Protests, uprisings, upheavals, fasts and revolutions marked 2011, the year that we stand to say goodbye to. Most recently, protests hit the streets of Russia on Saturday after disputed polls that granted victory to Vladimir Putin. In India, all indications are that Anna Hazare will resume yet another fast from December 27. All along when India was rising against graft this year, other countries too witnessed anti-establishment agitations. 2011 can easily be called the year of revolutions.

The last time we watched the world erupt on such wide scale was in 1989 (democracy movements) and, before that, 1968 (student movements).

Whereas in India it was either Jantar Mantar or Ramlila Maidan, outside India, Tahrir Square and Wall Street became symbols and sites of protests. These weren’t just another anti-incumbency agitations but peoples’ power at display out to make their ‘otherwise thick skinned’ governments feel their pulse and pain over the issues that concerned them locally.

The causes that led to eruptions were specific to the respective countries. People rose to prove there was a severe trust deficit in all forms of governance across the world or the countries where protests happened. The ‘Arab Spring’ started with police beating an unemployed youth, Mohamed Bouazizi, in Tunisia who set himself on fire. That ignited the spirit leading to sparked protests.

There is a pervasive strong sentiment that people ‘rightly’ resorted to protests to press for their long overdue demands. The year saw a swathe of people (neo-revolutionaries) pointing fingers at the ‘larger than life image’ of several governments in the Arab nations, something unheard of in recent decades.

Whereas protests in Syria had only little success, in Yemen, Tunisia, Libya and Egypt, protests claimed the long entrenched governments which hitherto ruled with an iron fist. The images of Hosni Mubarak being ousted from power in Egypt and of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi begging for life before being shot dead in a sewer pipe where he had taken refuge have gone down the annals of the history. But for the peoples’ power channelised through the protests, these leaders would not have been dethroned in normal circumstances.

The ripples of the Spring Revolution (as these protests are coined) spilled over to engulf other countries of the world like tsunami. Towards the latter half of the year, protests flared up in the United States and European nations against “greedy” capitalists. A blog post urging people to (#)occupy ‘Wall Street’, became the source of inspiration in the US. That followed 951 protests in 82 countries against the ‘greedy’ capitalism. British columnist Johann Hari wrote in The Independent, “Protests raises the political price for governments making bad decisions.” Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek said, “…The beginning is simply that people should become aware that the difficulties we are confronting are not just the difficulties caused by greedy guys in an otherwise good system, but there we have to ask certain questions about the system as such.”

People protested because they thought something was seriously amiss. The Spring Revolution triggered in Arab countries due to years of subjugation and absence of good governance. Economic structures of the western democracies were ripped by the financial wrong doings –bank failures and debt crises. Italy, Spain and Greece are on the brink of financial crisis. In India, Team Anna is gearing up to go full throttle against government’s reluctance on having a strong Lokpal bill.

The new-age protests through social media –Facebook, Twitter and YouTube–became vectors to the uprisings this year by allowing common masses to vent their anger across the world even as they took to streets. Someone posted, “I am so glad that people are doing this” and “It has been long time coming”. They were true. They needed a catalyst to outpour emotions. While the Spring Revolution and the ”Occupy Wall Street” were decentralised and leaderless uprising fuelled mainly from social media, Anna’s movement was more cohesive and organised under one principal ‘Gandhian’ way of fighting for rights. Anna could carry the flag of protests because different governments were non-committal on bringing a robust system to fight against corruption for the last 43 years.

Mark Beissinger, a professor at Princeton University, aptly encapsulates the mood: “The impossible becomes the inevitable.”

However, protests still continue even as people are yet to realise their demands. While we step on the threshold of biding adieu to 2011, we are reminded of Zizek’s words, “Don’t expect miracles in the sense that all of a sudden there will be magical solutions.”

Welcome 2012!