Born in a Rotten Place

To put it bluntly, the current phase is the worst that I have felt about my country and its politicians and the powers that be. 

For as long as that I can remember, I haven't been exactly patriotic or felt proud at being an Indian. I don't even remember to have been expressed my anger or anguish as an "Indian". I have been mostly apathetic towards all the ills that this country is cursed with. Except for the occasional barbs and remarks on Government and Governance, which were essentially meant to be some kind of humour, I have never really felt anything about or for the place that I live in. All these are primarily attributable to my refusal to accept the Indian identity as a primary or even secondary one (Blogged Here).

My indifference was rarely affected by all that has been happening around me. But, the present Government and the opposition have definitely done enough to shake me out of it.

Disgust is probably the right word to describe what I feel about our political parties, which are filled with more filth than what could one possibly find in a garbage ground or sewers. 

The economy is in shambles. Many companies and offices are being shut down. Inflation is rocketing upwards. Too many people are struggling to meet their ends. Safety and personal security is hitting new lows. Women are getting raped by the hour. Men are being beaten up by goondas by the minute. Young kids are probably dying faster the dragon fly. Honest people are being punished for doing the right thing in doing their job. And the Government is busy emptying the coffers to fill their personal ones at their official homes and mistresses place, and screwing even more. And with whatever is left, they are planning to come back to power and screw us even more. If your ass isn't ripped off yet, wait for one more year for the Government to do the honours and end your misery.

And the Government is busy increasing the Country's debt to just satisfy its desire to come back to power and do even more such fabulous things for the aam aadmi! The uneducated, illiterate, corrupt and morally bankrupt politicians have almost killed us now and planning our funeral pyre next year. What else would explain the Government's intention to bring the Direct Cash Transfer System and Food Security Bill in a Country which they claim have improved over their "historic" 9 Years of rule. 

At one side, we have idiots roaming around as economists and experts calling Rs.31 and Rs.27 as the benchmark for defining the impoverished and differentiating from the privileged. At another side, we have "I KNOW EVERYTHING" political heads telling a plate of satisfactory meal can be had for Rs.5 and Rs.12! Two years back, a beggar refused my alms of Rs.3 asking me if I knew what was price of a cup of tea. I had to give her Rs.5 to make her go. The same group of people have concluded that the country's poor have decreased over the nine years. 

Now people with even marginal levels of intelligence are just questioning this = If poverty situation is fantastically improved, then why Food Security Bill? If the poverty situation is still so bad, then why all those "rhetoric" claims about "Bharat Nirman"? And further, why do you need to allocate more than Rs.31 per head for the Food Security Bill if that is what you have identified as the Golden mean to identify the less privileged? Amidst all these things what the heck is then the purpose of Direct Cash Transfer Scheme?

One of the worst things that has happened over the past couple of years isn't the Dollar rate increase but the worsening the Current Account Deficit situation. And how does our Government address this issue? By punishing Gold imports, and increasing the duty for the same. Its policies have effectively resulted in devaluation of not just the rupee, but also the Gold. And there by hitting millions of people whose lifetime savings have been invested in Gold. Now did the CAD situation improve? Marginally. But the dollar increase has effectively wiped out any of the so called improvements. Talk about cleaning the soil dirt with a shit smeared cloth.

But then what can you expect of a group of jokers who have been clueless about tackling something as elementary yet significant as "Inflation", about handling the CAD. The Government has corruption, inefficiency and ineffectiveness written all over its face. What is even more disgusting is the fact the same rotten people appear on television channels and talk with such an amount of authority and an air of "I KNOW EVERYTHING". Arrogance would be too mild a word to describe them.

And in between all the scandals and looting and shameless act of horse trading to save the Government and create a new one (with Shibu Soren in Jharkand), we have them giving us lectures on Secularism, as if that is the only virtue that one should aspire for. Their entire machinery is busy discrediting a potential rival and future Prime Minster, by constantly calling him names and communal. Not that he doesn't deserve those assertions, but the very fact that these statements and accusations are being made as if it is an atonement for all their sins. At some level, it feels as if they are trying to make us feel guilty for their sins.

And what was the opposition party doing all these days? Disintegrating. Trying mighty hard to stay relevant in these troubled times. Trying mighty hard to escape its own corruption scandals in different states. Trying mighty hard to pacify an old fart who is well past his sell by date. Trying mighty hard to sound "Secular", when obviously they aren't. Trying mighty hard to hold a moral edge over its rival, without even realizing that they are second to none on moral bankruptcy. The opposition never came out of the shadows of its last great leader. They look upto a man who they believe has been the best performing Chief Minister of this country ever! Heck, I don't even think he is half as good as JJ Version 3.0.

Now where all these get even more murkier is when all the rotten bastards join hands in opposing two things - One, opposing the move to bring political parties under the Right to Information Act. Two, opposing and going against the Supreme Court's judgement on barring convicted politicians from holding public offices. But why do they want to oppose something which sounds entirely reasonable and logical. We don't trust a random stranger with even a rupees worth of material. If a person's integrity is questionable, we wouldn't even entertain him, and here in a country such as ours, we are trusting such political leaders with zero credibility with billions and billions of money and even more resources.

That is when you lose all hope of ever expecting a honest group of politicians. That is when you really feel that people whose decision making prowess and integrity would affect crores like us should be as clean and pure as a mother's milk, and straight as a ray of light. When you realize that they are anything but that, you have that urge to take a knife out of its sheath and stab it where it pains them the most, and just terminate them, and end our miseries.

You feel angry not because such people are ruling, ruining and looting the country that you are born in, but because such people are empowered to decide too many things that affect you and me, and they do a shitty job at that. And that is when you realize that you are truly born in a rotten place, where all the roads lead to hell. 

At the end of everything, the anger is overpowered by utter frustration and an ability to laugh at our condition, and recollecting some Goundamani dialogue "Kanda kanda naayellam saavudhu, aanaal......"