My Big Fat Indian Wedding - yes that is what I call this circus! Introducing the joker relegated to one corner - me!!!!!
In this chaos, confusion, raging arguments, need to conformance to stupid traditions, rituals, sacrificing of human emotions on the alter of the need to show off, emotions running way overboard, everybody trying to get their 5 seconds of fame and importance I am uselessly trying to search for happiness and togetherness.
I tie the knot the day after and I already dread my life as a sandwitch between all the different "stakeholders"in my life.
Listening to "The Persecuted Will not Forget" by Testament!!
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
Wednesday, December 3, 2008
Are we to be blamed?
Its been a week since the dance of death was played out in Mumbai. Everyday there are outpourings of grief, anger, frustration and concern directed against our neighbours, politicians and others. I share all these emotions as apart from feeling concerns for my relatives in Mumbai I also had to deal with a personal tragedy during the same time.
In addition I also have questions -
- why is it that we are facing these tragedies again and again?
- why is it that we are such a weak state?
- is it only the case that we have an inefficient home minister?
- why is it that if the home minister was inefficient he was asked to go after 4 years in office and numerous previous terrorist incidents?
- why is it that within the initial 5 minutes of the attack the 3 officers who were leading the investigations into the right wing terrorism were killed?
- why is it that out of the 10-11 incidents of terror that day the focus was only on Taj and Oberoi?
- was our media responsible in showing live the positions of our security forces? Did it result in the terrorists getting updated information about from where they were getting the threats?
- what purpose is served by politicians resigning / or being forced to quit now? is this accountability? shouldn't accountability be accompanied by punishment?
And many more such queries for which I know I will not get answers.
However, I do believe that somewhere deep down we as people are also responsible for the problems we are facing. We are perceived as a weak state because our disregard to Law. We take Law for granted. We are corrupt to the core. Yes our politicians, police, the machinery is corrupt but doesn't the politician or the police come from us? How many times have we paid bribes to get small favors or work done? How many times we break the Law in our every day lives? If we cant be Law abiding how do we expect that the people we elect are going to be any better? I have not voted for over 10 years and then I question the quality of governance I get. When I never was part of the exercise of choosing the government how can I question the governance I get. We as people have personified the "chalta hai" attitude. Everything is negotiable including our value systems. And we are weak because we are corrupt. We only have a sense of Indianess when we as a nation are attacked and two days later we forget everything.
For us to have a better situation we need to be make sacrifices - sacrifice the urge to get work done faster by paying bribes, sacrifice the urge to show the fellow Indian down, sacrifice our personal liberties so that the system can be made stronger, sacrifice the urge to find easy solutions e.g. blaming neighbors for our own ills and sacrifice the easy laid back attitude we have. "Chalta hai"has to be replaced with "Nahin chalta hai".
For the situation to become better we as people need to do our bit. We cant depend on others to do this for us. In addition I have a small request - Can we pass a law that anybody who even has a court case / chargesheet pending against him/her is not allowed to contest elections? Should we file a PIL for this because I cant expect the present politicians would pass any such legislation. I also don't think asking ministers to quit after an attack is a solution. They need to be given warnings and given one more chance to fix the problems. If they fail again they should be tried for "dereliction of duty" as any other normal person and punished.
In addition I also have questions -
- why is it that we are facing these tragedies again and again?
- why is it that we are such a weak state?
- is it only the case that we have an inefficient home minister?
- why is it that if the home minister was inefficient he was asked to go after 4 years in office and numerous previous terrorist incidents?
- why is it that within the initial 5 minutes of the attack the 3 officers who were leading the investigations into the right wing terrorism were killed?
- why is it that out of the 10-11 incidents of terror that day the focus was only on Taj and Oberoi?
- was our media responsible in showing live the positions of our security forces? Did it result in the terrorists getting updated information about from where they were getting the threats?
- what purpose is served by politicians resigning / or being forced to quit now? is this accountability? shouldn't accountability be accompanied by punishment?
And many more such queries for which I know I will not get answers.
However, I do believe that somewhere deep down we as people are also responsible for the problems we are facing. We are perceived as a weak state because our disregard to Law. We take Law for granted. We are corrupt to the core. Yes our politicians, police, the machinery is corrupt but doesn't the politician or the police come from us? How many times have we paid bribes to get small favors or work done? How many times we break the Law in our every day lives? If we cant be Law abiding how do we expect that the people we elect are going to be any better? I have not voted for over 10 years and then I question the quality of governance I get. When I never was part of the exercise of choosing the government how can I question the governance I get. We as people have personified the "chalta hai" attitude. Everything is negotiable including our value systems. And we are weak because we are corrupt. We only have a sense of Indianess when we as a nation are attacked and two days later we forget everything.
For us to have a better situation we need to be make sacrifices - sacrifice the urge to get work done faster by paying bribes, sacrifice the urge to show the fellow Indian down, sacrifice our personal liberties so that the system can be made stronger, sacrifice the urge to find easy solutions e.g. blaming neighbors for our own ills and sacrifice the easy laid back attitude we have. "Chalta hai"has to be replaced with "Nahin chalta hai".
For the situation to become better we as people need to do our bit. We cant depend on others to do this for us. In addition I have a small request - Can we pass a law that anybody who even has a court case / chargesheet pending against him/her is not allowed to contest elections? Should we file a PIL for this because I cant expect the present politicians would pass any such legislation. I also don't think asking ministers to quit after an attack is a solution. They need to be given warnings and given one more chance to fix the problems. If they fail again they should be tried for "dereliction of duty" as any other normal person and punished.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)