March 22, 2011

Indians can do with a Jasmine Revolution

With so much talk of unrest in many countries in West Asia and a brewing discontent in many more countries, Jasmine Revolution seems to have got a lot of civil societies together, in many countries. Most of these countries don't have even have a facade of "democracy", leave alone true democracy. So, one hopes things will settle down and these countries will soon have elected leaders and things will be fair & square. Infact the whole world is applauding this in different ways and feel this is how countries need to be governed, end of day. Hail democracy!

But, if we sit down and think how democracy has been fair and square to Indians, I wonder if such revolutions, giving way to democracy will anyway be different to the anarchy / dictatorship that they overthrew. I guess all these boil down to individual psyche and culture. Indians have had a feudal system long before it got invaded by the Moghuls, English, French or Portuguese. So, this culture seems to still lie within our psyche somewhere and we have displayed it time & again. 

So, no amount of reforms, civilised society that we call ourselves, has changed anything, much:-). We all continue in the same way, we can call it British Raj, Democracy, License Raj, whatever, but the average Indian continues to be very feudal, at heart. As a consequence, we have become a very very apathetic society and nothing seems to stir us out of this subjugation and slumber. Maybe, that explains the case of dynasty politics that is so rampant in every state and every party. 

Its time, we wake up to this decadence in our country and show some anger and resistance to the goings-on around us. What say?

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