My people, including myself, lack
dignity & discipline. Not surprising, considering that we had a little too
much of it growing up in India. And typical with age or even human frailty, one
wishes for his childhood with the passage of time. I too, long for the
simplicity and authority of an earlier time when the folk seemed more genteel
and courteous but then realise that I rebelled against those very ideas when I
faced them.
Our generations have undergone
drastic and sudden change without the advantages of graduated absorption and
accordingly, social interactions or transactions have acquired a different hue
& colour in their applications or perspectives. This is not wrong in
itself, but the world is surprisingly over-populated and the human race seems
to have become a sprint rather than a marathon.
The New York Times claims that
the average American sees 5000 advertisements a day from a variety of sources
and acts accordingly. The average Indian sees at least 500 instances of
corruption, rule violations, minor misdemeanours and social nuisances and also
acts accordingly.
Corruption is endemic states our
media most emphatically while breaking the same rules and regulations while in
pursuit of such rule-breakers. Irony is definitely not a term to be found in
their dictionaries and nor is hypocrisy. The virtues we espouse publicly are
western in genesis and hence, privately we choose to ignore them whenever we
think we’re not being observed. Such is our plight, the modern Indian.
The uncle who condemns the
deplorable law & order situation is un-surprisingly the first to break
lanes in traffic to get ahead. The cousins who spew fundamentalist and
alarmingly socialist views in our drawing rooms are quite secular and capitalistically compromising in
handling their due payments & not above paying off the “fragrant grease”
(as the Chinese term it) for expediting their matters.
That I have not followed that
principle is why I am being published in an online journal, perhaps but then,
this is not a rant, merely an observation.
A favourite mentor once explained
that in India, problems are never
solved – they are resolved, absolved or best, DISSOLVED - preferably with
scotch & soda. People do not wish for end-game solutions, lest they and
their comfort-zones are antagonized or changed.
We Indians might make a hullabaloo
about corruption and love to talk, rant or hear about it on mass & local media
but we do not truly wish it gone. We fear that if we were to live in a truly
corruption-free society, we would not be able to do what we have always done.
Simple facts of life, pleasures even such as littering, over-speeding,
drunk-driving, traffic abuse and all those simple truths of everyday existence
for an Indian might disappear. Or worse, cost more than they do now – And we hate
inflation, us Indians!
Charity begins at home, mercy is
a taught quality – most of our “moral science” virtues are afforded by civilizations
which do not have worry about empty bellies and desperate dreams, such as those
owned by 1.3 billion Indians. Which is why, we see a negative connotation of
Moses Abrahamovitz’s famous theory of convergence. We learnt how to leap-frog
into western technology and while doing so, inadvertently picked up their
social mores without the appending years of individualism, personal limitations
and social tolerance.
A little knowledge is a dangerous thing indeed.
Corruption essentially is an
issue of self-pride or nation pride and even ego, if one takes it that way. It
is a state of disconnected-ness which leads to insecurity or fear and thus
fostering aspirations or even creation of desire or fear of normal fulfillment
and hence adoption of other modes of acquiring one’s desires. In a way, it
could be called a state of mind or being, subjected to an individual or a
nation, in the throes of deprivation or desperation – in short, corruption is
the reflection of a society or a people who are afraid of their future and wish
to secure it at any cost.
Socialist India was far more
structured and the division between the haves & have-not’s were not nearly
as discriminatory or visible as they are today. Corruption like inflation was
similarly controlled till the late 70’s, not that it was non-existent. The
authority paradigm was stronger with social value systems in place to curb
against extremism or blatant antagonism. Since 1992, rapid liberalization & globalization
have caused a massive imbalance (of sorts) in the parent-child, teacher-student
or the authority paradigm resulting in several generations who are
disconnected, lacking identity or self-worth, seeking the price of everything
without ascribing value to anything, they are truly Wilde(s) children.
Solving corruption therefore necessitates we
recover the coming generations if we wish to hope for a society without
corruption or one with structure & values which are not over-ridden by a
mob-mentality. Demanding today’s generations to change and follow the westernized model of society as being self-realized and structured is like
expecting a fish to become amphibious over-night, not to mention a land-dweller
by the next day.
Education is obviously the key,
but exactly what sort of education?
We need values and dignity –
discipline essentially in almost all endeavours.
We need vigorous penalties and a
systemic approach towards mal-functions or break-downs.
We need specific branding and
visibility upon which to base our value systems.
India Shining is not a brand that
benefits the society holistically. The numbers of visa applications to the west
prove that we’re not happy with our own image or of our country. It doesn’t
satisfy us to be Indians and till we resolve this crucial issue – from children’s
bedrooms to schoolrooms, we will not escape the issues of corruption.
Blindly copying and emulating the
west is not enough for the rest. We need
self-realization and perhaps a dictator while we are at it. Not that I would
know much about power paradigm shifts anyhow, but we Indians are still too naive
and need guidance with firm control. Anything less is proving calamitous in
every predictable future for our nation.
Incidents like the one in GS Road,
at Guwahati happened and were dealt with monetarily and therefore significantly
forgotten within the period of a few weeks. We would be incited and provoked
into a social media circus in the belief of a rural octogenarian who has 17th
century solutions for 21st century problems and less than a year
later, it’s in the past and the new fight is about invasion of the lungi-clad
religious fundamentalists led by a perfume merchant who preaches.
By the way, did you know what was
the title/surname of the perfume merchants of Gujrat?
Gandhi.
Someone return our dignity &
discipline – we are lost.
