A Mirror to Our Quiet Complicity

The recent rainy season has affected our city in several adverse ways – the roads have more potholes than concrete, a car journey to work which should normally take 30 mins is taking up over an hour, the engine is consuming over double to expected amount of petrol – fuel by the way that was depleted with the expectation of being reduced to 1/10^th of the price. Areas which are waterlogged for days after one afternoon of torrential rains, where ambulances are unable to reach if needed, people’s belongings are destroyed beyond measure, and all forms of dirt and disease surround them.

Statues of decorated sons of the nation, on public property, installed years back with taxpayers’ money, are being defaced. No one can catch the perpetrators; no instantaneous punishment is being meted out by the mob. Schools are constructed and functioning with all facilities on paper, but on the ground reality, there is a flat land where children do not have any role other than to play. The buildings, if constructed, lack basic infrastructure like water, toilets and sometimes even teachers and teaching materials. So many of them close down as they are unable to sustain and cannot attract sufficient students, for many of whom school was a way to escape the hard labour at home and guaranteed a bellyful of food.

Crimes have become so commonplace that they do not even receive a raised eyebrow from us when we browse the newspaper nowadays. Criminals we know may be outside bars any day and may even occupy positions of power where they decide the fate of the educated but rebellious young men and women who either fell on the wrong side of the class or wealth line. Those who have stolen millions will either have their debts written off eventually or set up lives rolling in wealth elsewhere while mocking us poor middle-class folks with their guised humility.

Educational institutions will be raided in the day, temporary shops vandalized in the nights, snakes are appearing in elite private schools while the governing bodies remain busy elsewhere policing clothes in adverts, missing lyrics in songs and wondering if social media is getting too powerful. Even in tier 1 cities where homes are worth more than most people earn in an entire lifetime, the roads constructed with thousands of crores resemble rivers in which to drown our expectations.

So, is this a rant piece, where I ask you all to add to the list?

Or is it a wakeup call to us the citizens who have always been deprived of basic needs of humans in several different ways but have chosen to keep silent or find ways to adjust. It has never been about a certain government, a specific leader, a certain occasion, a single moment that has defined this fall. It has been about hundreds and thousands of miniscule moments in which we have degraded morally as a race, we have considered money to be the deciding factor for respect, we have assumed corruption is acceptable – be it a milkman adding water or a babu demanding a bribe or a traffic policeman pocketing a five-hundred rupee note. Instead of teaching our children that honesty is non-negotiable, we have taught them simple ways in which to trick the world into bowing to their needs. We have allowed black-markets to flourish, we have turned a blind eye to middlemen swindling old people at tourist spots, and ignored it when someone breaks a queue that has people patiently waiting for hours. We have neither demanded fulfilment of promises nor shown the loyalty necessary to make ourselves a model citizen.

And this is where we stand.

As we step into the 80^th year of Independent India, and raise tricolours galore, this is the cumulated effects of our actions and inactions. We are reaping what we have all sown over time. We all know deep down in our hearts that this is not the fault of the few in power but the millions who have quietly complied when faced with injustice and unfair practices. We can share colourful videos of our beautiful country and publicize the areas of improvement as much we want, but the time has come for us all to work at making this the wonderful nation that it once was and that we had all dreamt of.

Sujalam sufalam malayaja sheetalam….shashya shyamalam maataram…

Manobina Nanda Ganguly

Manobina is a Computer Engineer by profession, working for over two decades. An avid reader since childhood, she loves reading both fictions and non fictions. She can be reached at manobina@gmail.com.