Where did all the crowds that thronged Dhaka come from at a short notice as revolutionary fervour swept Bangladesh and ousted its elected prime minister? Where did the mob that vandalised Kolkata's R G Kar Hospital after the horrible rape and murder of a woman doctor emerge from? Indeed, how did protests erupt across India in support of the rape victim and against a similar incident in Maharashtra?
We have witnessed many protests in India and elsewhere. But in recent years, it can be said that social media plays an important role in the eruption and scaling of mass protests with a speed that can be stupefying for administrators. In the old normal, crowds gathered at a slower pace, often from nearby areas. In the new normal scheme of things, the so-called armchair warriors can turn active street protesters when and where required.
This monsoon, the subcontinent has seen both crowd bursts and cloudbursts. I would like to think of the latter as a metaphor for the former. Scientifically speaking, cloudbursts occur after warm air currents impede the normal flow of raindrops, leading to an accumulation of water. In a political sense, pent-up anger or simmering protests are like warm currents that reach a flashpoint when patient, peaceful people are ready to storm the streets - as we witnessed in Dhaka, Kolkata and Thane.
I would include in this category the recent riots in the UK, where far-right mobs ran amok, attacking immigrants or non-whites following a baseless rumour that the perpetrator of a knife attack that killed three young girls was a Muslim immigrant. Like water held back by warm air, pent-up feelings fanned by propaganda and fears can cause crowd bursts.
Cloud experts say climate change and greenhouse gas emissions have altered nature. Similarly, the internet and messenger apps have changed the nature of crowd behaviour.
The 2011 riots in London were linked to incendiary BlackBerry Messenger texts that escaped the attention of authorities. As the media observed, that eruption was a far cry from the Tottenham riots in 1985, when a megaphone-wielding man incited a smaller crowd. Technology has made many things go easily viral, and easily scalable.
Protests can and do resemble flash mobs that used to be in fashion over a decade ago. It’s a group of people that assembles quickly in a public place like a railway station to stage acts of entertainment, satire or artistic expression. The term is not officially used for protests. But the underlying technology is much the same. The internet enables quick assembly of people, whether as protest groups or artiste troupes.
Crowd computing now needs some sophisticated cloud computing. One does not mix metaphors to say that cloud-based software can help law enforcers if only they dig deeper to find patterns before they descend like furious crowdbursts. WhatsApp and other encrypted messengers like Telegram can spread rumours, useful information, hate calls and solidarity messages alike. Authorities must go that extra mile to keep track of social trouble spots.
Both good and bad crowds can emerge out of nowhere. Social media played a big role in the Arab Spring in Egypt and North Africa between 2010 and 2012. One research paper described the Janatha Aragalaya (People's Struggle) in Sri Lanka in 2022 as an "informed revolution" in which the public was educated about important political and legal facts. After the severe earthquake at Bhuj in 2001, Gujaratis from across the planet raised relief material using early Internet sites.
I recall an afternoon in Hyderabad two decades ago, when the founder of an IT company explained to me how his company had helped the UK's Scotland Yard to identify probable crime spots by processing geographical information system data from potential areas of trouble. Data science and cloud computing can make it easier.
Police across the world can and do use digital heatmaps and mathematical models to tackle riots and mob violence, but this needs to be stepped up and become more refined. The recent street protests show there is a long way to go—not to speak of the direction in which things must go.
Writing after the recent Bangladesh protests, a Colombo-based correspondent looked back at the ouster of Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa. She said a lot of hard work was necessary for journalists to get a clear picture as the protests had "no coherent narrative or clear author". So she underlined the importance of "listening" at multiple levels to find clarity. That applies just as much to law enforcers.
What is increasingly apparent is that the combination of social media, rumours, encrypted messengers, propaganda and police high-handedness can combine to form cloudburst-like situations that only need a trigger event to cause a flood of people on the streets. Authorities need to reverse-swing the traditional definition of crowd control, where a teargas shell or police firing could disperse relatively smaller crowds.
Listening to the voices of fears and injustice can provide democratic intelligence that was seemingly lacking in Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Britain and West Bengal. Having an ear to the ground has a whole new meaning when people can assemble like nimbus clouds and rain on imperious rulers. You can't sleep in peace with authoritarian fantasies when the technology is democratic.
(Views are personal)
Madhavan Narayanan (On X @madversity)
Senior journalist