One man, 74 plus years in age, Nehru topi, white kurta and pyjama clad magnetizes a country of 1.17 billion people. It is stale news for all you news by the minute purveyors but this movement has taken almost fifty years in it's efforts to make a dent in the darkest corners of India's political fortress. A fortnight's delay on an unvisited blog will not shake any foundations, not today at least. This man's modus operandi- an indefinite fast. The goal- to incorporate all levels of government to include the office of the Prime Minister, Supreme Courts and High Courts into the gamut of the bill (the Lokpal Bill), to leave no seat of Government free from an anti-corruption investigation, in the event that such proceedings are required. Corruption is prevalent in all countries be it the open ended, unashamed methods practised in developing countries, or the more subtle and sophisticated, democratically shrouded options practised in richer countries. It has threaded itself into the basic moral fabric of life in the developing countries. It has burrowed deep into personal, professional, corporate, government and even charity organizations. It bathes in our pump water, courses through veins unbiased of skin, tone or color, and is unfortunately the third stigma that outlasts both taxes and death. We have all stood face to face with it even in our revulsion it has fed off us, we have supplicated ourselves however strong in values we claim to be before its unabashed single mindedness. We may not have liked it, we may openly chastise it's birth and development we have in the smallest ways succumbed to it's snake charmer poise and rocked benignly. This cancer has grown stronger as we remain swaying aimlessly to the mesmerizing wave of it's flute and the promises it lures us into. This 74+ man has raised an uncompromised stink, so powerful in its rightness that it raised the nation on edge and made us stand up and say yes it's about time, even though the hour has long since passed when we were meant to act. I respect our Prime Minister greatly, as an economist and a leader, he has been one of the most poised, honest and decent politicians, elected to fire up the Indian political hearth. Yet the country is ablaze with the fever this single White clothed man called Anna Hazare has lit with resilience and straightforwardness. Will the country continue in its pace of anti-corruption pacifist vigilance or will it succumb to the tradition of time and erase all memories slowly. Just so you know, and so that I may remind myself the Fast was successful and the Parliament sits to debate the clauses that could be included in the bill. The Internet is amazing in it's thirst to dispense information, all we need is the dowsing that guides us to search and learn, I have the forked tongue and the snap of twigs in my bones so I should suffice for those of you who visit this blog for now. With all modesty be led onwards and read, and drink in what a few million have whet their thirsts for- the possibility, the hope even, that corruption will subside and eventually diminish to the ashes of a flame subdued.
Drink well for it may soon come to a political standing near you, the thirst for life without the impotent bribes, the filter of mistruth or the political cloaks of invisibility.
To this end I leave you, with a less serious note, a question posed by one of my friends in passing (unrelated to my rambling here). This friend asked "if you were a middle income man with three children, driving fast to get the kids to school, wife and self to work, and were pulled over on the side of the road, what step would you take. Go to court and fight it out or.....?" The possibilities are limitless.
We define ourselves and the country in the end.
We define ourselves and the country in the end.
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