Some Thoughts on Corruption in our Country and its Removal 

It goes to the credit of Anna Hazare and the fine management and planning of his team that they have been able to highlight the issue of corruption in this country. 
 
Every movement after a certain stage needs careful guidance and direction; lest there be anarchy, chaos and mobocracy. The mobilization has been good and now the direction should also be good.  It’s comparatively easy to speak against the establishment rather than to improve our own selves. 
 
Amitabh Bachchan ruled the silver screen for three decades just by spitting venom against the system, the authority and several social institutions. People are easily provoked. It has become a fashion these days to say, ‘the whole country rallied behind the movement’ or ‘the whole country thinks so’. 
 
We wilfully keep forgetting that 80% of India is still doing with Rs. 20.00 a day. The animal-like living conditions may be good subjects for research, winning prizes, making documentaries and films but these conditions can only and only be improved by a system of technology based delivery mechanism, a good education system, population control, a corruption watch-dog like the Lokpal and several other measures. 
 
There is frustration among urban Indian middle class because of corruption –there is no doubt about that. But that is not the end of the story. 
 
The gap between middle-upper classes and the poorest of the poor is awful. If the actual majority, that is of the poor, was to come on streets, we cannot gauge the consequences. The trend is dangerous. To bring people on the streets every two months is too selfish and too wrong. The system has to be respected. The system gives us the normal functioning of our lives. Everyone has a family, some liabilities to look after. The young people who have come on the streets will have to build their future by their personal toil and effort. The ‘bhandara’ at Ramlila cannot go for ever. 
 
Playing with the lives of the people is not advisable. Even pre-legislative discourse has to go in a disciplined and defined manner. A method has to be worked out in order to make our legislative process more inclusive. Party-targeted criticism or person-targeted criticism will not take us anywhere. It will only discredit us. We all know in our hearts that corruption in India is a universal phenomenon and is not limited to any party or individual. 
 
In fact, we ourselves have to improve. Our politicians, our social workers, our businessmen, our media-persons - all emanate from us, the society. They are certainly not different from us. All of us contribute on a daily basis to aggravate the problem of corruption in our country. It’s very soothing to look at villages, fields, greenery of India and hum ‘ye mera India’ from the AC coach of a train or a window-pane of a ‘cool’ office. Once we go there, we realize the mosquitoes, the mud, the smell. It’s easy to love the idea of India but difficult to understand the conditions under which the majority lives. 
 
The biggest flaw is to believe ‘my reality is the only reality; my truth is the only truth; my India is the only India’.   
 
We go on creating system after system, office after office, mechanism after mechanism, law after law but the situation does not improve. Nothing works if the quality of people deteriorates. The truth is harsh but the truth must be spoken. There is no substitution for hard work.  Labor must be respected. Our youth hanker after degrees but do not yearn for knowledge. Everyone is in some ‘jugad’. Everyone wants to manage; very limited number of people wants to actually ‘achieve’. 
 
Remember, you can take the horse to the pond but can’t make him drink water.