Paul Arokyam Raja, one of my MIM students in the 90’s quickly responded to my blog writing last week – on the reminiscence of recent Mahe visit; his command over English, clarity of expression, and emotional warmth have always made me happy and blanketed me with more love.At a time when I was going through emotional and financial turbulence most of them self inflicted, it came as a relief.
The Raja in our title story, recent hero of spectrum fame or shame is not merely reference to one of the mega corruptions of all times but a true representative sample of all our Rajas, not the old Maha Rajas whose privy purses we abolished long ago. But essentially refers to t the power mongering money seeking, new tribe of shameless Rajas, simply devoid of morals, ethics, sense of shame and self respect. This tribe has grown along with the resurgent India, engendered by corporate monopoly . Of course, this is not the first time that we are witness to an era of a fantastic season of scams. Thanks to dramatic climatic change even usual seasons in an year, drastically change and there is some order there with all chaos. But scams and scandals have become an all time phenomena in the era of liberalisatioin, with the exception of a few good opposition leaders and some good souls in the ruling party; no parliamentarian or Legislative assembly gentleman has any moral right to talk about corruption, and downgrade other fellow politicians. I am surprised and shocked at politicians observing, shrinking of the moral universe.This was once sketched by Prabhat Patnaik in his Convocation Address in Asian College of Journalism at Chennai way back in the mid 2000’s . Raja’s leader, an old man who is in the final leg of his life’s journey is so bemused and bewildered by the massive corruption of his close relatives that he has forgotten his sense of proportion and unashamedly invokes the Dalit card or uses some other clever ploy like playing with words or recollecting corruption of the old times to divert attention of the general public. The gentleman thinks and believes that public memory is short and that they will treat this mega corruption as a matter of no consequence for the simple reason that corruption has become a way of life and no culprit has been ever punished !
India is now really a rich country and shining nation for a select few, sorry for so many great politicians, both young and old, big and small i.e., it is enchanting only for those shameless and faceless individuals who are soaked in that dirt and filth of tainted money. Joseph Stieglitz long ago termed privatization as briberization and the way in which corrupt deals are openly taking place in wholesale fashion even before the eyes of the authorities, symbolized by a (Clean!) and notional prime minister, but not enjoying real power is just shocking, puzzling and frustratingly irritating. I don’t understand for how long, the P.M can afford to lose his prestige and risk his reputation carefully built up over a period of time and allow himself to be just bulldozed by his own cabinet colleague. 2G spectrum may be massive scam but it is only a representative case of other scams like housing, common wealth games scandal and so on. The most distressing thing is that for the last so many years, especially in the last two decades, in the name of liberalization and globalization, many individuals and many favored companies have been looting the country and amassing huge fortune, knowing full well that compulsions of coalition politics will not take them to prison, and judiciary will not act that swiftly.
No political party chief in India can say and suggest that his party really practices democracy and that it does not have any illegal or immoral relationship with corporate sector. The track record of the so called national parties is no cleaner. If a serious research is undertaken to compute the quantum of corruption indulged in by the so called leaders of this country right from independence till this date, it will be a mind boggling amount .When will all the accumulated riches –the tainted money, the sinned money will return to the exchequer ? One day it will. The law of the land may act slowly and for many years or decades may not even act at all but one day or the other the youth of India, in collaboration with ordinary masses will completely recover and restore that wealth in distant future.1789 French Revolution and 1917 October Russian revolution are not just dates in history; the collapse of Berlin Wall or demise of communism in Russia and success of authoritarianism in China do not mean, the poor , the downtrodden , the Dalit , the angry women and all those humans who are dispossessed of everything under the sun will just keep quiet, keeping lollypop in their mouth when the leaders loot the nation. Nature will not allow cumulative weakness and gross corruption for ages and centuries. Oh God ! Are you listening to our complaints?
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