My take on the anti corruption drive

This movement in India has come out of nowwhere and has overtaken cricket, bollywood, and Delhi politics all at the same time. Folks whose name I never heard before - Anna Hazare, Baba Ramdev, etc - have gotten to national and international limelight and staying there. This mass movement has spanned vast stretches of the heartland, across cities and towns, across provinces and regions. It has attracted, perhaps again for the first time - people from the urban middle class as well as the rural poor.

This is a phenomenon in the making. The corruption raj is endemic and deep rooted. Its eradication is not going to happen in a day. But, somehow, I feel this movement has crossed a silent thresold.

Anyhow, I had watched the growth of this movement on Facebook - a networking platform on the internet. And I posted something on their Facebook page, which I thought I might repeat here :

QUOTE

I believe this movement has been breathtaking - like a fresh breeze over polluted and stagnant airs of Indian politics. It is something I had never quite seen before in this magnitude. It is very very welcome, and about time.

However, it is my feeling that the benefit of this movement is not going to be an immediate eradication of all corruption in a month, or two, or even a few years. This would take a rather long time and a hard struggle. I shall explain why.

First, let us not forget that endemic corruption is not just present in India, but is a Global phenomenon. Only in India it has resulted in this movement. This bodes rather well for the Indian people.

But, on the other hand - think of the challenges the civil society faces. The people it has to deal with to bring in change and stop corruption - the elected members of the Government, the Judiciary, and the Bureaucracy - they are the main beneficiaries of the corruption, by and large. So, you are not going to find it easy for them to bring in new Lokpal bill, and implement it, that is designed to put them out of business.

IN democracy, the biggest and the only non-violent weapon that the public has, is the vote. Eventually, this movement has to mature so that voters stop thinking in narrow compartmentalized groupings of regionalism, linguistic ethnic or faith differences, and vote blindly in their narrow slots. They would need to keep an additional item in their checklist, which takes priority over other distinctions - and that it - which candidate allows corruption to continue, and which one is willing to go against his/her own party leader, and vote for REAL CHANGE to the system. My suspicion is that brand name politicians and people with long tenure into the system are likely already corrupt, or become complacent and the fight has gone out of them. One would need a new breed of elected members of high moral to come up to serve the nation.

This movement has a very vital function though - to raise awareness about how deep the decease goes - how pervasive and all encompassing it is - and how it crosses party and ideological borders.

This is also a movement where, perhaps for the first time, the middle class and the disenfranchised are finding common ground. This is a ground breaking development.

The face of India’s political landscape is changing. Perhaps India is destined to show the world a new say of Governance.

Jai Hind.

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The original link to the post is at : http://www.facebook.com/IndiACor#!/photo.php?fbid=224865794209780&set=a.186653318031028.51064.165845033445190&type=1&theater

Meanwhile, I wrote a poem about the movement, and in my own mother tongue (Bengali). I thought I might as well put that up here too.

Cheers.