When a civil servant is suspended or sacked for correctly billing a chief minister for the use of electricity, and then, when the dues are not settled, for cutting off the power supply to his home, as done to all ordinary citizens who are forced to abide by the law, it goes to prove how corrupt the upper echelons of power are in this nation. The man who followed the rules should be celebrated and given a State honour. Every passing day exposes a new development, which adds up to expose the terrible social plight that has enveloped India. Honest people are like zombies.

Then there is this other deep malaise, the inability of elderly men, many in their eighties, to make way for new ideas and retire. Jyoti Basu will soon be discredited for his ageing and outdated interventions if he continues to be active in contemporary politics. Why does he not set a new example and step back, away from it all, thereby forcing a radical change? Likewise, there are Vajpayee, Arjun Singh, Shivraj Patil and scores of others. Do they have no other life, no other interests, no other action? Or are they all lacklustre, demotivated and uninspired, stuck to the ‘chair’, lost without their mythical prestige? There seems to be a congenital lethargy in all government action, which stems from the fact that those at the helm are not charged up, but are, instead, tired, old and predictable. There is no energy and vitality, no excitement, no change.

Negative chatter

In this atmosphere, the living rooms of the capital have, once again, begun their negative chatter about how the country has never been in a worse predicament. Much of the whine is true, but the solutions trotted out by this class of privileged souls are scary, worse than the present reality, if that is possible! “Democracy has failed”, “We need a benign dictator”, and other such simplistic statements are voiced with great authority, as if problems of enormous magnitude and complexity can be solved in this unthinking manner. Intellectual responses are few and far between, and this is frightening. The urge to initiate and develop inclusive alternatives is virtually non-existent.

However, despite the overall gloom, the government is taking some salutary initiatives. The peace talks with Pakistan appear to have taken on a positive dimension, moving towards the first phase of a joint solution. Western powers would love to see conflict in our region prolonged indefinitely since it was Britain in the first place that divided India instead of having walked away with grace.

There is an intrinsic fear that the developed world harbours about India and China along with west Asia, albeit for different reasons, because somewhere in their psyche they know well that ancient civilizations have a special resilience and with economic advance, they could dominate the world politically, economically and most importantly, culturally. When a ‘deal’ between India and Pakistan does mature, there will be a sense of ‘alarm’ in such nation-states as their manipulative politics in the region begins to suffer. These countries must be put on the back foot.

The United States of America and its allies must begin to study and learn about other, more potent, tried and tested cultures and traditions. The imposition of their rather recent and somewhat unrooted history on the civilized world is bound to backfire and boomerang on them. Their limited intellectual ability and experience make them act in outlandish ways ever so often, like walking into sovereign states with their military might because they disagree with them politically. This kind of pedestrian foreign policy that ‘super powers’ dole out and abide by is out of sync with the new realities of the new millennium.