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 Commonwealth Games (CWG) 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 kind of 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 the 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 an incredible proportion.
When we thought we had arrived at the nadir, the Indian jugaad came into play. The stains disappeared and India preened itself on ceremonial hosting, graduating with honours at the end of an 11-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 the nation's sporting success did not last even 24 hours as reports about the Games scam amounting to a staggering Rs. 8,000 crore started coming in. With the graph rapidly descending into a bottomless pit, India shaming eclipsed India's momentary hours of shining.
Worse was to follow. The Adarsh scam showed how former defence officers were defenceless before greed and graft. The spectrum scam put all the rest in the 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 be gifted with self-delusion to affirm that the CVC, the CAG, and the CBI put together can erase the odium of corruption! Let us 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 picturised daily on page 3 of our newspapers and on TV screens are the sources of vaulting ambition among the middle class to become insta-rich by any means. The media which are aware of their reach and influence present a picture larger than life, shirking their responsibility to provide their audience a broad sociological, psychological and truthful understanding of all issues.
The efforts of our policymakers to liberalise our economy and bring about egalitarian capitalism have not yielded the expected dividends; 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 a 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 on the middle class that has always been the backbone of our society. Gandhiji during the freedom movement mobilised the middle class to sacrifice its dependence on the colonial masters. Today, we need a second freedom movement against corruption. The middle class should sacrifice its greed that is far greater now than before 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 writer's email id is: hema.vr@hotmail.com)
