I am not planning to give any view on Anna Hazare or the series of recent "Live TV shows on FASTS" !!! But adding Anna in the headline catches eyes of a lot people hence did so. Since we have started with Anna, let me start with Corruption! What is corruption for a common man and what are areas where it impacts him the most in "day to day" life. Being from a middle class, service going family in Indian metro, I come across the corruption mainly at 3 or 4 places. When a person like me buys a house he visits many government offices and spends a lot of time in moving across them. When he goes for buying a car or a bike, he visits again some government offices. But these are less frequent or rather once or twice in lifetime events. Then when do we "meet" corruption daily? May be when we travel on the roads and meet friendly cops? Or try to catch a rick with a tampered meter? Or some similar instances. "Is there any corruption involved there?" is the first question that comes to mind of most of us.
... Problem is exactly there. We have accepted these as part of our life / system. Our mind and values have accepted them as a legitimate part of us and since we don’t find them as something wrong happening around us, we are not able to change it. It’s a problem of mind set!
Pollution ... everyone talks passionately about this. Let me tell you an excellent event that happened few days back... and happens every year. Recently we finished with the "Ganesh fest" and there was hue and cry about the "Eco-friendly Ganesh idols", still most of the idols were made of Plaster of Paris and everyone was silent as it touches so called "religious" feelings. Not only that on the next day of immersion procession, there was heap of soiled plastic cups and bottles on the roads, curtsey - water provided to people in procession by various political parties and social organizations. And people felt it their right to dance throughout the time on loud music. So effectively people were causing all possible types of pollution and sadly enjoying it.
It’s been long time since people have accepted that cars run on horn than the accelerator or carrying a cloth bag for shopping is "down-market" or "Inconvenient" or keeping dry and wet garbage separately in "Waste of time". So same question resonates in our minds, "what’s so wrong in that?"
.... And yet again problem is exactly there. We have accepted these as part of our life / system. Our mind and values have accepted them as a legitimate part of us and since we don’t find them as something wrong happening around us, we are not able to change it. It’s a problem of mind set!
Now let me touch upon the biggest problem faced by the country of 1.21 billion ... Population (Hope the counting is correct?). True that it’s our strength sometimes (like in deciding where the cricket matches will be played etc.), but more often it is our limitation. I read an interesting comment after recent Delhi blast, "People of metros in India are sitting ducks for any blast". Next day I was at Mumbai CST and I wondered how can we have security for a railway station which carries people equivalent to population any small country in Eastern Europe every day within morning hours? It is practically impossible. Effectively the value of human life has gone so cheap that politician’s feel giving a few hundred thousand for people’s death in blasts a huge charity! The country which accepted the kids as "Gift of god" (especially male child !) has not understood the importance of family planning even after so many years of independence and sadly politicians are happy as they are able to get more and more poor people whom they can buy for votes. When a common man thinks of all this.. he feels "It is like this for years how can I change it? and even if I feel it wrong is it going to change?"
.... And yet again problem is exactly there. We have accepted these as part of our life / system. Our mind and values have accepted them as a legitimate part of us and since we don’t find them as something wrong happening around us, we are not able to change it. It’s a problem of mind set!
All the three major problems ask the same set of questions ... "when will this mindset change?" which makes us think.. "Do we have leaders whom we can respect and who can change this problem of mindset?" which in turn suggests "Do we really elect proper set of people who can help this?”..
We "All" need to think and answer these questions without letting our "mindset" and "inertia of stagnancy" coming in our way, if we really want to change .. than opting for and momentarily cheering "Live TV shows on FASTS" !!!
