Utopian Dream

Patience is a hallmark virtue of the hindu community. And therefore they wait indefinitely for things to improve. After all India is not Egypt where the populace does not tolerate the excesses of the government and walks out of the confines of their comfortable homes to throw out a government that they had voted in power. After all the definition of a democracy is a government of for and by the people, yet how many of us are able to appreciate it I wonder?

Watching the affairs of successive governments in the nation for a considerable time now, I am convinced that the nation is not conducive enough for the habitation of the aam Hindustani and has strangely emerged as a place where only the men in power and those rolling in cash can live in relative peace. For the aam aadmi however it is a land of non-stop turmoil and anguish and therein lies the tragedy of the journey of this great civilization.

In recent history, utopia was first presented to the populace in 1942 when the call to quit India was issued. The naïve populace then believed that everything would be fine once the britishers left, however that was not to be. The hopes that built up in the initial years post independence took a nosedive in the early sixties when famines and acute scarcity of food grain rocked the nation. Meanwhile the political class as well as the bureaucrats had turned wise and realized that being a self seeker is definitely the far better alternative. It was obvious that the nation had arrived and had started taking off in a skewed direction.

Fed up with successive governments, the populace turned towards the opposition parties in the mid seventies and formed the first non congress government that disappointed more than it enthused. Subsequent experiments with different shades of governments both at the federal and the state levels also proved that there is not much to choose between the devil and the deep sea, with each initially offering hope and then dashing it against the wall.

The series of scams that surfaced with amazing regularity in the recent past have however imparted a different dimension to the concept of governance in this nation. The people who govern, now firmly believe that their anointment on the seat of power gives them a right to loot and plunder for their personal gains. Yet they also like all others never fail to present a utopia whenever an opportunity arises, and the naïve populace continues to believe them perhaps for lack of options.

The utopian dream rocks and our slide downward continues unabated.