Veer Savarkar, Uma Bharati, perpetual screaming and yelling, endless boycotts, careful building of effigies, senior national leaders beating the reproductions with shoes ? all these contemporary images of India make us look like an ongoing opera of the absurd, without an intermission.
We come across as a bizarre nation left behind in a time warp, nowhere near being a modern, alive and energetic country on the move, making strides. No wonder the world has relegated us to a cumbersome, overpopulated, illiterate subcontinent of no import on the international arena.
It is tragic to witness the manner in which we conduct ourselves, embarrassing to be a part of the madness. To think that there is a whole new generation which is having to tolerate and be shamed by the farcical, irrelevant and thoughtless actions of senior national leadership.
One would imagine there were no crises of consequence, no real problems, facing this blighted nation. Irrelevancies are being doled out as pressing priorities, a dreadful trick that is only diverting attention from the failures and horrors the leaders have assaulted this country with over the years.
With such inanities they are trying to whitewash their supreme exploitation of this polity, because somewhere in this churning, they may well be on the way out. There is no place for their kind of parochialism, intellectual corruption and moral decline in this new and unfolding age.
Our leadership has, over the years, been consistent in killing all our strengths. Traditional skills, as well as the sectors they belong to, have been bruised and hurt with great deliberation. Rapacious politicians and greedy, dishonest bureaucrats have robbed the land, urban, rural and forest. The extraordinary and many layered heritage has been mutilated and ravaged, not by time and nature but by brutish men and women.
We are close to the bottom of the pit, there is a huge generational change underway, and we can only look ahead hereon. But, before the dawn there will be turmoil, confusion and social anarchy. We just have to live through that and be patient.
Imagine a Parliament without walking sticks, predictable platitudes, and broken knees. Think of bright minds, new ideas, lively debate and discussion, innovative action on the ground, quick decision making ? integrity in thought and action. Close your eyes and dream: Clean railway platforms with sane signage; roads without potholes where some creep hasn?t made dirty lucre; a pristine Varanasi, Mathura, Ajmer, Niza-muddin, in place of the dumps they have been allowed to become because of corrupt municipalities; polished historic towns and cities of which the people are proud to be the inhabitants; efficient new towns that function, streets without pimps pursuing one and all, every space transparent, without the law and order authority perpetuating corruption and malpractices and being condoned; no men with their flies down, standing and peeing against anything they can find. Just these few changes would make India the most coveted destination for both business and all else.
? Ongoing shenanigans make India appear like an opera of the absurd ? It?s up to all of us to fill the moral vaccum and reverse the intellectual decline |
It is easy to do. Override the corrupt and those who have held this country to ransom. Stop playing at compromise and adjustment. Go for the kill. India has so much going for her that other countries do not have. People are philosophical, creative and given minimal support, dynamic. To suppress the natural inherent traits of one billion people is asking for trouble. When they decide to retaliate there will be nothing left of those few who ruled!
One way to set the new standard ? every privileged individual or/and group should pick a dream idea and implement it with care, demand that the authority fall in place, expose the murky, maggot-ridden underbelly, and create one celebratory project. It could be anything, the sky being the limit! This exercise could begin to showcase the best that we are able to deliver and the new standard will begin to fall into place.
We could start with one or two great museums, endowed by one of our large companies who must take a leaf out of the Rockefeller, Carnegie and Ford book! How they launched and put culture on a pedestal, thereby celebrated mankind.