The State of the Nation

The plethora of articles and reports on the state of the nation, post the traumatic incident of rape has compelled the denizens of this nation to look inwards. The papers are flooded with suggestions and advice on how to go about life in the aftermath of this ghastly incident. Capital punishment, castration and public flogging are some of the most common suggestions doing the rounds.  And rightly so, sweet pills can never be effective deterrents.

A though provoking piece in the Times on date castigated the city government on merely focussing on building flyovers and not on controlling crime or improving the law and order. The writer hit the nail almost on the head, almost because flyovers are also as much a necessity as the need for a safer living environment. Yet the writer is right, merely building infrastructure is not what nation building is all about.

That there is a sea of a difference between a nation building exercise and mere building of civic infrastructure and providing consumer goods in plenty, is a thought that is yet to find appreciation amongst people who shoulder the major responsibility of leading this nation. The lop sided approach has led to a scenario wherein we have a swanky capital city that is unsafe and also houses, perhaps the most corrupt governance establishment in the world, as has been fairly exposed in recent times.

Is nation building sans character indeed possible, I wonder. Is mere adequacy of civil infrastructure and consumer goods a sign of a nation having arrived? Is a scenario that showcases both abject poverty as well as stinking riches, acceptable? And finally, does a tantra that fends and feeds on itself qualify as a democratic governance machinery? 

While it is apparent that the answer to all these and many more such questions is in the negative, yet the inability of all those who matter to first appreciate and then take corrective steps is indeed sad as well as deplorable.  

A thoroughly corrupt and inept governance machinery sends a powerful message across the nation that it is indeed the right thing to make money on the side and that delivery does not really matter. The recent incidents of rape that are coming to the fore are reflective of a society that in the absence of a clear direction and control has gone astray. Perhaps the lack of priority accorded for education immediately after our tryst with destiny has led to stifling of delivery mechanisms and emergence of a society sans value systems.

A society, the constituents of which expect others to build the country will rarely gallop. Each one of us has to play our roles genuinely and with commitment and only then the collective shall prosper is a thought that needs to go deep into our psyches for the nation to really emerge from the shadows.