Every columnist I read these days has one complaint. Our leaders have betrayed us. It is a complaint that the foreigners have also picked up. So, even as they write huge encomiums to India's fifty years of freedom and democracy, they make snide remarks about rampant corruption, nepotism, rising crime, violence against women, economic backwardness, and our terrible record of human rights violations. Every tribute is laced with irony and sarcasm and a surging sense of
disappointment. Every assessment ends with what India could have been, if only we had better people to rule over our destiny.
The target is always the same: our leaders.
We empathise with this argument because we also feel exactly the same. We feel that we could have grown, prospered, matured as a nation if we had better people to lead us. Some say that modern India needed a Sardar Patel, not a Nehru. Others claim that Subhas Bose would have been best. What they are all trying to say is that we deserved better. Certainly better than what we have. Laloo Prasad and Kalpnath Rai. Satish Sharma and Sukhram. Jayalalitha and Mayawati. And
now, history sheeters like Taslimuddin and Arun Gawli.
Point. But the question is: Have we ever paused to ask ourselves how we got these leaders? How did these men and women, who embarrass us today, come to power in the first place? If we did, perhaps we would find a few important clues out there.
Our leaders are voted to power. Even the ugliest crook has come up, using the electoral mechanism. Democracy, in other words. Every time people like you and I do not go to vote, someone else votes for us. Every time you pick up a magazine that runs a huge, glorious interview with some stupid, ugly, desperate criminal who imagines he is Robin Hood, you encourage the media to glorify yet another rogue who will use that process of glorification to politically launch himself. Every time you buy a movie ticket in the black market or ask someone to get your moron son into college for a few hundred thousand rupees, you are strengthening the forces of corruption and crime
to further your own short term interest.
Why do you complain later when the very people you had used to get your way grow into bigger criminals and come back to haunt your life?
Our film-makers borrow easy cash. Our stock brokers cut raw deals. Our drivers ignore the traffic lights. Our families ask for dowry. Our politicians come to power on hot money. Our heroines flaunt their underworld connections. There is a simple nexus between all these. You cannot say that bribing the motor vehicle department to get your under-age son a driving licence is not a crime but killing Gulshan Kumar is. Both stem from the same insouciance towards law and order. Both reflect
the same malady: a nation so desperate to get ahead that it is ready to break every rule. Not
realising that short cuts breed crime at every level.
You can breed the deadly anopheles by staying beside a filthy lake. Or by even keeping a bucket of dirty water in your bathroom.
You cannot complain about where we are going if you want to resort to short cuts yourself. That is he first lesson. You will get precisely the kind of government, the kind of leaders you deserve. If you bribe to get your child into nursery, that money will go towards breeding precisely the kind of political leadership that will corrupt the educational system you have subverted. If you use your neighbourhood goons to drive out your tenants, those very goons will come back to blackmail you a
few years later in the guise of your local corporator or your MLA. By that time, they will be too big, too tough for you to handle.
If you borrow hot money, for however short a while, for however noble a cause, the lender will return to harass and intimidate you. You cannot complain then. Because it is you who uncorked the bottle and created your own genii. It is no use blaming Subash Malhotra or Ronnie Mendonca. It is no use claiming that the cops and the criminals have a nexus of their own. Of course, they do. You are the nexus. You corrupted the cops. You grew the criminals. You corrupted the cops when you
paid them to look the other way when you broke a minor traffic law. You grew the criminals when
you asked them for a small favour to impress your friends and neighbours. How can you complain
now?
Democracy is a dangerous, double-edged sword. You cannot have two sets of laws in a free society. One for yourself, the other for the rest. This is the privilege of those who live in authoritarian nations. In a free country, every wrongdoing has a ripple effect. No man is an island. Crimes may go unnoticed but they always impact the society, the world you live in.
Every cigarette you smoke acts up your old mother's asthma, quickens your son's lung cancer, exacerbates your wife's chronic bronchitis. You are welcome to invite your own death. But it is unfair to hurt others just because you are selfish enough to believe that your own wrongdoing will go unnoticed.
That is the problem with India. You.
You, me, us. Politicians are our creations. Every time we cheered and clapped watching Deewar, we encouraged the hero worship of crime, we taught our children to glorify wrongdoers in the name of social justice. Today, Mayawati is doing the same. So is Laloo. So are Veerappan, Phoolan Devi, Arun Gawli. Why are we blaming them? We made heroes out of them, we are responsible for vanishing the thin line between justice and vendetta, between fighting back the wicked and becoming a victim of wickedness ourselves. It is we who taught our children that they could break the law with impunity if they managed to get away with it. It is we who bribed their teachers to get them pass
marks when they failed. It is we who bought them expensive gifts in cash, without paying our taxes.
It is we who taught them to flaunt their attitude and ignore what is right for what is expedient.
It is this that has caught up with us. It is no use blaming Gandhi and saying that Nehru failed us. It is
no use yearning for Sardar Patel or Subhas Bose in the fiftieth year of our Independence and
hoping that someone will come from somewhere to rescue us, lead us from darkness into light. In a
free, democratic society we are stuck with what we have, with what we do. The garbage you throw
out of your window will clog your sewers and flood your streets. It is not the municipal corporation's fault. It is not even the poor civic worker's fault. You are to blame.
You cannot complain that your forests are dying, your lakes are drying up, your tigers are vanishing
and yet, at the same time, hang up animal trophies on your wall. Just as you cannot breed nine
children and then say women are not getting a fair deal in our society or that over population is at
the root of all our problems. Everything you and I do directly impacts the society we live in. If you
pay black money the next time you buy a flat, that black money will eventually go towards funding
your coffin or your funeral pyre. There are no free lunches, no short cuts for which you do not
eventually pay.
Arun Gawli is in police custody today. Laloo, in judicial custody. Someone else may be in CBI
custody. Others, under TADA, FERA, MISA, COFEPOSA. But the laws of the land, however
strong or stringent they may be, cannot replace the responsibility of every citizen towards making his
or her own nation strong, free, incorruptible. The buck stops with you.
That is why you need to give up this killing cynicism, this belief that nothing can change unless we get
a better leaders. Leadership is no substitute for self help. We have forgotten Gandhi, rejected
Nehru, hated his daughter, accused her son of vile corruption, called V P Singh a crackpot, Chandra
Shekhar an opportunist, Narasimha Rao a crook, Vajpayee a fundamentalist. We have ridiculed
Deve Gowda as a self declared humble farmer, and now we are readying to write off Gujral as a
weak, effete prime minister unable to cope with a nation on the skids.
In the fiftieth year of Independence, it is time to stop pointing fingers at others and take responsibility
for our own destiny. Otherwise, fifty years later, we will be making the same charges against others
and bemoaning our own fate.
Tell us what you think of this column
