Does it make sense to create luxurious things and artful objects when so much squalor remains to be eliminated?
We live in a world full of ironies and conflicts. The world’s rich fret over how to gratify their palates with a new recipe, while the poor wonder when or whether they are going to have their next meal. People in one part of the world go to bed nestled in comfort, while in another they spend sleepless nights looking for a few inches of space to rest their exhausted bodies. There are some who don’t know what to do with all that cash piling up in their vaults, while there are many who are unsure how they’d support their families if they lose the only jobs they have known for years…
In the midst of acute food deprivation, we keep worrying about exotic cuisine. In the midst of widespread homelessness, we keep building sprawling bungalows. And as we face alarming levels of job cuts, we never tire of devising ways to hike productivity and efficiency.
Why?
Wouldn’t it make more sense to first bridge the gap between the haves and the have-nots? Shouldn’t we work at equally distributing wealth, means of production and living space? Why should we cater to the luxurious living of the rich when we can’t take care of the basic needs of the poor?
Our conscience pricks us uncomfortably at these questions. And we are often left speechless when we try to defend our pursuits. But centuries of physical, mental and spiritual evolution has meant that creating creature comforts and continually developing things that please us is something that’s gotten etched into our minds.
We see luxury not merely as production of things that gratify us, but as an aspiring pursuit for enhancing our lives with things which we really value and which prod us to go higher – be it art, literature, music, gadgets or anything else that doesn’t necessarily have to be pursued in order to merely survive.
At times, this aspiration does get bogged down by the misery of fellow human beings around us. But it never dies out. On the contrary, the coexistence of squalid subsistence and luxurious living creates a vivid contrast of how things are and how they should be.
For instance, a landscaped apartment block surrounded by slums does look like an eyesore, but it’s also a very powerful pointer to how we should and should not live. One that blaringly reminds us that well-built homes in a clean and green environment – not dingy slums – is worthy of our emulation. It’s only that the contrast between the two highlights it in a painful way.
But such a contrast also heightens the intensity of our aspiration. Potholed roads make a new, superfast highway all the more valued just as a rag makes a finely tailored suit so much more desirable.
That, however, doesn’t mean undesirable things such as potholed roads or rags or hunger should exist. But the fact of the matter is that they have always existed in human history – and we’ve always been struggling to keep them to the minimum, but with different degrees of success.
We are a race that is forever seeking new pleasures, exploring new frontiers and improving upon our own concepts of beauty. It’s hard to think of how to distinguish between two delicacies on an empty stomach, or go for an adventure trek if we’ve been shivering in cold without shelter for weeks, or create a designer label when our nakedness is a compulsion rather than a choice. But once our basic needs are taken care of, our mind itches to get more, to make better what we already have, and to excel in our chosen field.
We can’t altogether reject this ‘itch’ – it’s an inseparable part of our character, chiseled into our brain over centuries of civilization.
Creation of luxury and of things we consider beautiful is the only way for us humans to exercise and stretch our faculties that make us so different from other animals. That creativity and urge to create is the bulwark upon which we have honed our ceaseless efforts to become more and more civilized. If we stop to evolve in our creativity, we’ll most likely retreat to our uncivilized ways – and perhaps finally become just another species.
That’s why we must keep our creative efforts going – in spite of all the wretchedness surrounding us. We must not see our attempts to live a better life as counter-productive to our intent to create a more equitable and just society. But we should see it as a challenge before us to balance our quest for luxury with the removal of our destitution.
The day we achieve that balance more peacefully and successfully will be the day of a paradigm shift in our rise to the top among fellow animals. It will also be a time when we’ll be free – perhaps for the first time in history – of the collective guilt of inequality we’ve been carrying on on our shoulders for ages.
So we must continually ask ourselves: How far is that day and what can each one of us do to make it happen?
Tuesday, October 25, 2011
Wednesday, September 21, 2011
Remembering the Ganesha 'Miracle'
Did the Hindu god Ganesha really drink milk in thousands of temples on this day many years ago?
I can never forget what I saw on that twenty-first day of September when I reached the temple nearest to my home. It changed my whole outlook toward God, life and people in general.
I had paddled fast on my bicycle on that slightly nippy morning and, leaving the bike unlocked against the temple wall, I rushed inside. I had to jostle my way through a motley crowd of devotees to reach the inner sanctum, where Lord Ganesha’s stone sculpture was affixed amongst several other Hindu deities. The idol was thronged on all sides by devotees, who were all falling over themselves to offer spoonfuls of milk to Ganesha.
In Hindu rituals, Lord Ganesha is usually offered a laddoo, a round sweet made of gram flour, but on that particular day of 1995, news had spread that Ganesha was “accepting” milk. On normal days, the faithful would put a laddoo to Ganesha’s mouth and then place it at His feet or in a tray nearby. This act of offering is essentially symbolic and a portion of the sweet remains stuck to the idol’s mouth. But that day, people claimed that Ganesha’s idols everywhere were literally drinking the milk offered to them, spoon by spoon. Within a few hours, the phenomenon was being hailed as a miracle in modern times.
It was this miracle that I had come to witness. I got up a little late that day, and as I was rubbing the early morning sleep out of my eyes, my overly credulous and religious mother told me that Lord Ganesha was drinking milk in temples everywhere and I must go and offer some to the Elephant God.
I was not exactly irreligious but, in my haste to see the impossible happen right before my eyes, I had rushed out of the house without carrying any milk to offer.
Now, as I stood inside the temple, agape, and watched the throng near Ganesha’s idol, I just could not believe it.
Not the miracle but what I really saw.
People were actually tilting their spoons, cups and other dishes full of milk they had brought with them at the stone idol – and the milk that was supposed to be sipped by the deity was spilling down its body and away into the drain that led out of the temple and mingled into the bigger culvert outside.
All of these religious people had come running to the temple hearing that Ganesha was drinking milk, and all without exception were actually pouring milk at the idol. They did it one after the other in quick succession, without stopping for a moment to look at what happened to the milk. Their already devout beliefs needed no confirmation – the idol was indeed drinking milk as far as they were concerned.
I carefully looked at several more acts of milk-offering, hoping to see Ganesha take a single sip of the white liquid - if only to help me form my own faith in miracles. But my eyes saw the same thing over and over again: milk trickling down the sides of the idol without so much as a hint of acceptance by the deity. I even dared to ask the person standing next to me, “Don’t you think these guys are spilling milk instead of feeding it to the idol?” But he only chided me for being an atheist and for making such a sacrilegious comment. “You shouldn’t doubt this miracle, or the gods will punish you. If you can’t offer any milk, at least don’t poison other people’s faith!” he retorted.
With a heavy heart I walked back home, my bicycle beside me. But I kept thinking: How could it be? How could it be? Was I shorn of any devotion whatsoever, that I couldn’t see the miracle? Or were people so blinded by their faith that they could not see what was obvious to me?
By late evening that day, the “news” of the “miracle” was breaking on all TV channels and other media. Not just temples in Delhi and across India, but many places of Hindu worship in several countries of the world, including Britain, Canada and Dubai, reported the same phenomenon being replicated.
