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After working on the last leg of the Gandhi film for the Democracy project, I escaped to Kurseong and Darjeeling in the north Bengal hills for a much needed break.

But the quiet and sleepy environment of the hills that I remembered from childhood trips had been completely transformed by a sense of revolutionary fervour – not an activism that aspired for independent statehood or for better livelihood, but a round-the-clock fever-pitch movement to…make Darjeeling’s own son, Prashant Tamang the next Indian Idol.

What would make you start a revolution?
Without any doubt I have plenty of reasons to start a revolution here in Brazil. But I think that it requires many people. Many interesting people aware of what they would be doing. Knowing the particularities. But I think Brazil has progressed. Since 1990 we have been making interesting steps, creating a more public politics.

We asked all sorts of people -- authors, athletes, movie stars, politicians, thinkers, workers, dreamers -- ten tough questions about democracy. We will publish the transcripts of many of their televised answers on this page, with new ones every day. Be sure to tell us what you think in the forums.

Read today also:

10 Questions: Mike Monroe - Singer from Hanoi Rocks (Finland)
10 Questions: Dr Raj Persaud - Consultant Psychiatrist, Gresham Professor and bestselling author (UK)
10 Questions: Adil Tiscatti - Santa Teresa Cinema Founder (Brazil)

October 9th sees our feature film, Looking for the Revolution, occupying the day's discussions. Coinciding with the 40th anniversary of Che Guevara's death, the Democracy House is asking our readers what would make you start a revolution?

As an icon of socialist revolutionary struggle, Che Guevara has transcended cultural boundaries to become a symbol of leftist thinking around the world. Shaped in a similar revolutionary mould forty years later is Bolivia's Evo Morales. Besides being the first indigenous Bolivian president, Morales has sparked a crucial debate about the role of socialism in the twenty-first century.