be the change to see the change

Recently there was a lot of activity and noise on popular social networking sites, media channels and even in individual drawing rooms as the comfortable middle-class was suddenly shaken out of its collective apathy and galvanized into action by Anna Hazare and his hunger strike – a fast unto death a la Mahatma Gandhi – to press for his demand that the government move quickly and decisively on the long-pending Lokpal bill.  As soon as the media picked it up and started wringing out all the TRPs it possibly could, many other notables jumped on the bandwagon of visible public virtue and urged common people on the street to come out in support of the movement – and a silent majority of the people who had so far thought of themselves as powerless suddenly found they could make a difference by congregating at India Gate, or Jantar Mantar or Gateway of India or Shaniwarwada and light candles or hold up placards and chant slogans.  A couple of days back apparently the government seems to have agreed to most of the demands and so the fast has been called off and victory has been declared in the war against corruption – and all of us can let out a sigh of relief and go back to our routine and mundane lives with a deep satisfaction of having done our little bit against an evil that everyone publicly agrees is the bane of modern India.

And therein lies the real problem.  Because we haven’t done jack – we only think we have and we bask in a sense of satisfaction that is not only false, but downright dangerous.  Because in so thinking we have subconsciously absolved ourselves of the responsibility of what we could really do – what we should really do.

Let’s leave aside for the moment the dangerous clauses in the Jan Lokpal bill that make the Lokpal institution an unelected, non-democratic super-power institution with virtually no public accountability.  Other people have argued that point much better than I ever can but they seem to have been lost in the sea of virtuous chest thumping and pious roars from people whose main aim seems to be to make the non-supporters feel guilty for not being supportive of the anti-corruption sentiment.  What they don’t realize is that the lack of support on this issue by some people is not aimed at undermining support for the anti-corruption sentiment nor is it meant to belittle the efforts of one man standing up to an entire government.  If anything the dissent or non-support is with the way in which corruption is sought to be tackled – by setting up another institution, bigger and more powerful, to try and keep a check on the existing institutions and moreover, one which is police, judge, jury and executioner all rolled into one.  It’s like a class-teacher creating a bigger bully to control the smaller bullies in class and giving him a cane and the authority to use it as he sees fit.  It’s fine as long as the bigger bully is honest and fair, but what happens when power goes to his head and he himself starts bullying not only the smaller bullies, but all the other children as well?

In any case, my point is not about the Lokpal Bill and its possible shortcomings – my point is about the educated middle-class and its role in this whole media-managed circus.  People like you and me who went and lit candles and marched to various public places in support of this movement, and who went to sleep that night feeling good and satisfied at having done “our bit”.  People like me and you who woke up the next morning and in the rush to drop our kid to school jumped a signal because we were running late and there was no cop around – and anyway there was no traffic coming from the other direction.  People who went to work and submitted Saturday night’s dinner bill to their expense account even though no business was conducted and they knew it – but hey, why pay tax on it when the government is anyway siphoning off the tax rupees to certain numbered Swiss bank accounts instead of using them to improve infrastructure?  People who think it’s fine to wine and dine the purchase manager of a client so their orders will go through smoothly or their bills will be paid on time, or who call in a favor for their child’s KG admission, regardless of merit, to the desired school – but everyone does it, don’t they? So why should we be the ones to suffer – after all, good education is so important!  People who slip the LPG gas-agency delivery man a couple of fifties to get their cylinder out of turn – but of course, eating out is so expensive and how can we cook without a gas cylinder?  People whose first reaction when someone tells them that they paid a traffic fine by going to the main traffic police HQ because the cop on duty did not have a receipt-book is ‘oh – you should have just settled it there and avoided all the time and trouble’ – because our time is important and cops are anyway so underpaid!

It may be just a small amount but we conveniently forget that for every corrupt person taking a bribe, there is – dare I say – an equally corrupt person giving it.  We justify it by saying that we have no choice – oh, but we do.  We can choose hardship over convenience.  We can choose to suffer rather than compromise our principles.  We can choose to wait forever or even to go without something rather than pay under the table.  But no – we do not even consider hardship as a choice, and so we believe we have no choice but to go with the “system”.  We the people, my dear friends, are as much a part, and in fact a direct cause, of corruption as any corrupt politician, babu, cop or big business.  The fact is, we are all hypocrites with a very selective morality but we choose not to see it – because that would mean doing something tangible to change it.  As Mahatma Gandhi famously said, we must be the change we wish to see in the world.  We must change ourselves despite knowing that it may not change anything in our lifetime – and that is not easy.  Still, when (eventually) a sufficient number of people start doing the same without a second thought maybe our future generations can live in a corruption free society.  Till that happens, though, no amount of public gathering, candle-lighting or marching will make a whit of difference -

- and the real obstacle to this kind of change is in thinking that it will.

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