Heed the voice of conscience!

The incessant babble – of voices imploring one to act or not to act is often maddening and at times dangerous, if one indeed acts on them. This babble is often so overbearing that lesser mortals which  most of us are, find it difficult to set aside.

We Indians are great at advising others, while at the same time often guilty of inaction ourselves. And therefore we have all these cases of blatant corruption, loot and rapes in glaring public view. People watch and walk away, wishing that someone else would pick up the straw and yet later grumble about the sorry state of affairs in the society, a society that is rapidly going bereft of men with spine.

We look the other way when the powerful custodians have their hands in the till. We continue to look the other way even after our Prime Minister, the greatest that this nation has ever had, exhorts us to rise above the “Mera Kya Mujhe Kya” syndrome. The top guy realizes, yet we do not, that a thief is hurting us irrespective of the ownership of the cauldron he is busy emptying. It is our nation and also our railways after all.

Often in life one encounters situations when a bigger general good is tipped against a petty personal gain or loss and unfortunately the latter tips the scale. Personal discomfort or comfort takes overriding priority over the need to be on the path of righteousness and the general good. Giants become pygmies on such occasions.

The very fact that organization and nation building does not come cheap needs to be grouted firmly and straight, in the inner recesses of our mind. The thought that good shall always remain good and shall always be the right thing to do even at the pinnacle of “Kalyug” needs to settle firmly in the collective psyche of the nation. Will it ever be so I wonder, yet the thought that now we have a true leader at the helm gives solace.

While we are all separate bodies with different likes, tastes, preferences, attitudes and actions, the fact remains that at the sub-conscious level, we are all one having emerged from the one single root of energy in the universe. Our conscience is therefore our best guide at such moments in life when the voice of reason starts wavering in the face of petty personal gains or losses. Brutal suppression of the voice of conscience that invariably emerges whenever there is a subconscious battle between good and evil is definitely not in order. Gautam Buddha the great, advocated looking within as the best means to lead a life, yet in the land he spent most of his life in, we have moved away from our souls towards materialism that really does not matter in the short or the long run.

Spiritualism needs to be at the core of all our actions and activities if the glory of this great nation or the great organization is to be restored. 

The turncoat bureaucrat

The imminent change of guard at Raisina Hill will once again witness the emergence of the turncoat bureaucrats, this time in large numbers due to their long association with almost a decade of a continuing shade of governance at the centre. Misrule or otherwise, the penchant of the indian bureaucrat to disassociate himself with the previous government and actively associate with the next even at the cost of being termed a turncoat is perhaps beyond compare.

Bureaucrats are expected to be non-political and therefore meant to guide and obey the diktats of their elected political masters, yet many of them emerge as bigger and wily politicians themselves in their perpetual efforts to have a good time almost always. Good times they invariably have, albeit at the cost of the nation and the hapless populace.

Bureaucrats also have another major role to play – that of keeping the nation in the throes of poverty and backwardness for it is only in developing nation like ours that the bureaucrat is the most important and the most powerful of the various clans that constitute a nation. Strutting like masters in developing and backward nations, the bureaucrat is almost always an invisible commodity in the developed countries of this world where bureaucracy is way down in the choice of professions as opposed to our own where being a collector or a superintendent of police is the height of ambition of the middle and lower classes.

Ambition for what? – serving the nation – unbelievable. Ambition is for flaunting power over the heads of those he is expected to serve, totally oblivious of the role that a servant – bureaucrats are government servants – is expected to perform. Besides in the past few decades, the tremendous opportunity for garnering ill-gotten wealth that a bureaucratic role offers has also added to the charm of being a part of the elite.

And in the process the true role of those who were once regarded as the steel frame has been lost sight of. While the political dispensation is expected to be temporary, the bureaucracy that had permanence of job was expected to provide stability and guidance to successive governments comprised of politicos ensconced in the chair of power for merely five years at a time. Unfortunately the servants, in connivance or on their own have become almost as powerful as the masters themselves without sharing the responsibility that generally comes with power.

The most dangerous fallout of this non adherence to the avowed role is the rapidly mushrooming cloud of corruption that has encompassed almost the entire gamut of machineries meant to govern at federal, state and local levels. Graft has become an essential ingredient of almost all sarkari decisions and contracts to the extent that it is rare to come across even a single act of governments that is straight and devoid of the customary manipulations.  

Yet the blame for the ills is invariably laid at the altar of the politician regardless of the fact that without a bureaucratic nod or misrepresentation of facts, it is almost impossible for the neta to move ahead on the short cut to prosperity. Yet the social pressure for acquiring materialistic gains bears hard on the bureaucrat who does not lose any substantial period of time in picking up the ropes. Sometimes, only sometimes it is also a case of lack of will or spine to be able to say “No”, rather than direct indulgence in money making on the part of the bureaucrat who finds himself in the soup without partaking of the loot. But even then it is only the bureaucrat to blame.

It is time that nation building through adept governance and development is realized as the only role of those who are in the business of governance in the nation. The primary issue in achieving the same would be the massive course correction that would be needed keeping in view the misdirected take offs attempted since the midnight tryst with destiny.

Yet in God and providence we trust! India shall once again rise and achieve its destined glory.