THE MOTHERLAND AND THE MASSES ... 3

THE MOTHERLAND AND THE MASSES ... 3

Politicians are not interested in the welfare of the people. It is self-interest and ambition all the way. The people merely come into the play as the politicians' pawns to power. This state will continue for the foreseeable future till a new generation of ethically sounder children are born to replace the old dross and fill up the air with the fragrance of an enlightened humanity that considers well-being in collective welfare and not in the pursuit of putrefying personal ambition devoid of principle.

It is often aired that participation in politics by the educated and the enlightened citizenry will mend matters in this regard with immediate effect. But this observation is based on the assumption that politicians alone are wicked and the general electorate not so. It is further assumed that there are enough enlightened citizens in the country to alter the sad situation of the day. But this is more an assumption than a reality. The educated and the 'enlightened' are as much human brutes with their personal preoccupations and their selfish sensate living as these rogues who roam the legislative houses making a sham of the law there and elsewhere that have reduced democracy to worse than a despot's degenerate dream.

The ordinary man may not have mastered the art and the science of mass corruption as his sibling in the perverted politician or the crony capitalist has but he is no saint either. It is he or she who fathers or mothers sons and daughters who despoil the nation so. The ordinary man is neither messiah nor mahatma but is as selfish as selfish can be, and it is absence of character in him that is the root cause of the nation's downfall despite the much flaunted economic rise whose fruits a handful, and only a handful, enjoy wholly. The rest have to rest content with crumbs and pieces falling off the careless hold of these barons of business and these pirates of politics.

So, where lies the solution? Why, in the patient building up of our civilisation again through individual and collective effort at character building and rendering selfless spiritual service to our countrymen, beholding them as divinities incarnate in this play of terrestrial life. This may be a tall order to achieve but this is the order of the day and it must be carried out if we are ever to see a brighter morrow en masse as a nation.

Written by Sugata Bose