Anna was riding on virtual media, Ramdev has more support on ground

While Anna Hazare’s protest against corruption had more online support rather than offline, Shri Baba Ramdev’s fast against black money is seeing larger offline support rather than just online or TV box attachment.

This was clearly visible in Gujarat today, where dharna programmes are organized at more than dozen different places, and at every venue, it is joined by good number of people even in terrible heat. This is contrary to Anna Hazare’s agitation which saw very little or token support in two-three cities in Gujarat limiting the number of those present within ten or twelve.

While the main programme of dharna/fast is going on at Ahmedabad’s Town hall footpath, the other places where similar dharna/fast is organized are Vadodara, Surat, Surendranagar, Porbandar, Palanpur, Amreli and Vadodara among others.

While Anna Hazare’s fast was hugely supported through virtual media(TV,SMS and internet), Shri Baba Ramdev’s fast has more ground presence due to well-established organization on ground and also due to larger open participating base thanks to number of supporting organizations.

In Anna Hazare’s case the story was different because he had no organization in place. Moreover he had limited his own supporting base due to various kinds of ‘untouchabilities’ and lacking of openness.