Affixing the responsibility for scams

Heard of “a” Raja (a king) involved in a scam? Welcome to Incredible India! And you can see it happens only in India. A Raja, telecom minister (now ex) is being probed for his alleged role in spectrum allocation which cost the exchequer Rs 1.76 Lakh crore. Whoa! that’s a whopping Rs. 1,76,000,00,00,000 scam. This amount can make 176,000 people a crorepati! These days when I switch my television on, there is news all about scams, their investigation, setup of commissions for investigation, not that only one scam but you get a variety in various fields, arenas and their magnitude, still they have something in similar. All championed by our politicians. I guess scams are the new buzzwords among them. I think we are the strongest contender for Olympic Gold, if corruption as a sport is introduced. An assured gold! No training or practice needed for the event.

If you try to spot some similarity in these scams, you will find that these are executed by person at the helm. You would have observed that a sports team which has an incompetent captain does not perform well. Similar is the case with a government. The position at the helm is the most powerful one. But one must understand that with power comes responsibility. Except the position of helm, it happens due to lack of control and monitoring on subordinates. The recent Supreme Court observation blasting the central government on the 2G scam and the bringing the “sanctioning authority” in the limelight is very much justified. If there is lack of control and monitoring on your subordinates you are bound to face difficult times ahead.

If we introspect, we will find that these chaps are holding the respective offices because of us. We are the ones who elected them. We wanted them to govern and serve us. Instead, they are engaged serving themselves, and their families too. So if we elected them then why to cry foul over their actions? A lion leads a pride of lions, an ant leads a troop on ants, and similarly a thief leads a group of thief. So, are we too, swindlers to nominate swindlers to lead us? Certainly Not. But our attitude towards the governance we receive is certainly the one like a swindler.

Lets dig deep now to know the cause of how these guys muster the courage to swindle this great amount of public money? Let’s find out the root cause.

We wont think twice to bribe a babu to get our work done fast. But have you ever thought how the babu has guts to ask for bribe. Simple. People above him too are corrupt. And the chain continues and this way reaches the top. But if the person at the top is honest, person with integrity. Same is reflected in his staff below. It’s a vicious cycle.

But who decides, who sits at the helm? It is “WE”. We decide who will govern us. We decide how we want to be ruled. Let me be more realistic, I know we can neither decide who will be the telecom minister, nor the chief minister. But we can decide the people, who will nominate a person for these posts. If we elect people, who possess good intention and will power, this good intention and will power will reach to those posts there, which in turn will be delivered to us in the form of good governance.

That way, we elected Kalmadi (a Congress MP from Pune), we elected A Raja, we elected Ashok Chavan. We did not elect them to create spicy recipes (scams) for media channels to serve us at prime time. We elected them to give us good governance. But most of us are unaware of this fact. I hear many people say, “What are we to do with these scams coming to daylight?” They feel they stay unaffected. But, they are wrong. Though these don’t affect them “effectively” now, they will in the near future. And there is this cynics’ breed that keeps whining, “may whatever they do, things really won’t change”. These are the people who are audaciously showing their ineptitude towards being a moral citizen of this country.

We need a change in our attitude towards the governance we receive. We need to be more informed, to make an informed decision. We need to be more responsible to elect a responsible government. On the Ayodhya verdict day I read a tweet, “We‘ve built many temples and mosques, now lets build a nation” Really, a good thought. And the response to the verdict has shown to some extent the maturity that our society has covered, at least on religion as a front. Now we voters, need to reach a similar maturity level at the governance front. The recent Bihar election results have shown that the people of Bihar have shifted their attitudes from caste politics to development so they elected a government which will fuel their progress & prosperity. Some thing similar awaits us. Best of luck for the next election voting!

Right now, I have kept my fingers cross, hoping there is no other scam bought to the daylight while I publish this blogpost :)