I have been in India for the last 3 months, and during that time Occupy Wall Street was occupying everything and in India a series of protests have made the news. Except these protests, how to say it nicely, are really insane:

• Shops have downed their shutters in protest against the government’s decision to allow foreign direct investment (FDI) in multi-brand retail establishments, paving the way for Wal-Mart, Tesco and Carrefour to enter the Indian market
• Indian snake charmer releases cobras in tax office protest (no, really)
• Manipur blockade temporarily lifted by United Naga Council – an ethnic bloc in northeast India blockaded the state of Manipur for 121 days. 121 days! Just yesterday one person died on Wednesday when a bomb exploded in Imphal
• India’s Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar was slapped in the face by a man. The attacker was condemning corruption.
• Anna Hazare undertook a 12-day hunger strike campaigning for the anti-corruption Lokpal bill
• Baba Ramdev fasts against black money and corruption
• A Hazare supporter laid on a bed of nails in support

And these were just the protests reported in the popular press. There are undoubtably many more protests which happen across the subcontinent which aren’t reported in the daily papers.

I challenge you to imagine the situation of a disgruntled man in the West, upset at some injustice, brings a bag of live cobras to the government building and unleash them on hapless bureaucrats.

This why India is amazing – as long as you aren’t in the office when the bag of snakes is unleashed.