Dedications

Some of the lyrics of the famous song from the beat group bangles goes as, ‘All the old paintings on the tomb, they do the sand dance don’t you know, if they move too quick, they’re falling like a domino’. Just that what happened in Egypt was not old paintings, that did the sand dance, but real people who stormed the street, and they did not fall like dominos, instead they toppled a regime of cruelty, tyranny and corruption.

Another verse of the song goes as, 'All the school kids so sick of books, they like the punk and the metal band, when the buzzer rings, they’re walking like a Egyptian’. Eerily spooky, the kids are sick of books as all the education cannot get jobs. Whether they like punk and metal band is secondary, but they braved metal tanks, and walk towards it. The more they were beaten and tortured the numbers of them on the streets increased. They walked together as Egyptians.

In India the one walk remembered (or maybe even forgotten) was the ‘Dandi March’ in April of 1930 by Mahatma Gandhi to defy the law protest against the British salt monopoly, and made salt. The strategy was simple and brilliant use of a lethal and effective force of non-violence. This sparked large scale acts of civil disobedience against the British Raj salt laws by millions of Indians. Today we are over a billion people afraid to revolt against the corruption we are subjected to everyday. We take pride in our history of overthrowing a colonial power, and cannot emulate a thing from our history in our present times.

Rapes, murders, robbery, scams, and the list of atrocities are never ending. A freedom fighter Ishwari Singh Thakur, 90 years old, is fighting for thirty five years to get his freedom fighter’s pension. After being a soldier with the Azad Hind Fauj, is still fighting to get his pension, and is living a life of penury and survives selling firewood. Now if this is state how a freedom fighter is treated, what freedom are we looking forward to from our corrupt system?

Thakur's only identity was 'qaidi number 707'. Is that a way a freedom fighter’s identity and dignity is maintained? I guess this could be a reason why India is making UID no. mandatory for all Indians, so soon we would be only a no. to be identified with. We take pride of our economy booming, Indian companies taking over global companies, but when are we going to take over India? Some of the takeovers create in my mind a sense of ironical confusion, Tata’s take over a British motor manufacturing company, and in India we don’t have a basic transport infrastructure. Ranbaxy a big Indian pharmaceutical company acquires RPG Aventis in France, and we don’t have a good healthcare for the poor. We aim to acquire foreign football clubs, and don’t have sports facilities at home. If we can acquire foreign companies and prosper economically, can we not prosper as a Nation?

A Swiss Banker recently confirmed that if the money stashed in Swiss Banks is released to the Indian government it can be used for taxless budget, no need of World Bank or IMF loan, every citizen can be paid Rs. 2000/- for 60 years, forever free power supply to over 500 social projects. If that amount is released it will kill the power of the politicians, so it will never be done, and we don’t want to do anything about it. The joke is that India cannot reveal the names of the corrupt that have hidden the ill gotten wealth in Swiss Banks as it is governed by International treaty laws of confidentiality. Do International laws allow corruption and protect in with confidentiality laws? How true is the saying ‘the law is an ass’, but is it also an arsehole, serving as loopholes to encourage corruption?

How long can we be in slumber? Can we not awake and for a change walk like an Egyptian?

Character and Class never had any meaning in the professional and business world; but they used to have a great importance in relationships. Unfortunately since relationships have also deteriorated and it is just money, that keeps even relationships going. Character and class will soon find its way to where honesty, ethics, integrity, and other such values have been regaled too……and that is nowhere.

Since politics is primarily business, any of the said virtues to exist in that space, is out of space. Honest man making it in life is something we used to enjoy watching in the movies or reading in novels. Unfortunately even in these mediums, it is fading as people cannot digest it anymore, so it is space wars, sci-fi, unrealistic plots like Harry Potter, Matrix, that people prefer and relate too. A relationship as pure love is no longer even in movies, as no one believes in it. It has be extramarital, fornication as shown in the Bond movies. Good making it anywhere is rare, and we all wish it was the other way around, as it was projected in movies once upon a time. Now the movies also have the bad man as the good man. Even heroes, who would never do a negative role, find the negative, positive……and so do we.

Generosity and Charity is more of a washing machine mechanism where people do it as a religious ritual to wash their guilt. Even the emotion of guilt is killed, and there is no guilt anymore. The law states innocent until proven guilty. So everyone behaves innocent of any guilt. Though in India it is the reverse, guilty unless proven innocent, so even the law ensures innocence is killed. Even religion is used as a mockery in law. Why have courts? If everyone would one would profess the truth by taking an oath over a religious book of the religion he or she is practicing, then you don’t need lawyers. Class and Character in a noble profession as law, is again a market place of trade. The lawyer would trade his integrity and character for money, to fight cases of the guilty, and prove them innocent.

Is there nobility in any profession left? Medicine, teaching and religious life, which were considered as the noblest of professions have long lost their values. Doctors trade in kidneys. Teachers more interested in conducting private tuitions or being associated with private teaching classes where the remuneration is lucrative. Atrocities conducted in the name of all religions, can at times shake faith not just in religion but also in God.

Friendship was one of the few and only strands of relationships that had hope of any values surviving. That too has snapped; as friendships are more of fill the gaps of void of nothing to do ‘so let’s hang out’. If there is something mutually beneficial so be it, otherwise you are more of Hi! and Bye, and even that is rare. The old saying of a ‘friend in need is a friend indeed’ was proven otherwise, recently by a friend of mine who went out of his way to help his friend whose father was admitted into the hospital due to a heart attack. Being close to the family without battling an eyelid and without being asked, the guy wires a big sum of money to his friend. What was shocking was after his friend’s Dad got well there was no interest shown to return the money. On the contrary his friend takes for a holiday with his family and proudly displays the pictures on social networking sites.

