April 9th 2011
As India awoke to the realisation of a resounding win in the world cup cricket, little did it realise that the week going forward would have the country united for another reason altogether: The passion to end corruption.
Growing up in India, I realised soon enough how the country is united by the force of Cricket. The faith of my country men and their belief in the countries cricket team is unwavering, something I can't say with the same conviction about our countries governance and laws. Rampant corruption weaving its way from the lower rungs of the hierarchy to the upper echelons, seamlessly becoming entrenched in the functioning of individuals and other structures, rarely questioned when indulged in, but often talked about with panache in retrospect, is perhaps the major impediment in bolstering our faith in our country.
The phenomenon of Corruption in itself requires one instance and one individual to start and then becomes self-sustaining. Can everyone promise to steer clear of this chimera? Corruption can arise when the existing functioning of the system is grossly inefficient and in order to get the work done one must bribe an official in power. Alternately, it can arise when someone in power realises to wield his power position to extract favours from others in order to get this party what they desire. The second case of corruption can only be dealt with in a remedial manner- punish those who abuse their positions. However to curb the fundamental form of corruption, the systems need to be made efficient in the first place so as to remove the need for anyone indulge in an opportunistic manner. Until this is done, I am wary of the level of commitments that is going to be forthcoming from individuals across the country.
When Anna Hazare a political activist, decided to fast until a bill that creates an independent body to address corruption cases was passed, the entire nation was propelled to join in this vortex of cataclysmic process- thousands of activists, school and college students and movie stars joined forces- organizing protest marches, candlelight vigils and posting relentlessly on Facebook to substantiate their support for the cause. After 5 days of protest, the government relented and decided to issue a notification to set up a committee to draft the “Lokpal Bill”. This is when Anna Hazare and many of his supporters broke their fast. The country is still celebrating this victory as I write.
But are celebrations really in order? The transition might have been kick-started here, but the road to transformation does not appear to be linear. Whilst the past five days have taught us the power that rests in the hand of the common man in a democracy, at the same time this spurt of passion brings to attention the short attention span of our media-driven society. For most part the media helped in spreading the word of the masses across the country and even beyond the countries borders. This freedom and openness is like a security blanket, every move of the government is under scrutiny, and in a democracy, any inappropriateness can spell out disastrous poll results. But come tomorrow, and there is a fear that this valuable attention is going to be turned to the next newsworthy story and the ignited passion might be washed away overnight.
Perhaps, what remains to be seen is that if, this passionate display of solidarity to demand a redressal mechanism for corruption related problems, is just a fad and would dissipate as the world looks in other directions or is this a new form of democracy in making, where school children and retired individuals alike, would stand shoulder to shoulder, demanding transparent systems and even being prepared to fast until death to rectify the system?
