How Bad Is Too Bad?
When we Indians would understand that where exactly how much is too much? When we will realize that it is about time we shed off our easy going attitude and be proactive in demanding for our legitimate dues? Till when we will expect others to do the tough walk and we enjoying the benefits of someone else’s hard work? When we will get out of our slumber and realize, all that is been projected to us is not rosy in realty?
We have suffered a lot over the years, decades, centuries for this very easy going attitude. This attitude is the biggest reason why we could be ruled by handful of English for centuries and Mughals for thousand years before that. We never took our independence and sovereignty with any seriousness. We were greedy and selfish. We were lazy and volatile. We were traitors and touts. We were in fact everything that was bad and continue to be so. So no wonder, under the disguise of democracy again a handful of people are looting us for decades together and we are still lazy-ing around like pigs in the mud and continue to be looted.
We always thought there ought to be a savior who will come and save us from our plight. We always were too reluctant to oppose, voice our opinion and agitate for all the wrong meted to us. We heavily depend on figures like Sivaji, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi and Anna Hazare to come forward and uplift our pathetic state. But that always can’t be the case. There can’t be always someone who would take the fight head on while we cool our respective asses in our cozy drawing rooms enjoying a pathetic IPL encounter. At some point we all have to rise to the occasion and fight for our demands.
We take pride of us being the world’s largest democracy. But had anyone thought, how much of us really take the pain to stand in the queue to vote? A national figure of only 40% voters turning up says a lot about our indifference, even towards the government we chose. Is it the real democracy when only 40% of the entire lot chose their government? Can we say the ruling party really has the popular mandate? A mere 20% vote share makes you form the government at the center with help of regional parties. Can this be a real democratically chosen government when it is formed in connivance with regional parties to reach that magical simple majority mark in the house? Can the regional parties who would have won their seats based on regional agendas and differences contribute to the national agenda of the nation? Parties like DMK, TMC are examples of opportunistic politics where they become a part at the center only to fulfill their self-goal. They arm-twist, blackmail and loot to safeguard their own interest and yet the chief ruling party just can’t act against them in fear of losing power and conveniently brush the democratic disasters under the carpet in the name of coalition politics. Is this the real democracy where people’s wishes were pushed to the back row terming it as anti-national while giving importance to individual wishes?
How this happened? Who allowed this to continue happening? Of course there are those who are more responsible than others and they would be certainly held accountable. But again truth be told, if you are looking for the guilty, you need only look in to a mirror. This is again an outcome of our easy going and Chalta hai attitude.
Look at the rampant appeasement going around in exchange of National interest, pride and security. People have the audacity to attack our parliament and lucky enough to continue enjoying our warm hospitality. Afzal Guru was sentenced to death by our Apex court a good five years back but is yet to be executed. When asked about this generosity, we are bombarded with varied answers. While at one hand we are told it is the president who is sitting on the mercy petition of the joker as she has no time left after visiting Pune to meet her brother 12 times every year, at the other hand we are told of some funny and never heard first-come first-serve mechanism in dealing with mercy petitions, as if we are booking a hotel room.
Ajmal Qassab and his accompanying clowns killed hundreds of innocents in one go but we are still dragging our feet to give justice to all those who died that fateful night and their family members. This is scary when vote bank politics takes precedence over national interest and public sentiments. This is scary when we see a complete non-functional government at the center which time and again fails to act on the culprits because of some compulsive coalition politics or hidden minority appeasement for vote bank. Look within; we citizens are even responsible for such indifference and nonchalant attitude of our own elected government towards us.
We have got corruption in every sphere. We have corrupts in every street, city, village and government offices across the country. Have we done anything to get rid of this malaise? Perhaps not. We certainly can’t formulate the rules but we can for sure socially boycott the known corrupts in our immediate circle, our family tree, our neighborhood.
How many of us have done that? How many of us have bluntly told someone to get out of his house as that person is corrupt and socially not acceptable? We believe Anna will do that for us through Jan Lokpal. We believe Lokpal is nothing short of a magic wand which will eliminate corruption from our country by mere swing of it. Let me assure you, when corruption has gone down into our genes, even a thousand Lokpals can’t stop this spreading. As long as we citizens don’t humiliate the corrupts of our neighborhood in social circle we are not going to achieve what we expect to achieve from Lokpal. It may sound little illogical and out of tune but as they say ‘Tough situation requires tough measures’.
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