Michael Neri Development Days Can Anna Hazare compete with the smartphone? By Michael Neri August 25, 2011. The story of the Arab spring and the role that technology played in facilitating it is now widely known. Facebook, twitter, smartphones, and the internet were lead actors in that story, and helped bring down corrupt despots who had oppressed and robbed an entire generation of its prosperity and freedom. Can they play a similar role in India, where, ironically, corruptionhas infected the deployment of the very technology that unleashed free spirits elsewhere, as for instance in the...