Among the more disturbing aspects of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s Obama Moment and its aftermath is our utter collective callousness towards the thousands of peaceful protesters who were beaten and driven out of Ramlila Maidan in the dead of night.

Both the government and the Congress party that leads it are brazening out the decision to swoop on sleeping satyagrahis, rain lathis and teargas shells on them and leave them to fend for themselves across what was for most of them an unfamiliar city. The media remains obsessed with the political colour of Baba Ramdev’s agitation against black money and corruption. The principal opposition, the Bharatiya Janata Party, is too overjoyed to hide its excitement at having landed a political freebie courtesy Baba Ramdev and the prime minister’s rare decisive intervention that has a parallel with Operation Geronimo if only in the time of its implementation and in its element of surprise.

The Congress party’s conduct is easily accounted for. It seems to have reasoned that the general elections are three years away after all and much can change until then. It has also received advice from several quarters that it needs to keep civil society at bay. Most of all, its vested interest in perpetuating the system makes it violently resist any attempt to introduce systemic reform.

While the Congress party initially distanced itself from the government over the wisdom of the midnight raid, it did precious little for the thousands of protesters who became targets of the centre’s wrath. The BJP’s Sushma Swaraj claimed in her first statement after the shocking police action that the number of those injured was far greater than could be made out on television channels. Yet, neither she nor anybody else in her party made an effort to be with the victims of the horror. Too few stories played out in the media.

Just how many supporters were there with Baba Ramdev on Saturday night? The estimates range from 15,000 to no less than a lakh. Baba Ramdev says 5,000 of his supporters are missing. Reporters from the spot, the hospitals and the gurudwaras that sheltered the supporters returned with stories of hundreds of separated families and missing young girls that could not be confirmed and therefore remained unpublished.

So, who will account for the assault on the common men, women and children – the so-called aam aadmi – who had come all the way to Ramlila Maidan merely to exercise their democratic right?

The prime minister argued in his defence that though unfortunate, there was no alternative to his decision of crackdown on the peaceful protest. As the aam aadmi has reiterated in several elections in our democracy, however, there is always an alternative to such arrogant governments.