Between 2011 and 2014, the establishment from Cairo to Delhi saw its way of doing things shaken by the work of minor players. The Arab Spring, which triggered regime change and civil war across the Middle East, is said to have begun when a single man set himself on fire in Tunisia.
The man – Mohamed Bouazizi – was a fruit seller. In India, he would be called an Aam Aadmi – which can be translated to Mango Man, Common Man, or in the case of Khushboo Ranka and Vinay Shukla’s latest documentary, ‘An Insignificant Man’.
Bouazizi self-immolated out of frustration with a corrupt system that had bribed him to the point of despair. To the bureaucracy, he was insignificant – but his actions proved he was anything but. Violent revolutions that shook the whole of the Middle East spawned from his sacrifice. But thousands of kilometres away, in India, it also helped spark a non-violent revolution – and the renewed significance of another insignificant man.
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