this is, again, a past piece from my journal, of end-december, 2014. i post it now as a retrospection. i invite the reader to take make an assessment - do a score card - on what india actually got in the last six years, vis-a-vis the possibilities that that long-past evening held out...
as, or more, interestingly, what would you have advised this imaginary(wink) leader to do - as say, the top 10 doable things - to take the country towards that dharmic society, armed as you are with the perfect hind-sight...??
What can Marendra Nodi do?
India as it stands today is pervasively corrupt, with rampant breaking of small rules (read traffic rules, for example) that is symptomatic of the potential for complete societal breaking down of the respect & fear for Law abiding down the road, in the Wilson & Kelling’s “Broken Window theory” sense. A license to breed denominational politics and profiteering, enabled by the cancerous corruption that makes almost anything possible, with a price-tag on everything, and more than enough human beings expendable in the process due to the humongous population that we are ‘blessed’ with, is the form of politics we witness everywhere.
In short, we are a society hurtling headlong towards an abyss of anarchy, but - like the earth that hurtles through space at tremendous speeds and yet not felt or seen to be so by the specie like us living on them - where each person is saying in effect, that “it is not so bad (for me), the chaos/breakdown is still far off, and beyond my lifetime, so let me carry on chasing my own vested ends”, and thus sailing along, either as an active accomplice to the causes of the coming break-down or a passive witness abetting it.
Amidst all this, let’s say there is one Indian citizen, of name Marendra Nodi (MN from hereon), a man of humble origins, a true patriot at heart perhaps, who wants to make a difference, reform the government and society, to create the ideal state and polity. He has the savvy, the willingness to work hard, remain dedicated to the ‘causes’, the felicity of communication, and the will power to push and persist for success.
For creating changes towards the ideal society, he has to get into a position that gives him the power to change things socially, or to influence such changes. He needs to get the power of people – democratic power - in a country like India. Either the one that is formal, or the one that is obtained purely by the followership – like what Mahatma Gandhi, or Nelson Mandela, and the like, enjoyed.
Getting the power by followership of the Gandhi kind would require extraordinary circumstances, often oppressed and suppressed, from what history shows, and a life-time to reach there. And with a miniscule success probability. So he is left with the power of the elected mandate kind, the formal one, as the faster alternative to go for.
To fight election and win at state and national levels needs enormous amounts of money, besides organization. That kind of money can only come from either the Businesses, or from public at large. To get that kind of money collected from people is again an arduous task, verging on the near impossible if to be done on short notice (read one to two years) or in ‘normal’ times. That leaves you with the money from the ‘corporate cronies’ as the way to win the elections and get the power to ‘rule’.
Thus MN chooses the latter again, as the ‘practical’ and early doable alternative. He gets the corporates to fund his campaigns, and gets a resounding victory at the hustings - with a clear majority that can allow him to have his way at governance.
Now he has the power to do things, get big things done. But he also has all those big obligations to pay back, all the alliance partners to satisfy, pulls from countless at the center and the states, besides the constant nag and snapping of the opposition parties that are part of the whole venal system that only cares to be there to earn and earn as much as it can while it lasts, and thus considers anyone and anything that comes in the way to be a threat to be destroyed….
What can Marendra Nodi, if he wants to make it a dharmic, righteous society, Do?
29th December 2014.
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