First the disclaimer. I pen the
following words not with any hope from the present Indian society infested with
the pseudo intellectuals, but for the posterity and to satisfy the urge within.
To begin with, we err in not
realising how base we are or have become at the roots as a people, remaining
individually good at heart. We are a people having a fake leadership and
political system, a fake judiciary and judicial system, a fake bureaucracy and
bureaucratic system, and above all a fake media. Of course there are some
exceptions here and there. I am not the only one to say so, having brought out
this fact amply through my earlier articles and in my book ‘rogues rascals and
Eunuchs (pain of an Indian whistle-blower)’ (the book is nothing but a systematic compilation of my earlier blog posts), but a number of recent articles by
veteran journalists published in the Statesman have also clearly been
indicating this fact. To an extent this fact is a result of the crab mentality
we Indians are cursed with. Most of the times, we are using up our energies in
pulling down the capable and deserving individuals around us, allowing the fake
to rise. The correct knowledge of the depth and spread of the rot is necessary
before we could think of an effective cure.
Even those of us, who are well
aware of the fact and have the best intentions, err in searching for solutions
where none exist. Anna, team Anna, and lakhs of their active and passive
followers are the immediate example. In believing that Janlokpal was a major
solution for the deep rooted and widespread ills of the society and that they
could force its creation as an outside pressure group, team Anna betrayed some lack of vision; and their mass following proved once
again that the masses were governed by nothing but the herd mentality. At the
time of penning of these lines, theirs is a failed movement with loss of
credibility for their leaders. Had they not erred and had a year back taken the
course they intend to take now, they would not have lost their credibility. It
is an irony that they are choosing the political recourse at the same time when
proving to the world their lack of political acumen. Had they
taken this recourse (the only sensible recourse available to them for last one
year) without having led the people into doubting their intentions and without
having subjected the nation to the farce (as it has turned out to be) of yet
another fast at jantar mantar, they
would have been much better off. Or if all this drama was necessary to sway the
herds for a good cause, I won’t complain. All said and done, team Anna remains the best among the well meaning Indians in sight and it is unto them to provide the leadership the nation needs and for us to accept and encourage such leadership as and when it emerges.
A failed movement is worse than
no movement as it brings more despair to the people. In a similar way as issues
are raised without following those to a logical conclusion. Here the Indian
media errs the most as they do so day in and day out with no exceptions. Scams
are reported, losses to the public exchequer are reported, but one doesn’t come
to know of a logical conclusion in one’s life time. The people get more and
more demoralized.
Let us see what the culture we
nurture is. One playing seemingly fake cricket gets to earn Rs 150 crores
(besides undisclosed income) a year and a carpenter or another artisan doing
his or her job most professionally and sincerely gets to earn Rs 150 thousand a
year. Families known to have looted lakhs of crores of tax payer’s money and
stashed it away in foreign banks are chosen to rule us and are sung praises of
by the pseudo journalists and the pseudo intellectuals of the country that far
outnumber the genuine ones. We as a people bow at their feet day after
day. Politicians known to have looted other lakhs of crores are elected and
chosen as key central ministers or chief ministers again and again. We waste our energy in creating stars
from among us and then use up rest of it in competing with each other in licking their bottoms. Worshipping them becomes our main
preoccupation. These are nothing but the manifestations of our culture and the
capitalist and democratic systems we feel so proud of. When we accept these
manifestations so nonchalantly, don’t we look very foolish in making so much
noise about corruption? We, very seriously err in not realising that corruption
is nothing but a by-product of the culture we pursue. Corruption is not the root cause of our evils
as everyone conveniently seems to believe, it is a necessary off- shoot of the
capitalist and bureaucratic structure we have embraced. And if we are happy
with our culture, we should be happy to accept the by-product also. If we don’t
like this by-product, we must look for solutions in revolutionary corrections
in the economic and political systems we follow.
We err in associating only politicians
with corruption and scams most of the time, forgetting how thoroughly base our
bureaucracy, the backbone of governance, has become. And that much more than
the politicians, the bureaucrats and the bureaucratic systems, and the judicial systems we have become
slave to are responsible for the massive scams we come across on daily basis
now. I say this out of my experience in the Railways, an
organisation supposed to be having a better set of bureaucrats in the country.
This aspect has come out in better detail in my interview published in the
Statesman about a couple of years back under the title ‘Bureaucrats are both
running and ruining the country’ and subsequently in my above book.
The most importantly, we reach
the height of human foolishness when we abuse and curse our leaders, duly
elected and chosen by the people, for their rogue behaviour, not saying a word
to ourselves, the people, who had chosen and elected them as their leaders. We
happily accept that majority is authority expressing faith in the wisdom of the
people all the time, and then question why a majority of ministers and a large
number of parliamentarians elected by those very people were corrupt and
rogues. Even after experience of 65 years as a free democratic country, we fail
to understand that today’s lowest ever level of governance and the highest ever
level of corruption are nothing but a necessary outcome of our character and
the parliamentary system of democracy we follow with such pride. Not learning
from history, we continue to ignore the diseased roots and in vain attempt
curing some stray leaves here and there.
Sushma Swaraj, a renowned leader,
was all praise for our parliamentary system a few days back for the reason that because of it change of power in the country had always been
peaceful. But is that a reason enough to justify the existing system? The bottom line
remains that a vast majority of Indians live and die in abject poverty. The
disparity between the haves and the have-nots is ever increasing. There is injustice all around. There are
so many laws, some of those outright absurd, that a common man always lives
under fear of having broken one or another. The food adulteration and wide
spread corruption in medical care adversely affect everyone except probably the
VIP’s and the VVIP’s. If this scenario is acceptable to us, fine. If not,
nothing but our folly prevents us from achieving better for us.
We err in looking for incremental
corrections for a malaise that requires nothing less than total overhaul for
cure. Today many voices, Baba Ramdev’s and Anna Hazare’s being the most
prominent among them, are talking of need for total systemic overhaul. So did
Jaiprakash Narayan talk forty years ago. We as a nation have been talking and
saying everything for last sixty five years as it is our favourite pastime. Often
we lack in vision and always we lack in action. Deep down most of us do feel
need for a revolution not knowing what it should be and how it should come
about.
Historically, revolutions the
world over have meant a set of people fighting another set of people. In
today’s India, the adversaries are anti corruption crusaders led by Anna Hazare
and Baba Ramdev on one side and the present UPA Govt, perceived to be the
epitome of corruption, on the other side. But is not this government of the
people and by the people, going by the definition of democracy? Isn’t it that
the government is as corrupt as it is because we the people and the systems we
nurture have been allowing it to be so? Will it be correct to consider a few
individuals who happen to be in the government and have amassed massive wealth
illegally to be the culprit now after having encouraged them to indulge in
corruption all these years? Are not the people of India the real culprit? Has
world been becoming any better after wars and revolutions involving wars? Is it
necessary that for a revolution a set of people must fight another set of
people? Couldn’t a revolution be all inclusive where all the people combine and
unite to arrive at solutions beneficial to them at large, without indulging in
blame games?
Answers to above questions and
finding solutions won’t be difficult if we allow ourselves to be dictated by nothing
but truth and love (or compassion), the two legs of humanity. Truth and love
together. All the religions teach us so and all the literature tells us so. We
shall have to unlearn all that we have been following and embark on ‘zero based
thinking’ based on the twin virtues and principles of truth and love. That is
if we really wish well for our descendants. Otherwise let us continue to engage
ourselves in the same vicious circles, exemplified in our late evening TV channel debates involving the luminaries of the society, again and again, to get lost in the quagmire.