Some novice reporters even got carried away by the spectacle and, in addition to the reports they filed, made their own offerings to Lord Ganesha right there on live television – and came away “believers” themselves. At the same time, there were some channels that had rounded up a bunch of rationalists in their studios and were putting up questions to them, demanding either plausible explanations or asking them to surrender their rationality to the televised images of the miracle beaming alongside their somber visages.
I watched as many programs as I could. Among other explanations given by the scientifically inclined, I remember hearing “capillary action and surface tension” as being responsible for milk getting slightly sucked out of the spoon before making its way down the idol in minute trickles. The tiny streams of milk down the idols went mostly unnoticed. Or it didn’t matter to those who had already decided to believe in the miracle.
As for me, I wasn’t really looking for explanations, for I had seen the truth behind the miracle with my own eyes. But it really amazed me how millions of people across the world came to believe in it in such a short time – and that they still carried on with their belief even after many scientists repeated the “miracle” in a laboratory setting, offering their explanations in layman’s terms.
Like I said earlier, not that I was completely irreligious, but from that day on, I vowed not to be blind in my faith. Whenever any other news of such miracles appeared (and many times it did, in fact), my mind played out the images of people spilling milk at Ganesha’s idols as if in a movie flashback – and my sense of reason prevailed over mass mirage.
Today, 16 years on after the incident, my own spirituality and religious beliefs have gone through tremendous changes – and perhaps will continue to evolve till my last moment. But that single incident taught me more about mass hysteria, herd mentality and blind faith than any volumes of literature could. It also acquainted me with the power of telecommunication and electronic media – and what it could wreak together with a little rumor let loose.
Looking back to that incident, I’ve often tried to make sense of many other widely believed miracles – often dating back to times when there was no television or photography. I’ve also tried to make sense of people’s own experiences with worship and prayer and with bringing their loved ones back from the clutches of terminal illness through their religious leanings, especially after the world’s best doctors had given up on them.
Can these personal experiences be called the real miracles? Did Moses really part the sea? Did Jesus Christ really rise from the grave? Did Savitri (in Hindu legend) brought her husband back to life on the strength of her love and devotion to him? Did scores of holy men and women who are said to have healed thousands through their touch over the centuries really perform miracles?
Then what of those whose heartfelt prayers go unanswered and their loved ones are lost forever? What about those who die in a stampede or burn alive in a fire at the very place where they have come to worship God (irrespective of whose God it is)?
And then I look at the mess in the world surrounding us – global warming, terrorism, religious fanaticism, food crisis…and think again: Can anything other than a miracle save us from hurtling toward a collective catastrophe?!
Will somebody perform that miracle? Till when will he or she wait?
The questions keep flooding my mind until they form a deluge and I have to set them aboard an ark so they could float away for a while and allow me to breathe.
Meanwhile, my own search for true spirituality – with or without miracles – goes on…
I can never forget what I saw on that twenty-first day of September when I reached the temple nearest to my home. It changed my whole outlook toward God, life and people in general.
I had paddled fast on my bicycle on that slightly nippy morning and, leaving the bike unlocked against the temple wall, I rushed inside. I had to jostle my way through a motley crowd of devotees to reach the inner sanctum, where Lord Ganesha’s stone sculpture was affixed amongst several other Hindu deities. The idol was thronged on all sides by devotees, who were all falling over themselves to offer spoonfuls of milk to Ganesha.
In Hindu rituals, Lord Ganesha is usually offered a laddoo, a round sweet made of gram flour, but on that particular day of 1995, news had spread that Ganesha was “accepting” milk. On normal days, the faithful would put a laddoo to Ganesha’s mouth and then place it at His feet or in a tray nearby. This act of offering is essentially symbolic and a portion of the sweet remains stuck to the idol’s mouth. But that day, people claimed that Ganesha’s idols everywhere were literally drinking the milk offered to them, spoon by spoon. Within a few hours, the phenomenon was being hailed as a miracle in modern times.
It was this miracle that I had come to witness. I got up a little late that day, and as I was rubbing the early morning sleep out of my eyes, my overly credulous and religious mother told me that Lord Ganesha was drinking milk in temples everywhere and I must go and offer some to the Elephant God.
I was not exactly irreligious but, in my haste to see the impossible happen right before my eyes, I had rushed out of the house without carrying any milk to offer.
Now, as I stood inside the temple, agape, and watched the throng near Ganesha’s idol, I just could not believe it.
Not the miracle but what I really saw.
People were actually tilting their spoons, cups and other dishes full of milk they had brought with them at the stone idol – and the milk that was supposed to be sipped by the deity was spilling down its body and away into the drain that led out of the temple and mingled into the bigger culvert outside.
All of these religious people had come running to the temple hearing that Ganesha was drinking milk, and all without exception were actually pouring milk at the idol. They did it one after the other in quick succession, without stopping for a moment to look at what happened to the milk. Their already devout beliefs needed no confirmation – the idol was indeed drinking milk as far as they were concerned.
I carefully looked at several more acts of milk-offering, hoping to see Ganesha take a single sip of the white liquid - if only to help me form my own faith in miracles. But my eyes saw the same thing over and over again: milk trickling down the sides of the idol without so much as a hint of acceptance by the deity. I even dared to ask the person standing next to me, “Don’t you think these guys are spilling milk instead of feeding it to the idol?” But he only chided me for being an atheist and for making such a sacrilegious comment. “You shouldn’t doubt this miracle, or the gods will punish you. If you can’t offer any milk, at least don’t poison other people’s faith!” he retorted.
With a heavy heart I walked back home, my bicycle beside me. But I kept thinking: How could it be? How could it be? Was I shorn of any devotion whatsoever, that I couldn’t see the miracle? Or were people so blinded by their faith that they could not see what was obvious to me?
By late evening that day, the “news” of the “miracle” was breaking on all TV channels and other media. Not just temples in Delhi and across India, but many places of Hindu worship in several countries of the world, including Britain, Canada and Dubai, reported the same phenomenon being replicated.
Some novice reporters even got carried away by the spectacle and, in addition to the reports they filed, made their own offerings to Lord Ganesha right there on live television – and came away “believers” themselves. At the same time, there were some channels that had rounded up a bunch of rationalists in their studios and were putting up questions to them, demanding either plausible explanations or asking them to surrender their rationality to the televised images of the miracle beaming alongside their somber visages.
I watched as many programs as I could. Among other explanations given by the scientifically inclined, I remember hearing “capillary action and surface tension” as being responsible for milk getting slightly sucked out of the spoon before making its way down the idol in minute trickles. The tiny streams of milk down the idols went mostly unnoticed. Or it didn’t matter to those who had already decided to believe in the miracle.
As for me, I wasn’t really looking for explanations, for I had seen the truth behind the miracle with my own eyes. But it really amazed me how millions of people across the world came to believe in it in such a short time – and that they still carried on with their belief even after many scientists repeated the “miracle” in a laboratory setting, offering their explanations in layman’s terms.
Like I said earlier, not that I was completely irreligious, but from that day on, I vowed not to be blind in my faith. Whenever any other news of such miracles appeared (and many times it did, in fact), my mind played out the images of people spilling milk at Ganesha’s idols as if in a movie flashback – and my sense of reason prevailed over mass mirage.
Today, 16 years on after the incident, my own spirituality and religious beliefs have gone through tremendous changes – and perhaps will continue to evolve till my last moment. But that single incident taught me more about mass hysteria, herd mentality and blind faith than any volumes of literature could. It also acquainted me with the power of telecommunication and electronic media – and what it could wreak together with a little rumor let loose.
