Monday, December 01, 2008

And it continues...

Once the drama is over, we have to face the backlash, namely in the form of politicians. Maybe I'm too cynical for my own good or maybe I've just learnt from the bad experiences I've had from the governments in my own country, but I don't have any faith in politicians. When you see the so called leaders of your country making statements like, "minor incidents do happen in big cities" you need to take a step back and think about what has gone wrong. This morning, I just found out that the Chief Minister of Maharashtra went to survey the damage done inside the Taj with his son, who is a Bollywood actor and a film director (who specializes in making crime movies). Ram Gopal Varma claims that they just happened to be there, and it was not a planned visit, as if I or the rest of the country are going to believe this pitiful excuse.

I know that these people have resigned, but that isn't going to help, is it? Its not like we have anyone else who can do the job better. I don't see how the Congress is going to be re-elected into Maharashtra or India this way. So who are we left with? The Shiv Sena? Yes, all we need in this mess is a neo-radical, racist, militant (and I'm running out of adjectives to describe them) organization to lead us. Why don't we start going around, and burning the city down ourselves instead of waiting for them to do it for us? We just don't have anyone we can depend on, which is weird because you would think there would be a lot of people in the nation to choose from.

The problem in India (and well, the rest of the world) is that we seem to be unable to produce able politicians. Its not that we are lacking intelligent people. I mean, there are one billion of us out there, so by just taking probability into account we have ended up with a lot of smart, capable people. The problem is none of these intelligent, capable people want to deal with politics, and a part of me doesn't even blame them for this. So all we are left with are the likes of Narendra Modi and L.K Advani, and even someone with my limited knowledge and feigned indifference to politics can see this is never going to take us towards development.

Mind you, I'm not one of those people who likes to sit at home and complain about how they don't support either side and are not going to vote. I dislike the people that refrain from voting because even if you don't support either side, you need to make a some sort of a decision. Sitting at home, complaining and writing angy blog posts about how you hate everyone is not going solve anything. Either you vote for someone else or you take charge yourself, stand for elections and do things the right way, which is something no one is willing to do. Voting is a right, no its a privilege given to you in a democracy, and its your duty as a citizen of your country to exercise it.

If all this wasn't bad enough, we just like to pull out our trump card in situations like these and blame Pakistan. Lets just ignore the fact that you are unable to pay attention to all the warnings that you've received about some sort of an attack that was going to take place, unable to control and guard the borders of your own country, and blame another country who is in a pretty shit shape by themselves and really doesn't need you to bring them down any further. I'm not saying that Pakistan is or is not responsible for what has happened, I think that we should first sort out our deficiencies before putting all the blame on someone else. Pak bashing is and will always used to appease the nation when its angry, but this should really stop because its not a solution to our problems.

All I want is someone to tell me that they have messed up and that they are going to try their best in the future to make sure this is not going to happen again. Why is this so hard to do?

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

What a rant, yaar, what a rant!

Szerelem said...

Please checkthis out - the last 10 minutes are where the insanity happens. I am scared for my country.

Panacea said...

E: I just love your amazing contributions to my blog!

Sz: I actually just saw that whole segment with my mum before I read your comment :) I'm pretty much glued to ndtv for the last whole week because its one of the few news channels I can watch live. Its so surreal, I can't even believe this is happening.

Charlie said...

"Leaders" and "politicians" are, with few exceptions, the same all over the world. They are not for the people, but for themselves: greed, graft, power and, most of all, rhetoric. Many of them, in my opinion, are downright stupid.

There will be tons of finger-pointing because that is what bureaucracy is all about: it's called CYA, or Cover Your Ass.

Panacea said...

Charlie - You're completely right, but it can just get so frustrating at times, and the fact that you can't do anything about it makes it even worse!