The wake up call

Connaught Place today is the most visible symbol of all that is wrong with "Bharat". I call it the visible mess of the nation. The state of affairs at the Connaught Place is symptomatic, symptomatic of a much deeper malaise within the sarkari tantra of the nation.

That Bharat is not what it was, is already widely known and appreciated. What most of us perceive as our nation is not what "Bharat" is all about. The intelligentia and the upper crust from which most of us from the ruling classes hail, does not have even the foggiest idea of what "Bharat" is all about. A land of abject poverty and deprivation, a land of mind boggling gaps in infrastructure and a land of glaring contrasts. The real "Bharat" lives in its villages, most of which are underdeveloped beyond imagination.

What one also fails to appreciate at first glance is the deep rooted mess that we actually are in. Realization dawns upon us only during mega events like the ensuing CWG when the mess that we are in, severely hampers our ability to deliver even "passable" quality on a large canvas. This realization is perhaps the best gift that CWG has given us, the finest wake up call that we have received in over sixty three years of existence as a free nation.

But will we ever wake up, is the question that continued to haunt me even before the arrival of the latest wake up call. Do we, the bureaucrats of "Bharat" ever want to wake up? Do we, the bureaucrats of "Bharat" have any stake in taking the wake up call? Are we not comfortable in the corrupt mess that we find ourselves in, and yet aspire to climb onto the top of the garbage heap?

The wake up call is neither for the politicians, nor for the masses. It is for US, the bureaucrats of "Bharat" whom one British playwriter aptly described as a bunch of bumbling nincompoops.

We better wake up now!