Looking back to that incident, I’ve often tried to make sense of many other widely believed miracles – often dating back to times when there was no television or photography. I’ve also tried to make sense of people’s own experiences with worship and prayer and with bringing their loved ones back from the clutches of terminal illness through their religious leanings, especially after the world’s best doctors had given up on them.
Can these personal experiences be called the real miracles? Did Moses really part the sea? Did Jesus Christ really rise from the grave? Did Savitri (in Hindu legend) brought her husband back to life on the strength of her love and devotion to him? Did scores of holy men and women who are said to have healed thousands through their touch over the centuries really perform miracles?
Then what of those whose heartfelt prayers go unanswered and their loved ones are lost forever? What about those who die in a stampede or burn alive in a fire at the very place where they have come to worship God (irrespective of whose God it is)?
And then I look at the mess in the world surrounding us – global warming, terrorism, religious fanaticism, food crisis…and think again: Can anything other than a miracle save us from hurtling toward a collective catastrophe?!
Will somebody perform that miracle? Till when will he or she wait?
The questions keep flooding my mind until they form a deluge and I have to set them aboard an ark so they could float away for a while and allow me to breathe.
Meanwhile, my own search for true spirituality – with or without miracles – goes on…
Saturday, August 27, 2011
Anna, Corruption and the Development Equation
We must look at the whole development structure, and not just corruption, if the mess called “India” needs to be set right
It is a dumbfounding moment for a lot of Indians. This Anna Hazare thing and the whole idea of a nation suddenly up in knots against corruption.
Most people are beginning to feel that the Jan Lokpal Bill as envisaged by Team Anna will rid India of the cancer of corruption – to a significant extent. Some feel the Sangh Parivar is ready to ride on the back of the moment – and the movement. Yet others are trying frantically to save a government from whose cupboard the skeletons of corruption just can't stop coming out.
While corruption has become a buzz word, a love-hate word, a cure-all and curse-all word, I think it might not be a bad idea to look at the whole development equation and see where corruption – and we, a nation of billion-odd people, including oddest ones – fit in.
Let me warn you: this could be a longer article than the mostly asinine tweets and cut-and-paste status updates fast gaining currency as our preferred mode of conversation rather than well-considered and longish pieces of writing. So if you are just looking for some sound bytes, scoot away now! Please.
So, what does the whole development equation look like?
This questions is directly and significantly related to corruption, so just think it over.
To my mind, to embrace development in today's fast, technologically advanced and increasingly rights-aware world is to ensure these things: people are able to feed and clothe themselves, children get to play and learn the things they find interesting, adults get to work and get paid in fair proportion to their abilities and labor, and there's a speedy and reasonably fair system of settling disputes and administering justice.
What we have in the world today is this: a huge proportion of humanity goes to sleep on a hungry stomach; each year thousands of poor people die in heat or cold waves for want of proper clothing and shelter; millions of children are malnourished, millions more are child-laborers who hardly get to play anything, let alone learn about interesting things; most people have to settle for whatever they get for the back-breaking work they do (with only a few complaining about salaries and weekends – and still fewer making noises on taxes directed at the really wealthy); and justice is either out of reach for most, too delayed or simply putty in the hands of the powerful.
When you consider these parameters of development in third-world countries like those of sub-Saharan Africa or India (not very different if you look at the bottom two-third of the pyramid), you find that the development situation is truly appalling.
And yet...
Yet there is development happening. Can't you see, there are malls sprouting all around suburbia? Didn't you read about the 20 or so Bentley cars sold in India? Haven't you seen advertisements of bathroom fittings that promise to drench your body with hundreds of liters of water in a single shower? (Okay, the ads don't say anything about how much water is needed to “enjoy water” with those fancy fittings, but you could make out, couldn't you?) And hey, didn't you hear about the new shampoos for your dogs launched by that cult multinational brand?
Truly, there must be a lot of people out there willing to bathe their doggies in exotic shampoo? Or installing a thousand-dollar shower and taking a bath themselves instead? And don't you forget all those vacations in picture-perfect locales that the papers are so aggressively promoting through ads and articles (I forget which is which these days.)
So the top one, two or five percent of an economy is full of all these people – the mega consumer-owners who keep the bulldozing engines of “modern” development going on. And they get the economists to throw a beautifully coined term at anyone who raises an objection to this resource-hungry and environment-ravaging model of development: the “trickle-down effect” that reaches the common man.
The bottom 95 percent? Most of them just manage to keep alive, a majority never having any real chance of shopping in the same mall they helped build with their own hands. And a not-so-big-as-made-out chunk, the neither-here-nor-theres of the world, the enamored middle classes, looks up dreamily at the owners-superconsumers and aspires to reach there some day. But most never do.
The result is a gaping structural deformity in development. Which means a tiny portion of people enjoy all the luxuries of the world, a significant number work blindly for money in the hope of making it big, but the astonishing majority barely scraping through life in unhygienic, depressing and impoverished conditions.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not against capitalism, if that's the idea you are getting from the above views. We've seen socialism fail miserably and the days of autocracy are long numbered. So capitalism or market economy is what we are left with essentially.
What I'm just trying to get at is the root cause of corruption and the enabling environment that helps it grow and enrich a few at the cost of so many.
At the heart of such an enabling environment are three things: natural resources, power and greed. Corruption results from the unholy mix of these three ingredients. In particular, when the legal and systemic structure of a country is not designed to take care of huge structural inequalities in development, corruption seeps in, becomes a flood and starts to boil the blood of the suffering millions.
The unholy mix of corruption, in which powerful people loot the natural resources of a country to largely distribute the wealth thus generated among themselves and throw some peanuts to the milling crowds, is not a new phenomenon. Right from the old colonial masters, be they the Spaniards or the British, down to the current power-brokers and “industrialists,” this loot has been going on for ages. Nothing seems to stop it. What can be realistically expected, perhaps, is that this loot somehow lessens to a tolerable level so that people at the bottom can breathe a little fresher air.
The current upsurge in India is an acknowledgment of the huge and multiple instances of rampant loot going on in the country for the past so many years. The worst part is that almost all political parties that make the so-called democratic polity of India have been caught with their hand in the till at one time or another. Which is why “the common man” has lost faith in the democratic process itself.
If you look at the candidates who fight elections, who are they? Most of them are goons, goondas, boors, hardened criminals, apathetic profiteers and so forth. Many of them are the already rich scions of political bigwigs or their proteges. A tiny minority might be sincere and honest, but there numbers are too few to make a big difference.
Fortunately or unfortunately, the natural resources of a country are limited. That is why, after the process of economic liberalization in India has gathered pace, there is an urgency among our political and owner-superconsumer class to quickly dispense the remaining resources (mines, land, etc.) and ensure their own further enrichment. If palms need to be greased to hasten that process, so be it! If inferior material can be bought at exorbitant costs to the exchequer (read to “you, me and other tax-payers”) but at enormous profits to those giving and receiving contracts for infrastructure and other “nation-building” exercises, why not? Such is the rationale of the corrupt.
