The Issue of National Shame

What ticked me off to write this blog was our Prime Minister’s unveiling a report on Malnutrition this week and proudly declaring it a national shame. He is just an example on how Indians in the seat of power and authority fail to deliver and take pride in showcasing their failures. So what is Mr. PM doing about malnutrition more than just admitting it as a national shame? Does he take accountability?

Another study that came to light this week also revealed that 68% of milk in India is adulterated. In a shocking revelation, the Food Safety Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) has found that around 13% of food stuff is contaminated across the country.

We have a corrupt Government (doesn’t matter State or Center) and to top it off our food is adulterated. Is India really a safe place to live? With 1.3 Billion people, and 50% of them being less than 30 years, are we creating a good crop of  citizens to lead the nation and the world?

But before criticizing the Government and its officials, I decided to take a look at the attitude and genetic make-up of population by and large. So, who is the national shame? Is it the government or the citizens?

So let us walk down the streets in our respective cities to understand our civic duties and disciplines.

To many from outside this may look appalling, but for Indians it has become the way of life. So what is it that you see in Indian streets?

Hygiene, cleanliness, civic sense, honesty all take a back seat!

• I caught my educated neighbor fling a plastic bag of garbage from her balcony into the dumpster across the street. She missed the target by a few feet, but walked back into her living room with a sense of winning an Olympic Gold for getting her trash on the streets.
• 18 months ago while the house was being built, construction happened 24 by 7, and they dumped raw materials and material from the broken down building right on the streets, making the neighborhood uninhabitable.
• The sidewalk in every street is built for pedestrians, but instead they are used for drying clothes, dump heaps of rubbish from their house, parking vehicles, put up shops that sell tea and cigarettes, and sometimes for illegal activities such as drinking and smoking weed.
• We painted notices in our compound wall to ask people not to spit, throw garbage or defecate. Then a year later, we painted pictures of Hindu Gods and Goddess on our compound wall to prevent people from defecating. But nothing prevented them from doing what they want to do.
• 5 years ago, one of the owners in my apartment complex turned their balcony into a room without seeking permission or taking necessary approval from the civic body. This is a culpable offense!
• Every area in the city has a slum or illegal settlement. This almost resembles a beehive and politicians use these hives as vote banks and thus stay away from disturbing the hive.
• We find motorist jump red lights, constantly honk, engage in road rage, and treat pedestrians like cattle to find they way through the traffic.  
• We take pride in paying bribes to get our passports, get out of traffic tickets, obtain driving licenses, building permits, birth and death certificate, electricity, sewage and water connection.
• We falsify rent-receipts, medical bills and LTA claims to evade taxes. But we want to bring back the stashed away black-money in Swiss accounts. Double standards, huh?
• We jump queues, engage in road rage, throw anything and everything on the streets, and commit white collar crimes without any compunction or sense of responsibility.
• Travel on Indian Railways and Buses and find the amount of garbage thrown in the compartments. Toilets in trains and public places make us wonder, what our people eat that it smells so bad.

What does it say about our citizens?

• We can go back to the oldest debate in the world, which came first, the chicken or the egg? But let us understand and acknowledge that we’ve not delivered our civic duties. Why do we expect the Public Works Department to lay roads and maintain them if we cannot keep them clean, safe and habitable?
• We elect our representatives to form the Government and run the Government, when the society on the whole lacks discipline, why do we expect the Government and its office to function efficiently and be bribe free.
• Our literacy rates have improved since independence, but sadly education and literacy doesn’t seem to direct correlation to improve the society and quality of life. We have found education and literacy are used to circumvent law and commit intelligent crimes.
• For an average Indian today, it is all about “I” and “Me”. I want my house to be clean, I want to go fast, I want my greed to be satisfied, I want to be happy even if I violate rules and cause inconvenience to the public. We don’t mind bribing government officials, breaking rules and laws to make things work for us.
• Why are we so selfish and hypocritical? Why are we expecting the Government and its officials to be squeaky clean and deliver on their promises when we can’t dispense our civic responsibility and take accountability?

This is an ideal example of what happens when the value system in a society collapses. So who is the national shame? 

We have the next generation growing up in a corrupt society, where lawlessness is the way of life. May be the PM is right about the malnutrition report being a national shame. We as a society suffer from malnutrition of values and are willingly passing it on to the next generation.

There is nothing wrong in being a poor country, but everything is wrong if you are a corrupt country. Next time you complain about the Government for being inefficient and corrupt and the judicial system being for blinded, look at the mirror and ask yourself: have you delivered on my promises and have you been a law abiding citizen? So let us be the change we want to see in the world around us.