India's government survived a challenge last month from an unexpected source, a frail 74-year-old former army driver with no formal political power base, who nevertheless brought the powerful politicians to their knees with his campaign against corruption.
The struggle raises troubling questions, mostly for India, but some with wider implications for the world, especially concerning the efficiency and efficacy and uses and abuses of democracy.
The sight of a frail elderly man dressed in simple, though immaculately laundered, homespun clothes wearing a white Gandhi cap holding a protest fast in a field in the center of Delhi against government corruption evoked memories of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, the great Mahatma, and his epic struggle against the colonial British rulers of India.