And what happens in successive elections? The party or parties that come to power blame the previous regime for all the ills of governance, including corruption, lack of financing, poor decisions, etc. – and continue to line their own pockets while mouthing blames and expressing their own helplessness. Given that almost all parties in India shelter a growing flock of bad sheep in their midst, this cycle of blame and loot just keeps on repeating every five years.
And what development do we have at the end of the day? Oh, my God, don't ask me that! We have a monstrous situation in the country. But let me first talk about a few good things: there are some spanking new, world-class malls and office buildings, a huge number of automobile beauties are available for purchase, some expensive medical facilities have come up, a few lakh educated folk have found employment and there's a cornucopia of consumer goods out there in our urban markets.
Now, get ready for the not-so-good, bad and really ugly parts. There's muck and filth all around those swish malls. Muck and filth in large parts of our cities – on the roads, along the railway lines, around our very houses. Some posh localities and gated communities aside, the sheer amount of muck and filth is mind-boggling. If one were to weigh all that garbage in, say, Mumbai, it would perhaps equal half the waters of the Arabian Sea! Maybe more.
Come to the roads now. The Merc, the Alto and the cycle-rickshaw all stand side-by-side, trying to wiggle their way out of massive traffic jams. Flyovers have turned into nice places where cars crawl bumper-to-bumper, giving their occupants an opportunity to enjoy wide-angle views of their sprawling city – except nobody seems to be enjoying. The honking and heat and smoke are just all too annoying!
There have been many reports of the five-star-type hospitals charging exorbitant money and still not being able to provide the necessary healthcare to their customers. The poor are just turned away (despite the fact that many got land from the government at concessional rates in order that a certain number of poor can also avail of their facilities).
The increasing amount of burgers, pizzas and processed foods are making more and more Indians grow – their bellies, that is. And also grow the instances of diabetes and heart disease amongst them. Why do you think they are building all those expensive hospitals? All marketers have got their projections in place and are readying for the battle to fight diseases that the very pseudo development caused in the first place!
This whole development equation is coalescing around the few: the owners-superconsumers. Along with the politicians and bureaucrats, they are creating these development paradigms and profiting from it at the expense of millions and millions (for whose real uplift and betterment the public money should have been spent).
I can see the objections and the barrage of questions coming: At least more people today are well-off than at any other time in history. Wouldn't some inequalities creep in given the size and scale of our country? And then, what is the way out? Should we just live in shacks in villages? Shouldn't our children aspire to work and live in modern corporations in modern buildings in modern cities? What's wrong with having so many flavors of ice-cream? And how can we root out corruption?
Let me try and answer them in the best way I can.
I'm not against modernization or capitalism. And I love to experiment with flavors in ice-cream along with my kids.
I'm against the mess we have created in the name of development. Why I write strongly about all this is because much of it could have been avoided. Corruption is part of the problem but lack of a holistic vision and poor quality of leaders are bigger causes for this mess.
Why did our leaders throw open the flood-gates of economy without proper planning and preparation? How could we not learn from the mistakes of Western countries? If we had, a monster like Gurgaon should never have come to life. Why do we seem hell bent on aping the West, mostly guzzling their beer but not imbibing their spirit of freedom and justice?
Lokpal Bill may or may not cut down on corruption. But if we do not overhaul our existing laws and labyrinthine governance systems into simpler, speedier and more equitable ones, our development equation – and corruption situation – won't change much.
Over the past few days I have seen the resolve and sacrifice of a simple-minded – though sometimes confused – man, Anna Hazare. But he's already 74 and doesn't seem to have either the experience or the intent to play a larger and more active role in running the affairs of this country. His collaborators and team members seem well-meaning people but will the current political establishment allow them center stage once Anna's ongoing fast recedes into some complicated reconciliation?
To run a country as big and diverse as India, you need at least a dozen or so best minds who can review, change and execute our existing model of development. This will require an immense effort, honesty and perseverance of an order that would make Hercules' task seem tiny in comparison.
It will also require some radical thinking and steps on development: those that do not look at development as encouraging billions to crowd the roads with raucous cars but instead put more Metro tracks and create more walking space; those that include prevention of diseases and espousing a healthy lifestyle as essential elements of a nation's healthcare planning; that take systemic measures to ensure there's bathing water for every citizen and not bother too much about pricey faucets and showers; that rationally allocate natural resources to the production process for a more justifiable and environmentally friendly dispensation...
I hope that Jan Lokpal would be a right step in that direction, but I know that so much more is needed in India to set the course right. And I will be wary of what happens next. Won't you be?
It is a dumbfounding moment for a lot of Indians. This Anna Hazare thing and the whole idea of a nation suddenly up in knots against corruption.
Most people are beginning to feel that the Jan Lokpal Bill as envisaged by Team Anna will rid India of the cancer of corruption – to a significant extent. Some feel the Sangh Parivar is ready to ride on the back of the moment – and the movement. Yet others are trying frantically to save a government from whose cupboard the skeletons of corruption just can't stop coming out.
While corruption has become a buzz word, a love-hate word, a cure-all and curse-all word, I think it might not be a bad idea to look at the whole development equation and see where corruption – and we, a nation of billion-odd people, including oddest ones – fit in.
Let me warn you: this could be a longer article than the mostly asinine tweets and cut-and-paste status updates fast gaining currency as our preferred mode of conversation rather than well-considered and longish pieces of writing. So if you are just looking for some sound bytes, scoot away now! Please.
So, what does the whole development equation look like?
This questions is directly and significantly related to corruption, so just think it over.
To my mind, to embrace development in today's fast, technologically advanced and increasingly rights-aware world is to ensure these things: people are able to feed and clothe themselves, children get to play and learn the things they find interesting, adults get to work and get paid in fair proportion to their abilities and labor, and there's a speedy and reasonably fair system of settling disputes and administering justice.
What we have in the world today is this: a huge proportion of humanity goes to sleep on a hungry stomach; each year thousands of poor people die in heat or cold waves for want of proper clothing and shelter; millions of children are malnourished, millions more are child-laborers who hardly get to play anything, let alone learn about interesting things; most people have to settle for whatever they get for the back-breaking work they do (with only a few complaining about salaries and weekends – and still fewer making noises on taxes directed at the really wealthy); and justice is either out of reach for most, too delayed or simply putty in the hands of the powerful.
When you consider these parameters of development in third-world countries like those of sub-Saharan Africa or India (not very different if you look at the bottom two-third of the pyramid), you find that the development situation is truly appalling.
And yet...
Yet there is development happening. Can't you see, there are malls sprouting all around suburbia? Didn't you read about the 20 or so Bentley cars sold in India? Haven't you seen advertisements of bathroom fittings that promise to drench your body with hundreds of liters of water in a single shower? (Okay, the ads don't say anything about how much water is needed to “enjoy water” with those fancy fittings, but you could make out, couldn't you?) And hey, didn't you hear about the new shampoos for your dogs launched by that cult multinational brand?
Truly, there must be a lot of people out there willing to bathe their doggies in exotic shampoo? Or installing a thousand-dollar shower and taking a bath themselves instead? And don't you forget all those vacations in picture-perfect locales that the papers are so aggressively promoting through ads and articles (I forget which is which these days.)
So the top one, two or five percent of an economy is full of all these people – the mega consumer-owners who keep the bulldozing engines of “modern” development going on. And they get the economists to throw a beautifully coined term at anyone who raises an objection to this resource-hungry and environment-ravaging model of development: the “trickle-down effect” that reaches the common man.
