India is shining in 2010, many experts say. There is also an optimistic forecast that in the next few years, India might outsmart China in terms of growth rate. True, the rulers and their close relatives, inclusive of the nameless and faceless benamies are the major beneficiaries. Our former Minster Raja, and his leader, who always talks in a flowery language, also wants to demonstrate the same critical capacity in playing with the game of 2G spectrum. People of this kind are enormous throughout the country and by occupying the corridors of power; they call the shots, thinking that the hands of judiciary will ever hardly touch them as there is always a collusive oligopolistic relationship between the criminalized segment of politics, politicized bureaucracy and corrupt segment of judiciary.
If only all the wealth plundered by individuals and institutions of independent India in the last 60 years of existence as a free nation had been collected that massive figure might run in terms of trillions of Dollars; that would make the so called loot in the British India look very small and insignificant. If only some benevolent dictator in future could recover and confiscate all the ill owned wealth of these tainted individuals, for the next one century, we need not put any tax of any kind in the resurgent India and no nation on Earth would find it easy to compete with us. I am trying to fantasize things and live in a world of illusion but one day this will become true. When will that tomorrow come? Until then to console ourselves in the present shall we listen to our architects and spiritual giants like Jawaharlal Nehru, Gandhi , Aurobindo, who really had a real concern for the common man and the collective suffering of the humanity.They were a witness to poverty and malnutrition, enveloping post independent India, and attempted to do something for their salvation.
“Everyone is celebrating Diwali, but my house is only enveloped by darkness. There will be real Diwali, only when India attains independence”, wrote Jawaharlal Nehru to his daughter, Young Indira. That was in 1942.
Sensing and seeing all round poverty and starvation, Aurobindo, while his revolutionary spirit was still alive asked his wife Mirunalini, to travel along with him on the rough road.
“A man can’t satisfy himself by rendering assistance to his brothers and sisters. During these days of famine, I feel everyone, those who have not anything, are standing before our house for alms and assistance. All through my country, I have more than 30 crore relatives. Most of them die out of poverty and starvation. And many others are plagued by diseases and more suffering. Somehow they live and pull on. It is my duty to help them and enable them. What do you say, my better half?” Aurobindo asks his wife. It was in 1938.The question is so choked with emotive feelings and it is posed to all of us.
The quotes given above were not the actual sentences spoken / written by Aurobindo or Nehru. They were my translations from what I read in my language , Tamizh long ago. It is really puzzling and amazing to see Ms.Jaya, waging a war against corruption when her own ill gotten wealth is revolving around her neck like a millstone. The amount involved in court cases might look very tiny as compared to the huge amount appearing in the news today.Being one among the many, in plundering the wealth of the nation, no politician worth the name, of her tribe can preach sermon, to others.Since Gresham’s Law-Bad drives good from circulation, has been well entrenched in politics, our criticisms are not aimed at honest and good, still playing a role of pivotal importance at both national and regional level.
The entire independent India is posing a challenge to the majority of the masses , who are disadvantaged and dispossessed. Who will wage the second war of independence against the so called Indians who are virtually raping the soil, the river, the farm, the factory and the forest regions in the name of Special Economic Zones (SEZs), modernization of Airports, constructioin of five star hotels and I.T.Parks and so on .
This is also a country where the sports activity like cricket is more fun involving more scandals and cricket like other political event, elections, have more room for a particular segment to become very rich, impoverishing thereby the majority poor. If the politicians think that money and muscle power alone can place them back to power, they will be living in fools paradise. Nitish Kumar’s Developmental model of Bihar, one of the weaker states of India will be a timely reminder to all the politicians cutting across the party lines in the North and the South, East and the West that people do whisper by pressing the button in the voting machine: “ Enough is enough.”Meanwhile, we the intellectuals, the so called elite who do not even go and vote, will write poetry , lament in the class room and sometimes cry. That crying will be good for our health.
No comments:
Post a Comment