Mostly true, but not always. In 1971, people boiled and produced the sparks which gave birth to a new nation. But it doesn't happen like that every time, people seething with anger and frustration don't always reach their boiling point, and even if they do they don't always get organized to bring about changes. People boiled in Kanshat, people boiled in Shonir Akhra, and they boiled in Phulbari. But those were no more than flashes in the pan, and fizzled out as quickly as they had flared up.

Perhaps people can be compared to damp firewood that takes time to regain the tinder which catches on fire. The average people have many worries, their daily lives soaked in the sweat of struggles to put food on the table. Their minds are pre-occupied, and their bodies are broken under the crushing burden of drudgery from dawn to dusk. The irony of democracy is that it is a government of, by and for those who sometimes don't give it a damn.

Modern history records three great revolutions -- the French Revolution (1789), the Russian Revolution (1917), and the American Revolution (1776). And what were the outcomes of these revolutions when each of them took countless lives? The Russian Revolution produced a country named the Soviet Union, which no longer exists, and a political philosophy named communism, which has lost its appeal. The French Revolution produced a government that self-destructed five years after it was born, and resulted in the re-establishment of the monarchy it originally overthrew. The American Revolution created a nation, government and political philosophy that still hold sway over the minds of freedom-loving people.

So, why such different outcomes when all three revolutions rode on the waves of mass upheaval? One can find more than one answer to this question. In both the French and Russian revolutions, for example, fiery radicals fought to wrest power from a sovereign ruler, while in the American Revolution conservative property owners, many of them lawyers, fought to retain powers they had previously wielded as self-governing Englishmen.

Equality and fraternity were the rallying forces of the French Revolution, while in Russia the revolution's underlying premise was a "classless" society in which all people were the same, regardless of their abilities or ambitions. In America, the revolutionary "Declaration" said that everyone was "created equal" in terms of opportunity, but from then on their futures would vary, depending on their varied abilities, industriousness and capacity for hard work. Upward mobility was to be encouraged, but not guaranteed, in America. In revolutionary France and Russia, human rights were granted by the state. In America, rights were -- and are -- something individuals are "endowed with" at birth by their "Creator," and, therefore, the state could never take them away.

But, when tested, most of these ideological precepts failed to work in the common man's life. In revolutionary France there was no provision for cultural diversity, but in revolutionary Russia a polyglot of mostly incompatible ethnic groups were forced under one roof through state power. Only in America did culturally diverse peoples willingly jump into a "melting pot."

The purpose of reviewing revolutionary history is not to sing praise for the Americans, but to bring home the point that the form of government which lasted most is the one that had most consideration for the people. In other words, it is not enough for democracy to do politics in the name of people unless profound respect for people is ingrained in that politics. It's a different issue that the Americans don't have respect for other people. But they surely have lot of respect for their own.

So, it is now time to ask, where are the people? If sieges are laid, and barricades are raised, then they are the ones who pay the price. Their lives are disrupted, livelihood is diminished, and they face the humiliation, the hassle, the fear and anxiety of traveling back and forth between work and home through murderous mobs. Where are these people who stand in the sun, run in the rain, get crumbs of the pleasure but slices of the pain? Where are they who miss the bus, get thrown out of the train, hit by stray bullets, hurt by splinters; the silent lambs who are sacrificed on the altar of power by the cult worshippers of political gains?

If democracy is indeed the government of the people, by the people and for the people, then where are the people? If we take those who march in the processions, shout in the political meetings, scream in the demonstrations, those huddled bodies which turn and twist, skip and squirm in the stream of political rallies, are they the people? Those hired hands, rented headcounts and paid voices, who are they but the pawns in the hands of others who want to run the government?

Perhaps they prove the old adage right. It takes a thorn to pick a thorn. Politicians use people against people so that they can be divided and ruled. Perhaps what a Bollywood villain said on the spur of a scripted delivery was laden with prophetic truth. People have a lot in common with water because they can go with the flow, get divided or stand still. They can also reach the boiling point, but seldom produce the sparks which light the fire to change things.

Right now the people are stagnant, angry and anguished, fuming and fretting over their misfortune in the political turmoil which doesn't have any consideration for them. Do they really need to produce the sparks? What they need to do is to produce currents so that they can bring the spate to wash away everything that stands in their way. That includes barricades, politicians, musclemen, anybody and everybody who doesn't believe that people can do what they can.

Mohammad Badrul Ahsan is a banker.