The world is staring to see revolutions in several countries, big and small, violent and non violent. While youth in Egypt rose for their basic rights and overthrew a corrupt regime, rioters in London managed to help themselves with some expensive goodies. India also witnessed uprisings, first by Kashmiris and then by Lokpal supporters.While the first section never really got any support from the people of India, thousands rallied behind Anna. Media declared Kashmiri youth as anti-India while Anna is hailed as the modern Gandhi.
I have no doubt that Anna's intention to bring this country back to track from the ugly hands of corruption which started to threaten the great Indian growth story. Unfortunately we cannot wipe out corruption by targeting top politicians of this country. One filmy slogan said, 'Mera Neta Chor Hai'. But who elected these leaders? Its the same people who are protesting now. Are all politicians corrupt? If that was the case there will not be any difference between India and Pakistan today. People who are shouting slogans against the PM should not forget the fact that he has impeccable integrity and has done great services to this country when he was a finance minister .
The Indian middle class should understand corruption is not just in the top brass of politicians ,its everywhere. We should take initiative and find ways to stop it .How many of us pay proper receipt when a police constable stops us for not using you using helmet.By passing laws nothing will change .We all know what happened with POTA. If you bring LOKPAL on to of everything and give ultimate authority to prosecute anyone, will all issues get resolved ? What if the Lokpal goes corrupt? We will appoint something to monitor Lokpal? Finally we will haveto ask God to intervene in that case. There is no magic solution to the problem, definitely corruption will not end by passing one law. Anna's campaign is just like a Bollywood movie, but I cannot see a happy ending.
Instead of protesting in the streets of Delhi, we should create awareness about corruption throughout India. The people of constituencies which elected the Rajas and Ranis of Indian politics should be educated about the value of votes and the importance of selecting the right candidate. Once the people are able to identify politicians with dubious background and evil intentions, the political will be forced to field candidates who are willing to work for country and not for their own pockets. Needless to say we need tighter control and monitoring of elections. Its very easy to degrade all the politicians of this country and be patriotic, but none of us can deny the fact that we elected them.
We need transparency in government offices and there should be clear cut deadlines for all the offices to action any request from public. We should wipe out middle men who are in and around each and every government office waiting for preys. We require grievance addressing systems in place which can take strict actions if things are not falling in place. We do not require laws to get this done, we need to fine tune the system. Above all this we need to change our own attitude, those who are protesting now should not use bribe as a means to get their work done before others. Anna and other campaigners are focusing on politicians while corruption in the lower end of government is much more than what we can imagine.
We are the largest democracy in the world. It is insane to change this system one fine day. Already there are enough bottlenecks in this country which is slowing development. Who will dare to invest in India if we have a weak government who can't take independent decisions? We need to look at the bigger picture before branding all the elected representatives as corrupt and reject the entire democratic set up. The media who hails the new Gandhi and his second freedom struggle has no relevance in this society as they are least bothered about the consequences which will directly impact a billion people of this country. A man like Gandhi will take birth only once in a million years.
