44,03,891 steps to change India

Full disclosure Irsquove never walked 10000 steps This number has acquired nearly magical overtones since author Malcolm Gladwell put it out in his 2008 book Outliers Practise 10000 hours to become a worldclass pianist run 10000 miles to win a marathon walk 10000 steps a day for healthTherersquos no science behind 10000 but it has become an urban legend People earn doctorates trying to prove or disprove itWhat do you suppose would happen if you walked more than 10000 steps I know of a certain middleaged man who has been walking 24 km a day since September 7 Things quickly got complicated when I tried to calculate how many steps that would beApparently your stride depends on your gender height and your walking speed Strollers take smaller steps I learned that the gentleman in question was 52 years old and about 170 cm tall He walked pretty fast I heard people had difficulty keeping upAn online kmstosteps calculator told me that he was doing 28667 steps a day taking 3 hours and 42 minutesAlso Read Herersquos to another great yearHow long did he plan to keep walking His goal I learnt was 4403891 steps If he started in say Kanyakumari he would be in Srinagar at the end having walked 3687 kmIf 10000 steps are good for health what are 4403891 steps good for I wonderedThe answer should wake you up When you walk that much you start improving the health of the people around you More and more people start walking with you faster and faster trying to keep up If you walked long enough you could change lives in a whole country the size of IndiaBy now yoursquove realised that Irsquom talking about Rahul Gandhi and his Bharat Jodo Yatra I am generally sceptical of politicians and no longer an admirer of the Congress party But I sat up when a close friend of mine who is regularly depressed by the divisiveness and corruption of daily life in India said that she had felt a surge of hope watching the tidal response to the Bharat Jodo YatraIt would be easy to dismiss Bharat Jodo as a political stunt by a sidelined party but that would do injustice to whatrsquos unfolding before our eyesmdashnothing less than the reincarnation of a young man once dismissed as effete Englishspeaking too westernised and out of touch with Indian realitiesThe bearded Rahul Gandhi of Bharat Jodo is a reassuring equable and attentive fellow a wellinformed thinker thoroughly comfortable in his skin able to engage vast crowds in chatty Hindi by naming and shaming the corrupt corporate realities in our daily livesHe seems somehow to be speaking for lakhs of Indians even in states like Uttar Pradesh where his party has no standingThere is a moment in a YouTube video that says it all coming about 720 minutes into his speech at Red Fort ldquoAll your money from the farmers the workers the roads the airportsmdashwhere does it gordquo he asks the crowd Just then he is distracted by a comment or a gesture from someone in the crowd He turns in that direction and makes a conspiratorial face eyebrows raised halfsmiling Itrsquos a wersquoreinthistogetherdude lookHe answers his own question ldquoThis country belongs to Adani and Ambanirdquo And you might catch yourself thinking This is not a leader hersquos one of usWalks have a way of unseating those in power A lone Chinese man faced down a line of tanks in Tiananmen Square in 1989 one of 100000 or so gathered to peacefully mourn the death of Hu Yaobang an ousted official who had championed reforms in China The world stood up in supportMore than 200000 people walked peacefully to Washington DC in 1963 to hear Martin Luther King describe his dream A year later the US Civil Rights Act was passedIn January 2011 over a million Egyptians marched to Tahrir Square fed up with the corrupt 30year autocracy of Hosni Mubarak They ousted himBut Bharat Jodo is most like Mohandas Gandhirsquos 24day march from Ahmedabad to Dandi to make salt in defiance of British rules As he walked the crowd behind him swelled as it has with Rahul The Salt March triggered the years of civil disobedience that finally drove the British from IndiaIrsquove seen videos of Rahul Gandhi walking Hersquos easy to spot the only man in a summery white tshirt amid a sea of people swaddled thickly in black Itrsquos the heart of northern winter but it seems to be summer around Rahul Therersquos no question but that hersquos the briskest walker there Everyone else is huffing and puffing along It seems Rahul has no problem walking talking and thinking all at the same time And itrsquos looking more and more like a whole country is following close behind himFor a few moments 2023 seems a whole lot brighterYou can reach C Y Gopinath at cygopigmailcomSend your feedback to mailbagmiddaycomThe views expressed in this column are the individualrsquos and donrsquot represent those of the paper