Diwali Blues

Despite the mood set by the festive season of Diwali, one is seized by a sense of gloom over the vast screen across the country. Be it the social spectrum or the political panorama or the economic environment, one is uneasy and disturbed at what the nation is passing through, at where we are headed. There are, no doubt, rays of hope here and there, but the overall picture is foreboding.

The discord in the land is the villain of the piece. Unity of thought, of feelings, is present only in patches and pockets. There doesn't appear to be a single passion that drives our nation forward - unless that passion is the personal pursuit of pelf and power by one and all.

We, as a people, don't appear to be united by anything at all. We have reached the stage of each for himself; we have reached the stage where even those groups who want to secede from the country do not arouse the single, combined and mighty wrath of the rest of our total of one billion plus -- there are those who expect and demand that those vile secessionists should be engaged in an unconditional dialogue. Honestly, what have we come to under the garb of democracy? What kind of a nation of one billion plus are we that demands mollycoddling of the Jaichands and the Judas' amongst us?

Some Dalits are lynched to death in some village somewhere. The media makes a noise, big and proper. The police are suspected of aiding and abetting the heinous crime over sanctimonious sentiments about an animal deemed by some amongst our people as sacred to our very civilisation. What happens? The nation doesn't get aroused in anger at five young men stoned to death. Instead, religion enters the scene, and an opportunist with initiative and panache exploits the human tragedy to indulge in mass conversion of Dalits to Buddhism.

Soon, sure enough, the inhuman incident at Jhajjar village in Haryana will be nothing more than one more police case in the hundreds of others lying in cold storage. And the people concerned, or unconcerned, will resume their pursuit of pelf and power.

In fact, our whole society is divided and subdivided, forked and fragmented by various degrees of money power. Take the case of the spoilt brat who's a famous Bollywood actor. At first, his case is a straightforward one -- of a hit and run manslaughter by a car ramming into a poor human being sleeping on a pavement. Then, quickly, complications begin. The police go 'soft' on him for reasons well known. A big politician puts his foot down -- public image is to be protected, after all. A police inquiry into suspected police misdemeanour is ordered. Contradictory statements emanate as to who was driving the fatal car, to whom the car belonged, who its real owner was, whether he was real or fictitious. More headlines as the hero's bail application was quickly rejected and re-rejected and finally granted. And then silence -- the spoilt brat and his clever lawyers free to pursue pelf and power, the dead man's family silenced with compensation, the writers of 'letters-to-the-editor' smug with their paeans to the screen hero's several humane acts of charity. What kind of a moral and legal society is our democracy that cannot give justice in a short time in such a case?

Consider our economic scene. This nation simply cannot unite on the path we must take to reduce the government's role in business, to increase employment, to control population growth, to alleviate poverty, to improve transport facilities, to prevent recurring floods, to enhance education opportunities and standards in villages, towns, cities and metros. Every move in any direction for any of these is beset with debates, with delay, with agitation, with court orders and stay orders, with friction and filibuster. Worse, if possible, are those in business and industry who, despite their dishonesty and dishonour, their invidiousness and incapability, strut about in policymaking councils. Should the government not charge more for agricultural energy and irrigation water? The answer is dissent, discord and interminable delay in decision.

Indeed, the golden rule for India, the nation, would seem to be: dissent and delay --- if the world passes us, so be it, but we must live up to our image of being a democracy, the biggest in the world in case you didn't know or had forgotten.

Even basic civic sense doesn't unite us as a nation. Civic sense is something millions of villagers have never been exposed to in 52 years of central planning. Civic sense is something we've not been taught in town or city schools or, if taught, is something we practise strictly within our home, not on the roads or streets, whatever we have of them. In the metros, civic sense is totally alien to the slum dwellers and only slightly less alien to the non-slum dwellers. That's why prosperous private nursing homes think nothing of throwing hospital waste on the road that will be cleared at the mercy of the well-paid unionised municipal workers who are seen on the job for just a couple of hours, invisible for the remaining six or so. The toilets, even in our courts of justice, make one puke.

Indeed, the attention to civic amenities, general cleanliness and public hygiene by everyone is a shame -- no matter that the state of public health is already a matter of very serious concern. We are, you see, believers in freedom, fundamental rights and all that. Citizens' duties? What's that? Didn't we remove that facet from our Constitution of India?

Bureaucrats of course have duties, code of conduct, rules and regulations. And some of them are indeed a pleasure to deal with. But they are the exceptions. On the whole, our bureaucracy is simply in love with rules and regulations; they work and decide by rules, and know that their job is secured by regulations. No matter how bad the state of government's fiscal deficit, dearness allowance has become their fundamental right; fewer holidays has also become their right --to oppose vehemently, by fair means or foul. We are a democracy, remember?

Lastly, there are our politicians, perpetually in pursuit of pelf and power, through fair means or foul. For nearly all of them, life is but a cycle from one election to another, a hunt from one position of power (and pelf) to another, higher position on that game of snakes and ladders. Nothing, it seems, will ever reform their vicious, wicked ways wherein self-interest tops national interest. Among their several drawbacks -- nepotism, casteism, communalism, populism, duplicity and corruption -- the most inconspicuously commented upon is their lack of knowledge of public finance and economic strategy. The economics of vote bank politics is all they want to know. That is why we, the nation, have never had enough money for creating more courts, more judges, more schools, more public hospitals, more policemen, more roads, more buses, more trains, more homes, and so much more, but there's always money to spare for breeding politicians.

It's a miracle, really, that we are a space nation, set to export satellite vehicles to the world. It's a miracle, really, that our India is today rated by some as the fourth largest economy in the world. As a friend keeps saying, it must be Lord Ganesh, the Protector Ultimate, who must be behind this miracle. To be truly secular, let's say it must be Allah, Buddha and Christ (in alphabetical order) who, with Lord Ganesh, must be behind this modern miracle that ratiocination cannot explain.

It's a miracle, all right, in this nation of a thousand differences in thought where even Diwali is spelt differently as 'Divali' or 'Deepawali.'

Arvind Lavakare