The bottom 95 percent? Most of them just manage to keep alive, a majority never having any real chance of shopping in the same mall they helped build with their own hands. And a not-so-big-as-made-out chunk, the neither-here-nor-theres of the world, the enamored middle classes, looks up dreamily at the owners-superconsumers and aspires to reach there some day. But most never do.
The result is a gaping structural deformity in development. Which means a tiny portion of people enjoy all the luxuries of the world, a significant number work blindly for money in the hope of making it big, but the astonishing majority barely scraping through life in unhygienic, depressing and impoverished conditions.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not against capitalism, if that's the idea you are getting from the above views. We've seen socialism fail miserably and the days of autocracy are long numbered. So capitalism or market economy is what we are left with essentially.
What I'm just trying to get at is the root cause of corruption and the enabling environment that helps it grow and enrich a few at the cost of so many.
At the heart of such an enabling environment are three things: natural resources, power and greed. Corruption results from the unholy mix of these three ingredients. In particular, when the legal and systemic structure of a country is not designed to take care of huge structural inequalities in development, corruption seeps in, becomes a flood and starts to boil the blood of the suffering millions.
The unholy mix of corruption, in which powerful people loot the natural resources of a country to largely distribute the wealth thus generated among themselves and throw some peanuts to the milling crowds, is not a new phenomenon. Right from the old colonial masters, be they the Spaniards or the British, down to the current power-brokers and “industrialists,” this loot has been going on for ages. Nothing seems to stop it. What can be realistically expected, perhaps, is that this loot somehow lessens to a tolerable level so that people at the bottom can breathe a little fresher air.
The current upsurge in India is an acknowledgment of the huge and multiple instances of rampant loot going on in the country for the past so many years. The worst part is that almost all political parties that make the so-called democratic polity of India have been caught with their hand in the till at one time or another. Which is why “the common man” has lost faith in the democratic process itself.
If you look at the candidates who fight elections, who are they? Most of them are goons, goondas, boors, hardened criminals, apathetic profiteers and so forth. Many of them are the already rich scions of political bigwigs or their proteges. A tiny minority might be sincere and honest, but there numbers are too few to make a big difference.
Fortunately or unfortunately, the natural resources of a country are limited. That is why, after the process of economic liberalization in India has gathered pace, there is an urgency among our political and owner-superconsumer class to quickly dispense the remaining resources (mines, land, etc.) and ensure their own further enrichment. If palms need to be greased to hasten that process, so be it! If inferior material can be bought at exorbitant costs to the exchequer (read to “you, me and other tax-payers”) but at enormous profits to those giving and receiving contracts for infrastructure and other “nation-building” exercises, why not? Such is the rationale of the corrupt.
And what happens in successive elections? The party or parties that come to power blame the previous regime for all the ills of governance, including corruption, lack of financing, poor decisions, etc. – and continue to line their own pockets while mouthing blames and expressing their own helplessness. Given that almost all parties in India shelter a growing flock of bad sheep in their midst, this cycle of blame and loot just keeps on repeating every five years.
And what development do we have at the end of the day? Oh, my God, don't ask me that! We have a monstrous situation in the country. But let me first talk about a few good things: there are some spanking new, world-class malls and office buildings, a huge number of automobile beauties are available for purchase, some expensive medical facilities have come up, a few lakh educated folk have found employment and there's a cornucopia of consumer goods out there in our urban markets.
Now, get ready for the not-so-good, bad and really ugly parts. There's muck and filth all around those swish malls. Muck and filth in large parts of our cities – on the roads, along the railway lines, around our very houses. Some posh localities and gated communities aside, the sheer amount of muck and filth is mind-boggling. If one were to weigh all that garbage in, say, Mumbai, it would perhaps equal half the waters of the Arabian Sea! Maybe more.
Come to the roads now. The Merc, the Alto and the cycle-rickshaw all stand side-by-side, trying to wiggle their way out of massive traffic jams. Flyovers have turned into nice places where cars crawl bumper-to-bumper, giving their occupants an opportunity to enjoy wide-angle views of their sprawling city – except nobody seems to be enjoying. The honking and heat and smoke are just all too annoying!
There have been many reports of the five-star-type hospitals charging exorbitant money and still not being able to provide the necessary healthcare to their customers. The poor are just turned away (despite the fact that many got land from the government at concessional rates in order that a certain number of poor can also avail of their facilities).
The increasing amount of burgers, pizzas and processed foods are making more and more Indians grow – their bellies, that is. And also grow the instances of diabetes and heart disease amongst them. Why do you think they are building all those expensive hospitals? All marketers have got their projections in place and are readying for the battle to fight diseases that the very pseudo development caused in the first place!
This whole development equation is coalescing around the few: the owners-superconsumers. Along with the politicians and bureaucrats, they are creating these development paradigms and profiting from it at the expense of millions and millions (for whose real uplift and betterment the public money should have been spent).
I can see the objections and the barrage of questions coming: At least more people today are well-off than at any other time in history. Wouldn't some inequalities creep in given the size and scale of our country? And then, what is the way out? Should we just live in shacks in villages? Shouldn't our children aspire to work and live in modern corporations in modern buildings in modern cities? What's wrong with having so many flavors of ice-cream? And how can we root out corruption?
Let me try and answer them in the best way I can.
I'm not against modernization or capitalism. And I love to experiment with flavors in ice-cream along with my kids.
I'm against the mess we have created in the name of development. Why I write strongly about all this is because much of it could have been avoided. Corruption is part of the problem but lack of a holistic vision and poor quality of leaders are bigger causes for this mess.
Why did our leaders throw open the flood-gates of economy without proper planning and preparation? How could we not learn from the mistakes of Western countries? If we had, a monster like Gurgaon should never have come to life. Why do we seem hell bent on aping the West, mostly guzzling their beer but not imbibing their spirit of freedom and justice?
Lokpal Bill may or may not cut down on corruption. But if we do not overhaul our existing laws and labyrinthine governance systems into simpler, speedier and more equitable ones, our development equation – and corruption situation – won't change much.
Over the past few days I have seen the resolve and sacrifice of a simple-minded – though sometimes confused – man, Anna Hazare. But he's already 74 and doesn't seem to have either the experience or the intent to play a larger and more active role in running the affairs of this country. His collaborators and team members seem well-meaning people but will the current political establishment allow them center stage once Anna's ongoing fast recedes into some complicated reconciliation?
To run a country as big and diverse as India, you need at least a dozen or so best minds who can review, change and execute our existing model of development. This will require an immense effort, honesty and perseverance of an order that would make Hercules' task seem tiny in comparison.
It will also require some radical thinking and steps on development: those that do not look at development as encouraging billions to crowd the roads with raucous cars but instead put more Metro tracks and create more walking space; those that include prevention of diseases and espousing a healthy lifestyle as essential elements of a nation's healthcare planning; that take systemic measures to ensure there's bathing water for every citizen and not bother too much about pricey faucets and showers; that rationally allocate natural resources to the production process for a more justifiable and environmentally friendly dispensation...
I hope that Jan Lokpal would be a right step in that direction, but I know that so much more is needed in India to set the course right. And I will be wary of what happens next. Won't you be?
