1700000000000

The number of zeros have stunned and outraged us. Now what? Some say the corrupt should be arrested. True, the law has to take its natural course. But, will it make any change? The next person might only add a few more zeros to the already uncountably large number! We can only sigh that the system is so rotten and that they are all so pathetic. Many desperately hope for some Rang De Basanti style revolution or Mudhalvan style arrival of the deus ex machina! Obviously nothing like that is gonna happen. We also know that. I see elders throwing up their hands in despair and letting out a cry asking for the gods to intervene and transform the politicians! They are desperately concerned about the future their beloved nation and their progeny in this country. Everyone is confused why the ruling class is so rotten!

Is it really so hard to understand and to get to its root? Or is it that we have not really spent the time trying to understand why its all so wrong? How much time did we spend trying to find the perfect job / apartment / spouse? How much time have we spent in justifying our position in the hundreds of ridiculously trivial issues we have had with people around us? Have we spent even a fraction of it in trying to investigate why the politicians are like this? I mean real and true investigation and not cribbing and complaining. Is it so hard to understand the psyche of the people involved in these things? On the surface greed of politicians seem to have no end. But what is greed and what are its roots? I mean what can anyone or any family or even a whole town do with 170K crores of rupees? What is the underlying problem that manifests itself as greed? Isnt this question staring us at our face? Have we ever bothered to investigate along these lines? Or is it that the answers are so difficult to face for it also points a finger back at us? If we are genuinely / sincerely concerned about this would we still refuse to get to its root? There is no parent who will refuse to get into the root cause of the disease that is destroying the life of hir kid. Do we have that sincerity?

Its entirely an accident that Raja or anyone else accused of corruption was born in the families they were born in and exposed to the experiences they had and that we were born in our own families and exposed to our set of experiences. Our positions could have been swapped so easily. We were born in a place that provided us the means to exploit the world 'legally' and gratiate our senses and ego. Politicians have their own ways of doing the same. So what really is the difference? While many feel that it is perfectly understandable and even more ridiculously is an absolute necessity to: a.) pursue careers in order to make a name for themselves, b.) invest the inordinate amounts of money in real estate so as to 'grow' in the society, c.) feel pride at the number of people who work under them d.) feel great about the 'big' names they work with d.) Consume indiscriminately etc etc, but when the politicians do the same things in their own language, we are outraged. The stupidities we engage in or enormous. The exact same forces operate through politicians and the conditions around them make it manifest itself in the ways they do.

When such is the case, wouldnt a sincerely concerned person first clean up his/her act? Wouldnt such a person look at hirself with utter dispassion and with the sole aim of tapas or self cleansing in order to eliminate the virus from oneself that is causing havoc everywhere? The masters have always encouraged people to involve themselves in work as karma yoga and not to titillate ourselves. If one does not have the wherewithals to do so for whatever reasons, the least one was expected to do so was to unreservedly support such people - meaning just take care of their basic needs like food (the job of the house holder). But what are we up to these days? Even with 6 figure salaries per month (or three times that if earning in dollars), still we hesitate to give. Why? What are you doing with all the money that you are earning? We are happy to garland the image of Bharathiyar or Vivekananda now but we will happily let the living Bharathiyars and Vivekanandas starve! Can a society that lets it Bharathiyars and Vivekanadas be occupied with trivialities such as earning food and keeping the kid at home healthy progress? It will only encounter many such scams until its eventual annihilation. What are you going to do about it?

Finally, imo, this is the bottom line - if you are even minutely sincerely concerned about all the violence in this world (including the corruption of the politicians), you would sincerely go into yourselves and eliminate the same virus from you which is operating so destructively through the politicians!