Feb 04, 2008 09:50 AM
1898 Views
(Updated Feb 05, 2008 12:46 AM)
India needs the real change in citizen himself
YOU ask anyone on the street what is the source of problems with India and more than half of them will cite Indian politicians. The breed of Indian politicians has been blamed for every problem in the country.
I seem to differ with most of them. Not that I do not agree with them to some extent, but by blaming and accusing these politicians an Indian citizen is continually renouncing his/her responsibility. By blaming ‘them politicians’ we find a scapegoat to blame.
Instead of owning up to problems we seem to conveniently place the burden on some entity called the ‘system’, as if it were something alien to us. I for one believe that problem is with the Indian man — the common man: Like man, like state — Plato.
Contrast this with a popular Indian saying which many in India seem to believe: Yatha raja, thatha praja(as the king, so the subjects) This saying conveniently places the blame on the king(or the government in our case) and thereby we happily live our lives hoping for this king to change himself so that we can follow the suit. Who is to blame for bad roads, lack of potable water;underdeveloped villages;rampant corruption, delayed trains, garbage on the streets, casteism and communalism, discrimination based on caste, religion and sex, and for everything bad with our society?
Is it me or the politicians? I tend to take a stand that it is the me;Indian man(who behaves well in USA;or U.K.) who is corrupt, keeps his street unclean, and does not follow the law, and that the Indian system(or the Indian government) is a mere personification of these ills. To rectify the system, he has to rectify himself. The change starts with the ‘man in the mirror’.*