Thursday, August 18, 2011
Four Life Lessons My Kids Taught Me
In one of his poems, William Wordsworth famously remarked, “The child is father of the man.”
I had read this line years ago. But now, when I look at it again I'm not only in a better position to appreciate its import, I can perhaps make my own little additions to the very notion as well.
As an unabashedly proud father of a 14-month-old son and a seven-year-old daughter, I have spent countless wonderful hours with them—loving, learning and laughing enough to feel a little preachy.
So, my dear poet, not only is the child father of the man, the child is the teacher, guru and even God to man.
If the smiling face of a young child does not belong to God Himself, what else does?
If the whooshing cooing gurgling bubbling sounds of the child do not come from God's own throat, what else does?
If their little innocent pranks and pulls are not rooted in God's mischievous mind, what else could be?
In India I've heard a lot of old folks say, “Children are the embodiment of God.” Not only do I second them but I think the reverse could equally be true: God is made possible by children.
But let me not take you too far into the domain of theistic or ontological questions. Let me only share some of the most vital lessons my kids have taught me.
The first and foremost lesson—though I'm yet to fully imbibe it (revive it, rather)—is to always take delight in the little things around us. The melodious sounds of a toy, the vibrant colors of a book, the playful dance of a piece of paper in a whorl of light and air. Delight in anything that is pleasing to the eye, sweet to the ear, cool to the touch. Delight in anything that is new, exciting, mysterious, inviting...
They have made me discover the beauty of the world and take delight in it through their experience. So whenever my senses are numbed by the greedy and possessive ugliness of the world (and they often do), I need only look at the kiddos laugh and play and share their delight.
The second vital lesson is simplicity of being. A child just wants to be. Period. The thought of emulation or rivalry or the blind pursuit of a vocation is thrust upon them in their formative years. Have you ever heard children spontaneously say what they want to be? It is the parents or other people who usually put the nasty idea of being or trying to be someone else into their fragile brain.
True, sometimes the children say they want to be whatever they fancy at any given moment. But these whims keep changing and no true picture emerges until at least teenage. I've learned—and continue to learn—that we must let kids be. Our role is only to help them identify their true calling and facilitate their journey as much as we can. The rest is up to them.
Another great learning is that, tied as we have become to our clockwork schedules, we must sometimes allow ourselves to be yanked away from the tyranny of time—and be thrown cheerily into the timeless playfulness that is immanent in all children. (And in all Nature indeed.)
By simply throwing their arms around me, or clinging to my legs when I’m late for work, my children have often taught me, without saying a single word, how infinitely better it is to be a willing slave to love than to be a forced prisoner of time.
That is not to say that we do not meet our professional commitment or neglect work we are paid for—but just to reiterate that one thing cannot be a substitute for something entirely different and certainly much more important. (Unless your only priority is to chase greenbacks, in which case you shouldn't be reading this article.)
Perhaps one of the most important lessons children have taught me is forgiveness. They just keep forgiving me for my innumerable imbecilities. No matter how cross I’m with my daughter or how much I’ve scolded her (my son is too young to be scolded, though my wife disagrees :), she hugs me with an unconditional love that puts my tyranny to shame—and makes me want to become a better-behaved father next time around.
And these are not the only lessons. As I continue my parental journey, I'm sure there will be countless occasions for me to learn, unlearn and re-learn life's most vital lessons from children.
And so my education goes on...
-o-
I had read this line years ago. But now, when I look at it again I'm not only in a better position to appreciate its import, I can perhaps make my own little additions to the very notion as well.
As an unabashedly proud father of a 14-month-old son and a seven-year-old daughter, I have spent countless wonderful hours with them—loving, learning and laughing enough to feel a little preachy.
So, my dear poet, not only is the child father of the man, the child is the teacher, guru and even God to man.
If the smiling face of a young child does not belong to God Himself, what else does?
If the whooshing cooing gurgling bubbling sounds of the child do not come from God's own throat, what else does?
If their little innocent pranks and pulls are not rooted in God's mischievous mind, what else could be?
In India I've heard a lot of old folks say, “Children are the embodiment of God.” Not only do I second them but I think the reverse could equally be true: God is made possible by children.
But let me not take you too far into the domain of theistic or ontological questions. Let me only share some of the most vital lessons my kids have taught me.
The first and foremost lesson—though I'm yet to fully imbibe it (revive it, rather)—is to always take delight in the little things around us. The melodious sounds of a toy, the vibrant colors of a book, the playful dance of a piece of paper in a whorl of light and air. Delight in anything that is pleasing to the eye, sweet to the ear, cool to the touch. Delight in anything that is new, exciting, mysterious, inviting...
They have made me discover the beauty of the world and take delight in it through their experience. So whenever my senses are numbed by the greedy and possessive ugliness of the world (and they often do), I need only look at the kiddos laugh and play and share their delight.
The second vital lesson is simplicity of being. A child just wants to be. Period. The thought of emulation or rivalry or the blind pursuit of a vocation is thrust upon them in their formative years. Have you ever heard children spontaneously say what they want to be? It is the parents or other people who usually put the nasty idea of being or trying to be someone else into their fragile brain.
True, sometimes the children say they want to be whatever they fancy at any given moment. But these whims keep changing and no true picture emerges until at least teenage. I've learned—and continue to learn—that we must let kids be. Our role is only to help them identify their true calling and facilitate their journey as much as we can. The rest is up to them.
Another great learning is that, tied as we have become to our clockwork schedules, we must sometimes allow ourselves to be yanked away from the tyranny of time—and be thrown cheerily into the timeless playfulness that is immanent in all children. (And in all Nature indeed.)
By simply throwing their arms around me, or clinging to my legs when I’m late for work, my children have often taught me, without saying a single word, how infinitely better it is to be a willing slave to love than to be a forced prisoner of time.
That is not to say that we do not meet our professional commitment or neglect work we are paid for—but just to reiterate that one thing cannot be a substitute for something entirely different and certainly much more important. (Unless your only priority is to chase greenbacks, in which case you shouldn't be reading this article.)
Perhaps one of the most important lessons children have taught me is forgiveness. They just keep forgiving me for my innumerable imbecilities. No matter how cross I’m with my daughter or how much I’ve scolded her (my son is too young to be scolded, though my wife disagrees :), she hugs me with an unconditional love that puts my tyranny to shame—and makes me want to become a better-behaved father next time around.
And these are not the only lessons. As I continue my parental journey, I'm sure there will be countless occasions for me to learn, unlearn and re-learn life's most vital lessons from children.
And so my education goes on...
-o-
Friday, July 1, 2011
India and the Morality of Corruption
A scathing look at the state of corruption and its root causes in the world's largest de-Mock-racy
For the past few weeks, corruption has become a fashionable topic in India. Starting from Anna Hazare's fast over Lokpal Bill to Baba Ramdev's anti-black money drama, anyone who's got an opinion is voicing it stridently. There's a flood of opinions in electronic media, in the papers and on the chatter of Facebook and Twitter.
But all this brouhaha is the product of an increasingly and shamelessly corrupt nation. And it would hardly result in a major change in the way politicians and bureaucrats have been looting the country.
Before giving my reasons for saying so or suggesting any semi-cooked corruption-curing recipes of my own, let me state where my loyalties lie.
