It is generally believed that a stagnant society begins to degenerate much the same way as we see happening around us. This stagnation may pertain to multiple factors including, but not limited to, intellectual contortions, social disorders, growth deprivations, ethnic and societal disparities and generally an inordinate refusal to learn. Not only that we seem to be stuck with these gross and debilitating symptoms, we are wholesomely consumed with them. Concurrently, showing increasing insensitivity to the handicaps and contradictions within, we have stopped making the effort to undertake productive engagements to increase our awareness about what afflicts us and how to cope with it. In the absence of such remedial initiatives, the process of degeneration seems to have accelerated, propelling us into a steep and fathomless fall.
Apparently, we have become a society that loves pointing fingers at others without stopping for a moment and looking inwards to see what ails us. We are convinced that we are nothing but paragons of virtue, blessed with the inalienable right to see wrong in everyone else – and we do this with consummate pleasure! Even on the floor of the parliament, seemingly housed with people who call themselves leaders of their respective communities or constituencies, whenever a wrong is pointed out in the conduct of a legislator, he or she is quick to counter by accusing the person of having committed a similar wrong. So, the need to feel embarrassed or ashamed is appropriately averted. On the contrary, legitimate ground is created for doing likewise in the future also without the fear of being caught or chastised. So, a palpable wrong is converted into a convenient right. One can well imagine the state of a society that lives by mathematical extensions of such conveniences and compromises with one transgression leading to another, creating one unmanageable pile of degenerate yardsticks to measure cumulative performance by.
A few who still take pride in living by the right alone have lost the courage to step forth and speak up. They are afraid of the unpalatable consequences that may befall them. A few days ago, a discussion among a group of people about the social discrepancies that had crept in our society somehow turned to religion. A participant who tried to point out that we, as a nation, seemed to be more concerned with the letter of our religion than with its spirit had to urgently answer a query whether he was making this statement from within the domain of religion or outside it. In simple words, his being a believer was immediately questioned. Such is the limit of stagnation that has crept into our thinking and such is the extent of our inability to respond to contemporary challenges and situations.
There has been a general crisis with regard to the quality of leadership that we have had through the 63 years of our being an independent country. Having blocked all avenues of growth and reform, we have become handy victims of a degenerative process that has spread its tentacles and is digging deep into every bit of the residual potential that may have survived the bites of time. This also symbolises the absence of credible leadership that has the potential and conviction to take stock of the state and lead the people along a remedial path to recovery at some point of time in the future. On the contrary, the leadership is the principal cause of perpetuating these degenerative trends as they remain its main beneficiaries. It may, therefore, be quite easy to conclude that a change is required at the top where there is a growing need to have new people with character and courage to lead by example.
Generally speaking, there are two ways to bring about any change. The fashionable path goes through the process of elections where people are entrusted with the responsibility to elect representatives they deem would do their bit. In a society that is riddled with potholes and limitations regarding the financial captivity of large segments of the voting people in the hands of a few who have wrongfully manipulated the national resources, there is little chance that genuinely credible leaders could be returned to sit in the legislatures. Instead, we have been seeing a repeat of the same groups being elected with cosmetic change of faces: instead of the father, we may have the son, or instead of one brother, we may have the other. Same priorities, same approach, same results: mediocrity, corruption, lack of governance.
The other path may tend to be violent, but is generally more geared to bringing about a change at the grassroots level. The manner in which the country has been misgoverned and the alarming pace at which corruption has increased and the problems have multiplied for the poor people, there appears little ambiguity about the kind of change that is desirable. What matters is the cost that we may have to pay as a nation to facilitate this change. But, more often than not, such questions are consumed by the intensity of deprivations that a nation suffers from and the extent to which the tentacles of corruption have penetrated the body politic. If that were to be considered, one may assume that the time is ripe and the conditions conducive. Do we hear the knocking?
The writer is a political analyst.
