Sumeet Ponda
It was a Saturday yet again! A strong country of 120-billion people force-fed with heavy doses of corruption, bad governance and deep-rooted apathy rejoiced once again on yet another weekend. If last Saturday, Dhoni and his 10 men won the highest title in the game that this giant country loves passionately, this Saturday, it was the turn of Anna’s Indians that won the bigger game – Politics, another, that keeps the denizens of this country pepped up – beating the long-time indifferent Indian Political Royals.
I whole-heartedly supported the mission Anna and his colleagues undertook for a great cause. They spoke for a common man and I was one too! I too went to the Yaadgaar-e-Sahahjehani Park, the local destination for Anna’s support and fasted between breakfast and lunch, got a few photographs clicked, posted them on the facebook and won accolades, took a stroll of the place with a candle in the hand later in the evening, spoke about how corruption was eating into this great nation and felt great when I heard that the Government had almost relented to the common man’s demand while I drove back home.
En route, I saw people happily skipping red light at the cross-roads with the traffic policemen chewing, gutkha sitting comfortably on a scooter parked in the no-parking zone. It was only then that a car bearing a non-Government number-plate with a red-light atop zoomed past me from the wrong side. Nobody even took notice. When the light turned green, I started to move only to be stranded a few metres ahead as people disregarded the traffic-lights yet again. I and a few others found our own way out of the chaos with no one from the Cheetah vehicle parked a few feet away even bothered to clear the disarray on the heavily rushed road. As I steered past the bedlam, I got into one of the numerous bottlenecks that the road network of Bhopal has to offer. Stranded, I stood for the numerous errant motor-cycles and scooters, some speaking on a mobile phone with head tilted on the one side and controlling the bike with the other, from all sides to let me off. No law-maintenance authorities were to be seen. Suddenly an auto-rickshaw passed by with two drivers and loads to passengers and there I was with my windscreen coloured red! Someone had spewed the remains of a delicious pan from the auto-rickshaw. Cautiously, I began to tread again. Then started the endless patch of rough road that was dug up for some World Bank project almost half a year ago and I was once again, like every day, reminded of Neil Armstrong’s first walk on the moon. Potholes galore! No signboards that cautioned the commuters were to be seen. Reached home and heaved a sigh of relief. My family rejoiced in me reaching home, safe in a lawless society. One acknowledges the very fact, that a country of this size survives, to the God of corruption – the politicos! It is for this uncivilized country that Anna fasted, most of the citizens of which want the stick of fear to abide by the law and flout civic laws on their own sweet will.
On the late evening news, I saw a jubilant Anna and his supporters celebrating the so-called surrender of those in power to the demands for erasing corruption. The jan-lokpal bill, held back by successive Government since 1964, will see the light of day soon. I saw it as a victory of the common man, for the common man and by the common man. Period.
Suddenly, I was flooded with a flurry of thoughts from left, right and center! This was a clinical trial. God forbid, if anything happened to Anna…. With the huge support from the media and common man and the time bomb ticking, it was foregone that the Government had to concede the first round. This isn’t a victory! Anna, the tiger-heart he is, has no bank balance, no business, nothing to lose and everything to gain. People like him are a few! They live and fight for us. People like him are gems that need no polish to smoothen out the rough edges. They shine on their own.
Haven’t we, the common people, who have so many things on stake, instrumental in enhancing corruption? Haven’t we paid bribes for getting even the straightest of things done? Haven’t we offered money to those in power to let us home from a bye-lane that the complicated network of laws that our Nation has to offer? Haven’t we corrupted the ordinary, under-paid policewalla to get a fast mandatory clearance for passport even when no criminal case exists in our names? Haven’t we given a fifty-rupee note to the traffic constable who stopped us for non-observance of smallish rules that make us wear a helmet or a seat-belt, for our own safety? We all have. Let us have the guts to admit.
I am the common man and I have the bouquet of fundamental rights to let me live a respectful and peaceful life. But the irony is that the same constitution that awards me these rights is so out-dated, complex and complicated that it contradicts itself hundreds of times.
A jan-lokpal bill is not going to help. It will only convict an official, politician, minister found guilty of asking and accepting money for doing something unlawful or adding speed to the slow movement of files or finding a way out of the confusing constitution. My biggest worry here is, can we devise an objective system that will keep a check on the jan-pratinidhis – 50% of the committee members – from becoming vulnerable to the mouthful and pocketful that will be offered to them, keeping in mind that the remaining 50% political representatives will not be clean and keeping in mind that Anna and his team will not live forever? This will be the biggest challenge to Anna and his team.
We can penalize the corrupt ones but can’t we have a provision to penalize the one who corrupts and offers bribes? Can’t we find a system that doesn’t corrupt? Can’t we amend our existing constitution or re-draft or accept a new one for the sake of a corrutption-free society?
Anna, we have won but….
