, including online, which can work wonders as it did in Egypt, the Lokpal Bill, education, everything that falls under human rights. There is a mushrooming of activism, civil societies as opposed to the more uncivil ones, we don't want to call them NGOs anymore. They have lost their charisma and have become vapid. We have a novel phenomenon in civil rights societies. Fair enough, everyone has a right to rights, but have things improved?

People are still being killed on the flimsiest issues, there is family murder, community murder, child foeticide, dowry deaths, clashes between communities, horrors of rape  etc. Corruption has besotted us, to the extent that it needs to be legitimized! It is in the corridors of power. Politics has reached a new nadir, there is little in it to augur anything that calls for redemption. There is infraction of rules in everything. Look at the traffic, there is no semblance of law, wrong side driving is the order of the day. So wrong is right and right is wrong. The meek or the compliant are mistaken for weak and submissive creatures. We forget the famous saying the first will be last and the last will be first, uttered by a god man, twenty to twenty one centuries back, in a hoary past, when civilizations transcended materialism. But racial memories are short, we sever historical connections, and suffer from an obdurate amnesia. Yet this country bequeathed to the world at least three religions, and many more found fertile soil here.

It is good to be aware, it is good fighting for human rights, but not by violaing it. If we are whistle blowers let us not be the partisan umpire or referee.

It is amazing how coteries flourish in this country, from offices, to parliament, to colleges and universities. A particular teacher is popular with students, other teachers burn with envy. I was reading a letter to the editor in a local newspaper about a misbehaviour of one teacher to another, in the premises of the university in front of students. University coteries can be as vile as political ones. Let our civil societies take note of how life in academic institutions are vitiated tarnishing the hallowed name of education.

True the internet has worked towards activism, online or offline, but such activism will remain untethered if we do not look at the decreipt condition of  the country in terms of poverty, ubiquitous corruption, affecting every strata of the country and perpetrated by them including people who are NOT Politicians, formally but have the guiles of the latter, people who do not bat an eyelid to take the extra bit, come on I am being euphemistic, I mean bribes! The difference is only in quantity.

What about the street child, who should be studying? Where is the right to education? What about the abysmal condition of school teachers and teacher absenteeism? I think our civil societies have enough work in their hands, other than posting causes on Facebook and getting the much coveted ''like''.