But they still have all those negative traits of the rich and powerful: greed, corruption, criminality, misogyny, instability, and on, and on.
Indeed, in badly run countries, a powerful anti-corruption agency can aggravate the problem: special powers and privileges can be abused for venal reasons or to settle political scores.
The protesters want speedy adoption of a law to create a powerful anti-corruption ombudsman which would be able to ensure rapid investigation and prosecution of offenders.
Early in September word grew stronger — people who had just met ministers said an internal announcement had been made for mid-October; people who hobnobbed with mandarins in the powerful anti-corruption apparatus said the same.
But one of them, Anna Hazare, an ageing rural activist with a hint of Gandhi about him, has just scored a tremendous victory.He had vowed to fast to death unless the prime minister, Manmohan Singh, agreed to push through parliament a long-stalled plan for a Lokpal, a powerful anti-corruption ombudsman.
Just a few thousand had turned out to watch, a small fraction of the numbers the 74-year-old man had attracted during his earlier fasts in New Delhi to demand the creation of a powerful anti-corruption body called the Lokpal that would primarily roast politicians and bureaucrats.
Since April 2011, when the social reformer Anna Hazare first sat on a roadside in Delhi to demand powerful anti-corruption legislation, the movement against graft has lost its virtuous halo and evolved from a hugely popular citizens' struggle to a mere right-wing political campaign against the Congress.
PS: Mr Hazare has now called off his fast, and said he will campaign against the "nation's traitors" for their inabiity to come up with a powerful anti-corruption law in the upcoming elections in five states early next year.
Led by the Anna Hazare, a respected Gandhian social reformer, a national campaign by a group of social activists to establish a new and powerful anti-corruption body -- the Lok Pal -- has been underway for the past year.
In December, his court threw out an amnesty that shielded hundreds of powerful Pakistanis from corruption prosecutions, including Mr. Zardari and a number of his allies, opening the door for corruption cases against them.
