From India bashing to India Shining to India Shaming to…?
By Hema Raghavan
The graph of Indian character during the last couple of months has had an amazing run- from notches down its Y-axis to a spectacular rise above and a steeper fall way below its starting point. The run up to the games was marked by rains, dengue, delay, corruption, dug up roads, dirt and filth strewn all over the city. The foreign press and the Indian media wrote off the CWG citing Indian inefficiency to host a major sporting event. The loathsome pictures flashed on the BBC website and gleefully reprinted by the Indian media were meant to show that India lives only in her toilets. No one questioned whether this filthy reporting was the erstwhile Empire’s way of striking back? For nearly six weeks we ground our noses in muck and filth and looked gleefully at CWG as Corruption Wealth Games played in a Hall of Shame. Passively we accepted the sobriquet ‘corrupt’ for ourselves and painted our shame in all its stains! India bashing had reached incredible proportion.
When we thought we had arrived at the peak of nadir, the Indian Jugaad came into play. The stains disappeared and India preened itself in ceremonial hosting, graduating with honours at the end of an eleven day extravaganza. Our athletes lifted the Indian morale to show that all is not lost in corruption and India shines still. As the Indian flag went up 101 times the graph peaked higher on the Y-axis.
But even before the victory bugle sounded the Last Post, the First Post was heard to mark the start of the investigations. The euphoria of a nation’s sporting success did not last even 24 hours as reports about Games scam to the staggering sum of Rs.8000 crores started coming in. With the graph’s rapid descent into a bottomless pit, India shaming eclipsed India’s momentary hours of shining. Worse was to follow. Adarsh scam showed how the former defence officers were defenceless before greed and graft. But Raja’s broad spectrum of scams put all the rest into shade! Is it possible to retrieve the graph after its hellish descent into the dark vaults of shame?
The famed Indian jugaad now pejoratively stands for Indian ingenuity for corruption. One should be an outright optimist or gifted with self-delusion to affirm that CVC, CAG, CBI put together can erase the odium of Corruption! Let us honestly admit that there is a distinct malaise-an insatiate greed for money- afflicting our society. The vulgar display of riches and the glamorous lifestyle of the ultra rich picturized daily in page 3 of our newspapers and on the TV screens are the sources of vaulting ambition among the middle class to become insta-rich by any means. The media which is aware of its reach and influence presents a picture larger than life, shirking its responsibility to provide its audience a broad sociological, psychological and truthful understanding of all issues. The efforts of our policy makers to liberalize our economy and bring about egalitarian capitalism have not yielded the expected dividend; on the contrary they have ushered in crony capitalism among many of the corporate biggies and infected the middle class to dream big and seek unhealthy satiation through graft and corruption. The politicians have gained the most by their (ab)use of power and clever distribution of largesse to those select few who can return their favours in equal measure. To live and let live is their mantra as the politicians package humanity into politics, but not politics into humanity.
How to regain our honour and dignity in the world polity? Can we turn the graph up on its axis once more? Our only hope rests with the Middle class that has always been the backbone of our society. Gandhiji during the freedom movement mobilized the middle class to sacrifice its dependency on the colonial masters. Today we need a second freedom movement against corruption. The middle class should sacrifice its greed that presently is far greater than its need and build a corruption-free society that values the elegance of a life of simplicity. Can India shaming turn into India Shining ? Only if the Middle class rises and says “Yes, we can”
The graph of Indian character during the last couple of months has had an amazing run- from notches down its Y-axis to a spectacular rise above and a steeper fall way below its starting point. The run up to the games was marked by rains, dengue, delay, corruption, dug up roads, dirt and filth strewn all over the city. The foreign press and the Indian media wrote off the CWG citing Indian inefficiency to host a major sporting event. The loathsome pictures flashed on the BBC website and gleefully reprinted by the Indian media were meant to show that India lives only in her toilets. No one questioned whether this filthy reporting was the erstwhile Empire’s way of striking back? For nearly six weeks we ground our noses in muck and filth and looked gleefully at CWG as Corruption Wealth Games played in a Hall of Shame. Passively we accepted the sobriquet ‘corrupt’ for ourselves and painted our shame in all its stains! India bashing had reached incredible proportion.
When we thought we had arrived at the peak of nadir, the Indian Jugaad came into play. The stains disappeared and India preened itself in ceremonial hosting, graduating with honours at the end of an eleven day extravaganza. Our athletes lifted the Indian morale to show that all is not lost in corruption and India shines still. As the Indian flag went up 101 times the graph peaked higher on the Y-axis.
But even before the victory bugle sounded the Last Post, the First Post was heard to mark the start of the investigations. The euphoria of a nation’s sporting success did not last even 24 hours as reports about Games scam to the staggering sum of Rs.8000 crores started coming in. With the graph’s rapid descent into a bottomless pit, India shaming eclipsed India’s momentary hours of shining. Worse was to follow. Adarsh scam showed how the former defence officers were defenceless before greed and graft. But Raja’s broad spectrum of scams put all the rest into shade! Is it possible to retrieve the graph after its hellish descent into the dark vaults of shame?
The famed Indian jugaad now pejoratively stands for Indian ingenuity for corruption. One should be an outright optimist or gifted with self-delusion to affirm that CVC, CAG, CBI put together can erase the odium of Corruption! Let us honestly admit that there is a distinct malaise-an insatiate greed for money- afflicting our society. The vulgar display of riches and the glamorous lifestyle of the ultra rich picturized daily in page 3 of our newspapers and on the TV screens are the sources of vaulting ambition among the middle class to become insta-rich by any means. The media which is aware of its reach and influence presents a picture larger than life, shirking its responsibility to provide its audience a broad sociological, psychological and truthful understanding of all issues. The efforts of our policy makers to liberalize our economy and bring about egalitarian capitalism have not yielded the expected dividend; on the contrary they have ushered in crony capitalism among many of the corporate biggies and infected the middle class to dream big and seek unhealthy satiation through graft and corruption. The politicians have gained the most by their (ab)use of power and clever distribution of largesse to those select few who can return their favours in equal measure. To live and let live is their mantra as the politicians package humanity into politics, but not politics into humanity.
How to regain our honour and dignity in the world polity? Can we turn the graph up on its axis once more? Our only hope rests with the Middle class that has always been the backbone of our society. Gandhiji during the freedom movement mobilized the middle class to sacrifice its dependency on the colonial masters. Today we need a second freedom movement against corruption. The middle class should sacrifice its greed that presently is far greater than its need and build a corruption-free society that values the elegance of a life of simplicity. Can India shaming turn into India Shining ? Only if the Middle class rises and says “Yes, we can”
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