The Country is Facing Moral Collapse

Bhushan Lal Saraf                                             The writer is former Principal District & Sessions Judge

In the ICU of a Rajasthan hospital rats nibbled facial parts of a paralysed patient, admitted thereto for cure of his ailment In Kolkata two hospitals refused to admit a poor woman in an advanced stage of pregnancy. With the result, she was forced to deliver twin babies on the pavement and lose her life. Before that, in a super-specialty hospital of that city dozens of patients died not because of the diseases but perished in a fire which broke out in the parking lot, not used for the desired purpose but to store inflammable material A Dalit woman was paraded naked in Karad hometown of the Maharashtra Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan, for the alleged fault of her son Honest bureaucrats and police officers are victimised for uncovering misdeeds of politicians and persons occupying high public places.

HUNGAMA foundation says 42% of Indian children under five years of age suffer from malnourishment Tourists throw money and food at semi-naked Jarawa tribal women in Andaman and Nicobar islands and make them dance to their tunes. And in ensuing state assemblies the contesting political parties rake up issues not of sadak, Bijli and Paani, but of reservations, caste and communal calculations This is a list of some of the unfortunate events which have been, lately, dotting the headlines of every type of media we have in India - not to mention the Telecom and CW games scams of 2010. Memory can't keep pace with these. The list could go on and on, given the shameless demeanour of the men and women who are destined to rule us till eternity.

Then, we have leaders in the corporate sector shaming us in no less measure. They build palaces for their residence, spending fortunes, but have no compassion for the poor labourers who shed their blood and sweat in constructing these. This vulgar display of wealth borders on criminality when we have a quarter million farmers committing suicide in the last 15 years, 80% of Indians living in poverty and dying in the absence. of healthcare. Perhaps, it is time to remind these leaders of the decadence of what was written long back by the French thinker, Rousseau in Discourse on the Origins of Inequalities; "It is obviously contrary to the law of nature for a handful of people to gorge themselves on superfluities while the starving multitudes lack the necessities of life."

A question may be asked on societal front as well. Where are we heading as a society? We have fallen apart. Our story is of broken homes, shattered social fabric, loss of trust and a surge in community and family strife. The economic situation is worsening. Political uncertainty looms large on the horizon. The corrupt rule the roost. Deep pessimism pervades all over. To our misfortune, there is no one like Archbishop of Canterbury around to warn us as he did the British." Britain is loosing its moral compass and no longer has a sense of where it is headed as a society." Nor do we have a forthright leader like. British P.M. David Cameron to tell us as he talked about "Britain's broken society and its slow-motion moral collapse."

Can our leaders dare raise a question as Cameron did? "Do we have the determination to confront the slow-motion moral collapse that has taken place in parts of our country these past few generations?" Our nation suffers from a governance deficit. Rulers, on their part, suffer from, inter se, trust deficit, inasmuch as right hand doesn't know what the left hand doe The candidness of Cameron (some of his blemishes not discounting) contrasts well with the art of stonewalling developed by our rulers to dodge issues and refuse to confront these. We routinely witness a sorry spectacle at the Centre where an important functionary of one of the ruling coalition parties makes wild statements impinging upon national security concerns, role of the Union Home Ministry in combating terrorism and PM O's office. Yet neither of them dare challenge him publicly. They feel safe to take refuge in issuing the bald statements: "We distance ourselves from the utterances of the party functionary." We have ready made alibis for every heinous sin committed or likely to be committed by the high and the mighty. The co-opted intellectuals, of any shade, are ready to bestow content on what is inherently hallow and bottomless.

The situation near home is no better. Chief Minister Omar Abdullah, while recalling the period of turmoil he had to undergo and counting the achievements of his three-year rule, referred to novelist Charles Dickens to describe his period of governance as, "it were the good times, it were the bad times..." Braving acute shortage of the essentials of life, suffering innumerable inhuman abuses on various counts and having to contend with persistent bureaucratic indolence and indulgence, people of the State would have liked the young C.M to remember, also, the scene of Victoria 1 Britain portrayed by the great novelist, "a grim, impoverished society, full of abused children, wrangling lawyers,sadistic teachers and watchful effigies." It would indeed be enormously honest of Omar Abdullah to quote Dickens as above, because our present position is not much different from the image of Victorian British sketched by the great writer. We witness a pathetic spectacle when Chief Secretary of the State publicly admits his helplessness and failure to elicit a response from the Secretaries, to his measures initiated for good governance. When it comes to the safety of moral fabric, all of us have to introspect and account for.

(The writer is former Principal District & Sessions Judge).

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Courtesy:- Bhushan Lal Saraf and  April 2012, Koshur Samachar