It’s perhaps almost unfair that one of India’s greatest modern civil uprisings – the India Against Corruption movement – culminated at the Ramlila Maidan and not Jantar Mantar. For dharnas, or any protests and remonstration, particularly against the government, there’s only one place in the capital – Jantar Mantar. This is the place to visit if you’re getting disillusioned with democracy and freedom of expression, as some seem to be. Not us – we visited Jantar Mantar to get you the scene, now that no OB van or breathless reporter or fasting fakir has been there in a while.

When we arrived at Jantar Mantar (Jantar Mantar,  the observatory-cum-heritage monument, is not even on Jantar Mantar Marg, which is the actual site of protests – it’s on Sansad Marg, a street that forms a right angle with Jantar Mantar Marg) last week to take a look at how the hub of government-related discontent was faring at a time where many people can’t seem to stop gloating about the new government, it was business as usual. The usual motley mix of people – cops, beat reporters, and of course, protesters – doing what you do at Jantar Mantar: wait and wait some more for something to happen. The cops for something that would require their attention, the reporters for that press release and the protesters for that someone important who could address their grievances.

It is a slow day, with only three major protest groups. The group farthest down the street is where we go first. It consists of opium farmers who are demonstrating against the government having cancelled their farming licenses. Representing the Afeem Kisan Samiti, Chittorgarh (Rajasthan), Aunkar Lal Jat is eager to talk to us. He has all the numbers on his fingertips, including the production capacity of Turkey, the country India imports most of its opium from. “Over the last decade, the country’s reduced the number of opium farms to around 30,000 from more than 1 lakh, leaving all our kisan-bhais jobless and hungry while the government continues to pay a foreign country inflated rates for inferior opium”, he laments. Jat is defensive when we ask him if the region has had a history of addiction. “A kisan will never misuse his hard-grown crop; we used to give all of what we grew to the government,” he asserts.

Jat tells us that large-scale cancellation began since Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s time and the Congress government made things worse. “We had lost all hope and submitted to our fate but the only reason we‘ve come here is because of Modi-ji. He had promised during a rally that if he became Prime Minister he’d help us,” says Jat.  He has a Hindi newspaper clipping to prove his point. Jat makes a range of allegations and speculations – that range from hoarding to arms’ trade – regarding why the government is eager to revoke their licenses. They, according to Jat, have been squatting since two months, and would finally go home the next day, which is Diwali. “Mention in your headline that farmers of the country will observe a kaali Diwali this time.”

While Jat and his accomplices are keen to talk about the modus operandi of the opium trade, it is the more mundane questions that perhaps help deconstruct the anatomy of a protest site. “Where do you relieve yourself?” “Where do you bathe?” What do you eat?”

The answers are matter-of-fact. “There’s a public bathroom.” “We haven’t bathed in the last month”. “We cook our own food and eat once a day”.

A few metres away, there is a group with a loudspeaker.  It’s much smaller than the opium farmers’, consisting of three middle-aged women and three teenagers, none of whom seemed to have any idea who or what they were shouting slogans against. The placards, however, suggest that their object of derision is Kailash Satyarthi, India’s newest (and for a change actually Indian) Nobel recipient.

“We came here when we were asked to by our malik,” quips one of the women. When we persist, one of the kids reveals that they live in a slum nearby and were often hired to protest.

Soon though, two middle-aged men: Swami Omji and Mukesh Jain arrive and take charge – of the situation as well as the microphone. They, Jain explains, were the Dharam Rakshak Shree Dara Sena, crusading against Christian terrorism in the country. Jain, who claims to be an IIT- Roorkee graduate, proceeds to announce on the microphone to a clueless crowd that only hanging Arvind Kejriwal, Manish Sisodia and Kiran Bedi at Jantar Mantar could rid the country of its problems. While the first two names are the usual suspects, Jain argues that Bedi has won too many foreign-funded awards and hence is an American agent.

We ask Jain where they get the funding to organise rallies and publish books. (Jain’s written a book “exposing Kejriwal”.) “From here and there, we have Hindu organisations which are sympathetic to us”, says Jain.  The man of the moment, however, is Satyarthi and Jain wants to talk about no one else. “He takes children under his wing and then converts them to Christianity. I have filed a petition for his prize money to be confiscated”, he says.

The last group – the one closest to the observatory – is the smallest. They have a fairly large tent but there are only two people – a middle-aged man and a young girl. They are – or rather were – from a village 20 kilometers off Hisar, Haryana.  They are Dalits who were forced to leave their homes three years ago owing to atrocities by Jats. It’s a long and highly complex story that reveals much about an inconvenient truth that refuses to go away: caste-based oppression. Newslaundry will do a detailed on-ground report on it by the end of this month.

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A bystander who looks a little confused listening to the Dharam Rakshak Shree Dara Sena representatives’ seething address gingerly approaches us after they’re done. “Do they have any proof to back their claims?” he asks in all seriousness. It’s a classic Jantar Mantar moment. There is so much noise here that beyond a point it almost becomes difficult to distinguish fact from fiction. And to make matters worse, everyone waves a bunch of papers à la Arnab Goswami, claiming documentary proof.

Evidence, sense, sanity or not, everyone’s allowed to speak here. You’re protected by the state even as you rail against it.  Every time you lose a little bit of faith in Indian democracy, a visit to Jantar Mantar reinforces all of it and some more.  Jantar Mantar may have lost its great moment to Ramlila Maidan, but it’ll always remain the place you’ll go to when you want to be heard. And there’s a good chance you will be.