Random Thoughts
Progressing by Leaps and Bounds...
We are progressing by leaps and bounds, in that magic term read: ''Corruption''. No matter how much we cry hoarse about such terminology no one, read the powers that be are bothered. For them it is just another word, and if you impugn anyone with it including our revered politicians, then they cut across ALL party lines, remonstrate and show an unique solidarity. At least they can be united on one issue, that is corruption not against it, but FOR it.
Even a few years back a financial scandal of one crore was mind boggling. We would be agahast at such tainted things. Then in the coal gate scam it was a few hundred crores. The nation was rocked, shocked. Now in the helicopter scam it is thousands of crores. We are so shocked that we refuse to speak. We are benumbed into silence.
Aren't we progressing? After all now we are impervious to corruption, have taken it for granted and maintain stoic silence on it. And then we plead with the British Prime Minister to solve this imbroglio! It is like a child, who has committed a crime and then pleads with his parents to bail him out! My simile may be inapposite, but it is the best I can think of...
So what do we do? I suppose we accept it and then try to legitimize it. That is why I have been saying that we should legitimize corruption, and accept it as a way of life. In the process at least the poor can be richer, and of course more corrupt. The rich, well let us not talk about them, they have their own ways to manipulate things, they have mastered it into an art. And the politicians who also belong to that elitist class, have made it into a science, an empirical one at that.
This notion of progress will I am sure lead the country into the twenty second century. Now we talk in terms of centuries. After all cricket has been infused into our consciousness ubiquitously, and has engendered a sense of patriotism, to the extent that we are clamouring for the Bharat Ratna to be awarded to one of them! Thank god some of us remembered a late hockey player, and got the entire thing scuttled! That is the kind of cleverness we need, even politicians would blush!
Now, coming back to this progress story we talk unabashedly and unceasingly of growth. What is growth? We are growing, in terms of corruption, in terms of population, in the mobile phones we produce and in our purchasing powers, and of course in the number of glitzy malls we construct and erect, paling into insignificance the might and the beauty of the Taj Mahal. We are technologically advanced, but educationally backward. We don't like cartoons, especially in text books and we want to re- write history. Good, we are progressing, don't talk of regression, that is for the poorer nations.
We are a rich nation, rich with tainted money, showy malls, the glamourized FDI, foreign investment, why we now boast of foreign pilots in many of our airlines.
Yes, we are progressing by leaps and bounds!
23-Feb-2013
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Ananya S Guha
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