New Delhi, Oct. 16 -- One of my childhood memories is travelling through Bombay (now Mumbai) of the 1980s and reading "Chalo Dilli" written in mud red colour on various public walls such as those bordering railway tracks. Sometimes they would say "dhadak morcha" making our hearts race a little as we passed by. It felt like a call to take on power centres, the bull by its horns and all of that. And in keeping with that, morchas or long public marches to public institutions such as Mantralaya were not uncommon.

At some point, different dispensations decided that the inconvenience-their reasons were traffic and chaos but perhaps it was the inconvenience of accountability being scrutinised-of public protests, demonstrations and morchas was m...