I'm neither with BJP-RSS-Sangh types nor with the Congress or its multiple splinter groups, nor with any just-for-name's-sake-group on any social networking site. I am with the proverbial and much-abused common man who, while all this media circus is going on, is busy carting a back-breaking load of supplies through our ramshackle markets.
I'm with the man who is trying to survive with meager earnings from his nondescript kiosk-shop. I'm with the girl who must hurry home if she doesn't want to be raped or teased and who hasn't got a chauffeur-driven car to take her home. I'm with the homeless beggar who is being harassed by the policeman and the gangster alike. I'm with the farmer whose irrigation water is diverted to serve five-star hotels and resorts...
In fact, I'm with about 700 million poor people of India who never understood the meaning of Shining India and probably never will.
Let me take you a little back in time. I'm not sure how many of you would appreciate it, but I grew up on an ample dose of all-round prosperity shown on Krishi Darshan (a government TV program). It was also taught in school books and preached through a state-controlled media.
I was under the impression that the founding fathers of this nation had done a great job by putting together a wonderful Constitution. And by following in the footsteps of our erstwhile rulers (the British), they kept a gargantuan bureaucracy as well-oiled as you would find in a spanking factory.
How was I to know that all that oil was actually grease, exchanging millions of palms for the enrichment of their owners alone? How was I to know that while our leaders threw out the tyrant rule of the British, they wittingly or unwittingly installed a draconian regime that thrived on abusing power?
I wouldn't bore you with all the details of a newly Independent, proud India with great leaders having a great vision for our great nation. But the bottomline is this: our population control measures have failed. Our aging infrastructure (much of it bequeathed to us by the British) is deteriorating. The sub-standard products made by our 'license raj' industrialists have mostly failed to stand against global competition (do a count of how many products we buy come from China and elsewhere). Our socialistic mutlipoint programs and hare-brained schemes have failed to give social security to the poor...
The list of failures just goes on and on.
But yes, we have succeeded in creating a vicious, greedy, bloated and extremely corrupt 'governance' system. And at the tentacled head of this system sits that obsequiously dynastic, shamelessly appeasing and pathetically spineless 'grand old party' – with a foreigner madame and a stooge of a man currently at the helm.
This otherwise useless party seemed to have done a good thing when it opened up the Indian economy in the early nineties. But, alas, it all came a cropper!
While the license raj was being disbanded, a new band of robbers and looters emerged – and they were of all forms and persuasions, comprising politicians, bureaucrats, land grabbers, deal brokers, thugs and curmudgeons.
This band set out in earnest to divvy up the natural and other resources of the country. They did it largely among themselves, but threw away some bits and pieces off and on for the rising middle, lower middle, lowest middle and god-knows-how-even-lower middle classes.
Some crazy statistics were rustled up about the benefits of all this 'wealth creation' trickling down to the lowest rungs of society. Never mind that the trickle has been nothing but a stinky obnoxious drain.
If you are stats oriented, chew these: more than 75% of Indian population has a purchasing power of less than Rs20 a day. Nearly half of Indian children are malnourished. About 110 million agricultural workers found employment for only 209 days in 2004-05 compared to 220 days in 1999-2000. Around 150 of India's 607 districts are engulfed in Naxalite movement. And while the much-touted GDP growth races ahead in the 7-9% range, employment growth has been a meager 1%...
In these twenty or so years of liberalization, one of the most 'liberalized' things in India has become honesty and integrity. While the slogan of India's freedom fighter Subhash Chandra Bose was “Tum mujhe khoon do, main tumhein azadi doonga” (You give me blood, and I'll give you freedom), the prevalent leitmotif in an increasingly corrupt India has become “Tum mujhe ghoos do, kyonki main kisi aur ko doonga!” (You better give me bribe, coz I gotta give it to somebody else.)
Mera Bharat mahaan, indeed! (My India is great.)
It is this ghooskhor or bribe-infested culture that seems to have captured the absconding imagination of a few lakh people (a handful in the colossus of India) all of a sudden.
Ask any businessman – from the local chaiwalla to the global Ambani – about the number of times they have to bribe the multiple power brokers in order to survive (in Ambani's case, thrive).
Ask the owners of the buildings in any Indian city (most of which are truly ugly and urgently in need of fresh air) whether they could have erected those eyesores without making “the authorities” turn a blind eye to their multi-storied plans?
Hell, ask yourself, would you be able to survive the daily horrors of getting a gas connection, registering a property, obtaining a government stamp of approval, securing school admission for your child and innumerable such “tasks” without paying any bribes to someone?
So, in a broader view of things, almost all of us are corrupt.
But the way in which the high and mighty are corrupt – and the way they engender this culture of corruption all around them – calls for special discussion.
Imagine a unit of society in which the head of that unit is corrupt. The unit could be a family, a resident welfare association, a local governing body, a state government or the central ruling formation. This head goes about lining their pockets at the expense of others, asks and permits others to do as they please so long as all those “involved” get their “cuts”, and generally remains unaffected by the misery of those way down below in the hierarchy. How do you think one can cure this unit of the curse of corruption?
By asking those at the bottom of the ladder to not pay bribes? By just complaining about the situation and the whole machinery? By pressing the Like button on someone's anti-corruption page?
No, dear reader, of course, not. And that's precisely what we the people of India seem to be doing. From the above example, I'm sure you would agree that the most effective way of making the unit corruption-free is to remove the head of the unit and replace him or her with an honest, caring one.
And that's where the biggest challenge for India lies. My question is, who do you install in place of the current corruption-laden ruling parties in India? Which national-level party today is without the stains of corruption?
A bigger and related question: Do we have any leader of the stature who can clear up the mess in our heritage-rich but idea-poor country? Can anyone take India to the social, economic and scientific heights achieved by the likes of US and Japan (or by its own people centuries ago)?
Is there anyone who can ensure that calling India a superpower in the making is not a laughing matter but a matter of progressive achievement? (For one, I laugh out loud at such peasant-like thinking, given the way things are going.)
Who is going to be that person? That leader?
Anna Hazare? Hmmm, perhaps, but let me think...
Sonia Gandhi? I was so happy that she refused to be Prime Minister (PM) – only to be much angry later when she installed that puppet-puppy PM...and we all know how many corruption scandals have erupted. Why, you are reading this article because of that!
LK Advani? Gadkari? Narendra Modi? No way!
Baba Ramdev? He doesn't see himself in politics – and neither do I!
Rahul Baba? He has neither the credentials nor the credibility (what he has is the Gandhi dynasty and a boatload of sycophants)...
You? Me? What are we talking about!
Alas, my dear reader, no one. To my eyes, there is NOT A SINGLE human being (as far as that weary eye can see) with the moral courage, impeccable integrity, caring humanity and a wide support base who can lift India out of the abyss of corruption and then take it to the greatness we are so fond of remembering.
And so? So we keep on trying (or pretend to), while the millions keep on dying. Sorry, CK Prahalad, despite your philanthropic economic advice, when it comes to India, there's only misfortune at the bottom of the pyramid.
For the past few weeks, corruption has become a fashionable topic in India. Starting from Anna Hazare's fast over Lokpal Bill to Baba Ramdev's anti-black money drama, anyone who's got an opinion is voicing it stridently. There's a flood of opinions in electronic media, in the papers and on the chatter of Facebook and Twitter.