The relationship has now soured, the hope of getting the money remains a hope, and a lesson learnt in the process that a ‘friend in need, could be a friend in greed’.

One fruit seller in Tunisia with an act of self immolation as he could not take the atrocities of a corrupt regime set an inferno that spread to Egypt, and is slowly spreading to other countries in the Middle East, and even Sri-Lanka in Asia.

Acts of individuals will drive the future of the world. It no longer would be governments or power hungry politicians. Any form of government whether democratic, dictatorial, and communist or kingdoms have failed. The need for a new world order has become immanent. A comment on my earlier blog read, ‘the system is corrupt or corruption is the system’, either ways it is the man on the street who suffers. The common man, who is toiling to make ends meet, is not asking for much. The basic human need is peace and harmony. Then basic infrastructure, security, education for all, health care, jobs, and a law that guarantees rights. None of these have come through any form of governance. All these are easily achievable. The budget of countries like India, China and Pakistan spend on Arms and Ammunition if invested for the basics would more than surplus.

The US who claims to be the beacon of democracy has only proven how rotten its system is with the financial meltdown, and the subprime crisis. China the world’s largest populated nation on earth has the worst cases of human rights abuse for its development. The world’s largest democracy India has been a hog wash showcasing its economic development, when it is rotting with scams, farmer suicide, no law and order, etc. Kingdoms or countries under dictatorial rule are experiencing uprising.

The rich and the powerful will always be safe is a myth. The poor gets hit bad with bad governance, and the rich get hit worst when it’s a revolution. So when power and greed is only for exploitation there is always going to be a back lash. Clinging on to power at any cost is the sole motto. Hosni Mubarak who is estimated at USD 70 billion worth, refuses to give up power. Death toll continues, but for leaders for who opiate on power, the voice of the common citizen is the last thing they want to hear. US drugged its citizen with the smoke screen of freedom of speech, freedom to live American dream, legalize everything immoral, and today the President Mr. Obama prays that the length of the skirts of his daughters be longer, and wants to keep them away from Face Book. None of these leaders ever imagined, that every policy made is a boomerang. It hits you back. No policy was ever aimed at the good of the citizen first. It was always an afterthought. It was primary selfish gains of the leaders, then the good of the people if anything remained of the crumbs of the pie that is gobbled, by politicians.

Flinging shoes at Politicians was an innovative act by an Iraqi journalist aimed at George Bush during his visit to the country. The act found many takers and in India there was a Sardar who flung a shoe at a minister, which was followed by another at some BJP leaders during a rally. The latest being a shoe flung President Musharraf in UK.

You can fling anything on these thick skinned animals. Nothing can hit their soul. It does not make a difference even if you are aiming it with your sole.

It looks like an alarm has rung and suddenly everyone in India has awoken to the fact that our political machinery, its mechanism and people who run the system are corrupt. Suddenly you will have an Azim Premji who screams hoarse saying “Enough is enough”, and gets into verbal diarrhea mode of how much corruption is effecting the country. Mr. Premji, India is not a division of Wipro that you employ a CEO and then sack them if things don’t work out. If you want a change you be a part of the system, and not just appoint a CEO (political party) to do the work for us. The problem is we all want someone else to do it for us.

Why can’t the business community wise men for a change come together to help in nation building rather that just flaunting their occasional philanthropical gestures to showcase their fake patriotism, or commenting and criticizing the system. Most of the alleged good business community leaders if they decide to float a political party, the support would be phenomenal, as everyone if fed up and frustrated. Alternatively they could throw their support behind a Party called the ‘Professionals Party of India’. Not that I support or endorse them, but atleast if they end up corrupt they would be ‘professionally corrupt’. The current bunch of politicians are ruthlessly corrupt. Maybe we could think of voting Baba Ramdeo’s floated political party. On his level if there is corruption it would be ‘spiritually corrupt’, which would be far less to the ugly corruption we are faced with. At the end of the day if we want to fool ourselves saying we can wipe out corruption, then we can keep dreaming. What we can do is to explore options to minimize it.

Corruption is another form of colonization of our country which can be only tackled with a revolution. Egypt is a clear case of the way our country will one day explode. Just the size of our country and our population, we tend ignore the sparks that is waiting to start an inferno. Self immolation of people out of frustration is not something new. Since we are so immune even such acts of desperation we are even blind to it. Starvation deaths are like a regular feature and we read like as if it is an ongoing cartoon strip. Why are there starvation deaths when food grains are rotting in the warehouses? As long as we are not the victim, its fine and this apathy is what will cause our doom very soon.

Come to think of it, are we not responsible for the mess? Most of us (at least I have) bribed our way through a traffic cop, bribed our way get a certificate from a Municipal office, bribed our way through for registering a house, getting a driving license, practically everything that needs an interaction with a government or municipal body, we have to bribe, to get the work done or to get it done fast. We have become so numb to the problem that we have accepted it as a part of the system, and give in. We take solace in the fact that at least the work gets done, and move on. We don’t want to challenge the system as then it would be inviting trouble. So it is like an old saying “why trouble ‘trouble’, if trouble doesn’t trouble us, coz if we trouble ‘trouble’, trouble will always trouble us’. So we avoid the trouble.

It’s time we challenged trouble, coz if we don’t challenge trouble, 'trouble' will finish us. On that tongue twister, hoping we could untwist the noose of corruption slowly choking us.