The two malignant
outcomes of the politics of divide and rule – economic and social divisions
– were mutually reinforcing in that they were bound together in a downward
spiral. The government fragmented the society into many segments and that
led to general impoverishment; which increased the economic inequality
between segments which then led to greater strife, and so on.
But all that changed
in 2014 when Indians finally gained economic and personal freedom. It was a
freedom movement and it finally gave meaning to political freedom, the
freedom they had nominally had since 1947 but had never been empowered to
enjoy. Today we can celebrate 2014 as the year of India’s Real Freedom.
Let’s briefly review
what happened and why.
Breaking the Cycle
of Corruption
Change is not
generally welcomed by people. We like to maintain the status quo for as
long as we can. But when things become totally unbearable, even the most lethargic
people take action. Revolutions happen when the old ways of living become
absolutely intolerable. For India, change had been a long time coming but
it was not until the people were staring down at the abyss from the edge of
the precipice that things finally changed for the better.
If you review the
situation around 2010, you will probably react with shocked disbelief.
Consider the level of corruption. Every other day, yet another “scam”
involving billions of dollars would come to light. It was not just your
everyday petty corruption such as bribing a local official to overlook some
minor matter. That petty thievery was so pervasive that it did not evoke
any comment or surprise. It was as much a fact of life as air or water.
The mega-scams we
are talking about were quite different. That was corruption of astronomical
proportions that is hard for people to fully comprehend. They involved
politicians, naturally. But politicians cannot act alone. They were joined
in the looting of public resources by industrialists, by newspaper and TV
journalists, by judges, by bureaucrats, and even celebrities.
These scams involved
such diverse areas as animal feed, government tenders, grains such as rice
and wheat, public distribution systems, radio spectrum, defense contracts,
mining rights, real estate deals, major purchases of equipment from abroad,
you name it. There was no segment of the economy that was untouched by
massive corruption that involved people at the highest levels.
gateway.india.in
Rachaita VyaS
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