The current rage on the streets of Delhi over the recent gang rape case is essentially similar to that that was on display when the issue of corruption was taken up by luminaries like Anna Hazare, Arvind Kejariwal et al. It has its genesis in the same thirst for GFGS (Governance, For God's Sake) that led to what Hindi newspapers termed नमो, नमो, नमो (Three times NaMo) phenomenon in Gujarat. The thirst is so deep that it remains unquenched even after two NaMos. Elsewhere the public is simply sick and tired to the core of a defunct system that doesn't care much for its citizens, their life, livelihood and prosperity.
We must not mistake it as merely an outburst against wretched humanoids who perpetrated the beastly crime against the victim girl. I am sure that all societies, howsoever evolved, do have a certain percentage of such beastly creatures. Similarly all societies and their constituents have within them the primal urges that need to be controlled and sublimated through moral persuasions. It is our leaders in the government who have been given formal powers by the society for governing it. It is their job to ensure that the beasts in the society are either reformed or subjected to strict controls or, if all fails, eliminated. They are also supposed to epitomize all the values that the society collectively cherishes and aspires to embrace. They cannot be otherwise and provide the kind of governance and leadership that the society desires and deserves. Do we see this happening?
It is strange that no leaders from the government have come out to address the restless crowds. This job has been left to the opposition and the informal leaders. The government has instead deployed the police: The police whose job it is to protect the public at large: The police which repeatedly fails to check and control the beasts amongst us: The police which sometimes itself is found perpetrating similar beastly acts. A foreigner may be forgiven for thinking that the police forces in the country exist merely to protect our elected leaders and they hardly have men or resources left to protect the public. And when they do mobilize the men and resources it is always for repressing the public rather than protecting them. Has any of our leaders shown the courage to let go of their A-Z kind of security and ask them to perform their first and foremost task of protecting the public? Why are we perpetually deferring the police reforms?
What indeed frightens the daylights out of me is the utter and sheer disregard for law and order that is displayed by our political figures and then imbibed by their followers and finally percolates down to the beastly elements that we have been talking about. The political leaders must be allowed not to pay toll tax that have to be paid even by a bus carrying a busload of BPL people. A political leader considers it okay to publicly threaten another public figure who insists on exercising his right of freely moving through the length and breadth of the country. It is okay for leaders to remain absent from their job, to defy all codes of decent conduct in the highest bodies of the country, to call each other names, to throw missives on each other, to amass DA (disproportionate assets), to entice and kill young girls, to father children out of wedlock. Once the leaders have thus established their absolute superiority over ordinary mortals and law of the land, it is the turn of their supplicants. So they go out brandishing legal and illegal arms, rape women and beat up cops. The message finally percolates to the humanoids who shed all fear of authority and indulge themselves. Finally the public is bound to get fed up to its nose and come out openly against the deep shit in which it finds itself.
My dear leaders, please listen to this desperate cry for GFGS.
