May 21,2009
Readers will recall that this paper, through its Lead India initiative, ran a sustained and hard-hitting ‘Say No To Criminals’ campaign in the run-up to the elections. It was therefore with a modest sense of vindication that we reported in our special election edition of May 17 that the Indian voter had given candidates with criminal records a resounding thumbs down.
The time has come to also say no to corruption. The strongest signal Sonia Gandhi and Manmohan Singh can send out to venal netas and their babus is to pack the cabinet with honest and efficient men and women. Let us not continue with ministers who have so brazenly bled the system. The clean-up needs to start at the top. How can we blame the pitiably paid traffic constable or the lowly government clerk for trying to make a buck on the side when their big bosses—be they politicians or bureaucrats—are making a million times more? Corruption has become endemic. Worse, and this is the really sad part, we have come to accept it as a way of life. The fact is, corruption penalizes the honest, distorts important decisions and policies, weakens the moral fibre of a society, and, most grievous of all, robs the really needy. In the extreme, it compromises the safety and security of our country and our people and is therefore as anti-national as an act of terror.
The people of India have given the Prime Minister and the Gandhis a historic opportunity to make a difference. Manmohan’s refusal to back down from the nuclear deal and Rahul’s insistence on soldiering on solo in UP proves they are made of sterner stuff than they were credited with. Keeping out the dishonest is not going to be easy—especially with nominees of Congress’s allies in the UPA—but good governance is also about taking hard, unpopular decisions that fly in the face of political expediency. It’s time we jettisoned our politics of cynicism for a politics of conscience. We are aware that the pundits will laugh this off as the naivete of the hopelessly idealistic, and say “that’s not how the system works”. But change comes because someone somewhere has the courage of conviction—no matter how foolish—to tilt at windmills.
Wow...I am so happy, I am not alone who thinks like this...
The change WILL come! :)
