They Said it!

The following are three quotes picked up from the Times of India dated 25 November, 2011:

“Why should I pay the Rs 15000 crore? …They have given the loan to the earlier government.” – Mamta Banerjee, Chief Minister, West Bengal

“He was slapped? Was he slapped only once?” – Anna Hazare, social activist, initital reaction to attack on Indian Agriculture Minister.

“Anna is mad. I do not drink but that does not mean those who should be treated like this. It is Taliban mindset.” – Gurudas Dasgupta, Communist Party of India Leader reacting to Anna Hazare’s prescription of public flogging for those who drink.

Talking of the first statement, it’s true that the CM of West Bengal has nothing to do with the debt as a person but now as she is heading the government, is she not bound by the obligations of the previous government. Is this not the way the country runs?  Think of what will happen when the next BJP government says that it was Congress government in 1991 which went for liberalization, we don’t follow all this. Sounds like madness! Anyway, Mamta is in the habit of being ignorant about what her predecessors did. She did the very same thing when she became the railway minster in 2009 and the result was this.

Anna Hazareji is a very daring person, if not respectable. It is a very big thing in a country like ours to go against the government and bring it on its toes. But by appreciating the humiliation of a minister, what he is doing is a complete mockery of the democratic framework of the country. Why does he forget that this minister was chosen by the people of this country? When he is clapping on the disrespect of the minister by an ordinary citizen, is he not slapping the very integrity of the democracy of the country and its voters? I know that the honorable minister might be at fault for many things going wrong in the country but before people enjoy this ‘slap’ as killing of a demon, they should check in retrospect that they are the ones who gave the power to this person to be a minister.

The third statement is a reminder to Annaji and his followers that the pillar of democracy which he (Anna) is holding to disrupt the smooth functioning of the parliament and the government is being broken by his aforesaid treatment of drunkards. Not only this is against ahimsa (non-violence) but also it is shear dadagiri and gundagardi.

The moral of the story (and this post) is only that it is easy to blame others and government for all our problems, but if we look within, we can find solutions to most of the problems. The government can’t do everything for us unless we are willing to take some efforts on our own. And as far as honesty is concerned, it is we and people among us who form a part of the government. The bigger question then is whether we are honest or not. If we can’t be honest in our day to day dealings, how can we expect someone there making policies and decisions for us to be honest? As Kahlil Gibran says in ‘The Prophet’:

“And as a single leaf turns not yellow but with the silent knowledge of the whole tree,

 So the wrong-doer cannot  do wrong without the hidden will of you all.”