But all this brouhaha is the product of an increasingly and shamelessly corrupt nation. And it would hardly result in a major change in the way politicians and bureaucrats have been looting the country.
Before giving my reasons for saying so or suggesting any semi-cooked corruption-curing recipes of my own, let me state where my loyalties lie.
I'm neither with BJP-RSS-Sangh types nor with the Congress or its multiple splinter groups, nor with any just-for-name's-sake-group on any social networking site. I am with the proverbial and much-abused common man who, while all this media circus is going on, is busy carting a back-breaking load of supplies through our ramshackle markets.
I'm with the man who is trying to survive with meager earnings from his nondescript kiosk-shop. I'm with the girl who must hurry home if she doesn't want to be raped or teased and who hasn't got a chauffeur-driven car to take her home. I'm with the homeless beggar who is being harassed by the policeman and the gangster alike. I'm with the farmer whose irrigation water is diverted to serve five-star hotels and resorts...
In fact, I'm with about 700 million poor people of India who never understood the meaning of Shining India and probably never will.
Let me take you a little back in time. I'm not sure how many of you would appreciate it, but I grew up on an ample dose of all-round prosperity shown on Krishi Darshan (a government TV program). It was also taught in school books and preached through a state-controlled media.
I was under the impression that the founding fathers of this nation had done a great job by putting together a wonderful Constitution. And by following in the footsteps of our erstwhile rulers (the British), they kept a gargantuan bureaucracy as well-oiled as you would find in a spanking factory.
How was I to know that all that oil was actually grease, exchanging millions of palms for the enrichment of their owners alone? How was I to know that while our leaders threw out the tyrant rule of the British, they wittingly or unwittingly installed a draconian regime that thrived on abusing power?
I wouldn't bore you with all the details of a newly Independent, proud India with great leaders having a great vision for our great nation. But the bottomline is this: our population control measures have failed. Our aging infrastructure (much of it bequeathed to us by the British) is deteriorating. The sub-standard products made by our 'license raj' industrialists have mostly failed to stand against global competition (do a count of how many products we buy come from China and elsewhere). Our socialistic mutlipoint programs and hare-brained schemes have failed to give social security to the poor...
The list of failures just goes on and on.
But yes, we have succeeded in creating a vicious, greedy, bloated and extremely corrupt 'governance' system. And at the tentacled head of this system sits that obsequiously dynastic, shamelessly appeasing and pathetically spineless 'grand old party' – with a foreigner madame and a stooge of a man currently at the helm.
This otherwise useless party seemed to have done a good thing when it opened up the Indian economy in the early nineties. But, alas, it all came a cropper!
While the license raj was being disbanded, a new band of robbers and looters emerged – and they were of all forms and persuasions, comprising politicians, bureaucrats, land grabbers, deal brokers, thugs and curmudgeons.
This band set out in earnest to divvy up the natural and other resources of the country. They did it largely among themselves, but threw away some bits and pieces off and on for the rising middle, lower middle, lowest middle and god-knows-how-even-lower middle classes.
Some crazy statistics were rustled up about the benefits of all this 'wealth creation' trickling down to the lowest rungs of society. Never mind that the trickle has been nothing but a stinky obnoxious drain.
If you are stats oriented, chew these: more than 75% of Indian population has a purchasing power of less than Rs20 a day. Nearly half of Indian children are malnourished. About 110 million agricultural workers found employment for only 209 days in 2004-05 compared to 220 days in 1999-2000. Around 150 of India's 607 districts are engulfed in Naxalite movement. And while the much-touted GDP growth races ahead in the 7-9% range, employment growth has been a meager 1%...
In these twenty or so years of liberalization, one of the most 'liberalized' things in India has become honesty and integrity. While the slogan of India's freedom fighter Subhash Chandra Bose was “Tum mujhe khoon do, main tumhein azadi doonga” (You give me blood, and I'll give you freedom), the prevalent leitmotif in an increasingly corrupt India has become “Tum mujhe ghoos do, kyonki main kisi aur ko doonga!” (You better give me bribe, coz I gotta give it to somebody else.)
Mera Bharat mahaan, indeed! (My India is great.)
It is this ghooskhor or bribe-infested culture that seems to have captured the absconding imagination of a few lakh people (a handful in the colossus of India) all of a sudden.
Ask any businessman – from the local chaiwalla to the global Ambani – about the number of times they have to bribe the multiple power brokers in order to survive (in Ambani's case, thrive).
Ask the owners of the buildings in any Indian city (most of which are truly ugly and urgently in need of fresh air) whether they could have erected those eyesores without making “the authorities” turn a blind eye to their multi-storied plans?
Hell, ask yourself, would you be able to survive the daily horrors of getting a gas connection, registering a property, obtaining a government stamp of approval, securing school admission for your child and innumerable such “tasks” without paying any bribes to someone?
So, in a broader view of things, almost all of us are corrupt.
But the way in which the high and mighty are corrupt – and the way they engender this culture of corruption all around them – calls for special discussion.
Imagine a unit of society in which the head of that unit is corrupt. The unit could be a family, a resident welfare association, a local governing body, a state government or the central ruling formation. This head goes about lining their pockets at the expense of others, asks and permits others to do as they please so long as all those “involved” get their “cuts”, and generally remains unaffected by the misery of those way down below in the hierarchy. How do you think one can cure this unit of the curse of corruption?
By asking those at the bottom of the ladder to not pay bribes? By just complaining about the situation and the whole machinery? By pressing the Like button on someone's anti-corruption page?
No, dear reader, of course, not. And that's precisely what we the people of India seem to be doing. From the above example, I'm sure you would agree that the most effective way of making the unit corruption-free is to remove the head of the unit and replace him or her with an honest, caring one.
And that's where the biggest challenge for India lies. My question is, who do you install in place of the current corruption-laden ruling parties in India? Which national-level party today is without the stains of corruption?
A bigger and related question: Do we have any leader of the stature who can clear up the mess in our heritage-rich but idea-poor country? Can anyone take India to the social, economic and scientific heights achieved by the likes of US and Japan (or by its own people centuries ago)?
Is there anyone who can ensure that calling India a superpower in the making is not a laughing matter but a matter of progressive achievement? (For one, I laugh out loud at such peasant-like thinking, given the way things are going.)
Who is going to be that person? That leader?
Anna Hazare? Hmmm, perhaps, but let me think...
Sonia Gandhi? I was so happy that she refused to be Prime Minister (PM) – only to be much angry later when she installed that puppet-puppy PM...and we all know how many corruption scandals have erupted. Why, you are reading this article because of that!
LK Advani? Gadkari? Narendra Modi? No way!
Baba Ramdev? He doesn't see himself in politics – and neither do I!
Rahul Baba? He has neither the credentials nor the credibility (what he has is the Gandhi dynasty and a boatload of sycophants)...
You? Me? What are we talking about!
Alas, my dear reader, no one. To my eyes, there is NOT A SINGLE human being (as far as that weary eye can see) with the moral courage, impeccable integrity, caring humanity and a wide support base who can lift India out of the abyss of corruption and then take it to the greatness we are so fond of remembering.
And so? So we keep on trying (or pretend to), while the millions keep on dying. Sorry, CK Prahalad, despite your philanthropic economic advice, when it comes to India, there's only misfortune at the bottom of the pyramid.
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