How many times have you heard the public cursing politicians for what they have not done for their country? Chances are you won’t be able to count.
How many times have you heard the public praising you for what you have done for your country? Chances are you won’t be able to count.
Abusing politicians has become our national pastime. Need we say more? ‘Abusing’ seems to be too strong a word, so is the reality. Most of us have grown up listening to epics of moral bankruptcy of our rulers & their opposition. Every Tom, Dick & Harry is too eager to badmouth the political class, little realizing that more often than not s/he too deserves the same, maybe more. What most of us fail to realize is that it is this political class which has kept the nation alive & kicking & if it was not for them the country & its people would have surely gone to dogs. Our politicians may be corrupt & hypocritical sycophants, but are still better than the most of us ordinary mortals.
We are the real culprits, I am afraid to say. The great Indian public wants politicians to be embodiment of all things fair & just, while it itself is the root cause of all evils. We chastise Netas for corruption, how many of us can truly claim not to have given or taken a bribe in our lives? We want the Netas to play by the rules, how many of us have not broken some rule or the other at different times of our lives. To put things in simple perspective, what do you do when you see an empty road with a red traffic light? Most of us will overlook the signal & cross the road and what happens when we get caught by the Traffic Police? We beg the policeman to drop charges, use all sorts of emotional black mail, threaten if we have contacts in high places & negotiate a 50 Rupee bribe & crawl our way out.
We are happy contributing thousands of Crores to the VDIS scheme floated by good hearted politicos & then abuse them all over. We are happy to let our kids jump merit by paying hefty capitation fees or using our caste. We are very innovative in stealing (aka saving in fashionable language) Income tax, Sales tax, VAT, Service Tax, Excise, Customs etc.. etc.. & call it financial ingenuity. We do not hesitate to change the classification of the same materials in different books & loot the country (commercial people will know this).
Why do builders always have different architectural plans for the municipality & for the customer. How do we dare to operate a medical shop without being a qualified pharmacist? How many of our factories meet the norms set by the factory Inspector (I challenge Indian factories to prove their adherence to fire safety norms). How do we dare to buy pirated music, films & DVDs, smoke in public places, give false affidavits, buy without bills to save sales tax, the list can go on & on...
Let us admit it. We are no better than the politicians. Some will argue that paying a 50 buck bribe to the traffic police is not corruption & go on to claim that the Netas do far bigger scams. But then our bribe is small because we are small fry, dealing with small, mundane matters. Netas deal with far bigger things, so engage in bigger corruption. The ratios & the proportions remain the same. “Jiski jitni aukat wo utna corruption karta hai” as a politician said. Let us not mistake our limitations for honesty.
The key to national progress lies not in blaming the political class, but ourselves. We are to blame for the mess because we have all created it. Eradication of corruption is the collective responsibility of all citizens. Merely chastising a particular class of people will not do. Its time we come out of our hypocritical consciousness & introspect ourselves. People living in glass houses should not throw stones.
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