KAHIHI

For India, last year has been pitiful. While few countries were rocked with public uprisings and natural disasters, India witnessed corruption calamity. The dirt of scams and immoral practices among the politicians and bureaucrats were probably more tumultuous than the citizen uproars and the tsunami waves.

Last year our country (sadly) was full of news about the CWG scam, 2G scam, land scams, food prices manipulation, etc in which unthinkable amount of money was siphoned depriving our country (and its citizens) of basic needs.

The progress of a country lies in its development and empowerment of its citizens. However, none of that is seen in our country. The development projects that are undertaken go on for years due the bureaucracy and practices of bribery that are allowed in our system. Eventually, the prices of development go high, the budgets are then manipulated and either the quality is compromised or the citizen is burdened with excess taxes. The budgets allotted for upliftment of the downtrodden are deviated before they reach the actual audience – a very tactful means to exploit the people for want of votes – keep them illiterate and underprivileged so that they always remain at your mercy.

I do not intend to justify or falsify any of the claims made by either sides of the government or the general public. I am, however, confused, as I have always been trying to understand the psyche behind people doing such frauds, scams, and adopting to ill means to achieve what they want. To put it simply, I always wanted to understand, “how much should be enough”; the greed keeps increasing ever after. Even in my wildest dreams, I can never think about what I would do with Rs. 200 crores of assets, if I could ever make that kind of wealth (I did dream about that once, accumulating 200 crores of assets was in itself a gigantic task, and it was morning by the time I could reach that mark. I assumed that I already had that asset base and dream again, yet I failed to conceive of anything to do with that kind of wealth). And here there are people who guzzle down 10 times or even 100 times of that money with so much each and pretence like chewing a paan.

Corruption has plagued our nation. Or perchance, it is like a cancer for our country.

See the cases of Harshad Mehta, Ketan Parikh, Dinesh Dalmia, Telgi, Raju of Satyam, Kalmadi, Raja, and so on. They all reaped what they sowed. They all were big and powerful, yet had to confront the results of their unlawful activities. They had to face the heat.

However, the next step would be to make sure that men like those get punished. It is imperative that we have rules & laws that empower the people to take actions against the corrupt officials. The government alone cannot decide what it must do with those immoral people, there should be a people’s say deciding the appropriate actions for the wrongdoers – a law breaker cannot be a law maker, after all.

Many things like these (words I have wrote above this line) have been written in protest. However, little did it helped, as probably the efforts were not focussed and properly channelized.

Nevertheless, not anymore.

We finally have someone who has taken these men of dishonour head-on. There comes a time when the tolerance level is breached and it takes one person to pull things off. And that person is Anna Hazare – someone who has cared & dared to fight corruption and clean the dirt. How successful he will? Let’s leave it to time. In the meanwhile, let’s stand by him to strengthen his dream of having a righteous society around.

I salute the “man of honour” – Anna Hazare.