Whenever the issue of corruption vent out more than usual trickles or a new terrorist activity rips our major cities or any other burning social issues come to surface i used to face typical questions from my friends and other fellow FBians, buzzers and bloggers
" What are you going to achieve by updating your anguish and frustration in your Facebook/buzz updates? or sharing some 'inspiring' videos which nobody in the government machinery care to read ? "
I have to admit that not only from my friends , this question used to ripple in my mind also.
Let me tackle this question. India is the largest democracy in the world with more than 1.2 billion population. Since it is a democracy, power lies with the people. In other words power is with the politicians who are elected by the people . So it is me and you who are there in power. So where are we in fault? We are hearing lot of scams , a puppet government who can't control its ministers, a government who cant defend its citizens from ruthless terrorists! , and still consider we the people in power ??!!
Answer to this question lies in us only. This 1.2 billion people neither share a common language, religion or culture that is the usual cases of other countries . Even though we used to say that we are proud of our ‘Unity in diversity’ , our politicians used to exploit this diversity time to time. It is the same diversity that lead to Hindi politics, minority & majority propaganda , sons of soil argument etc. When it touches these sensitive points we ,the Indians forget everything else. Even though we netizens used to share frustrated FB statuses, engage in fierce blog arguments regarding social issues etc , when it touches anything in this ‘diversity category’ where each one of us belongs to one or other category we weigh that down and give social issues less weightage. It is the same reason why regional political parties working on regional issues getting prominent roles in national politics .
Because of this peculiar nature of indian politics our good politicians (not sure any such breed exists!!) can’t do much about these corruption or other burning issues .It is the same reason our police/intelligent agencies became toothless. It is used to say 'Prevention is better than cure' but to prevent a terrorist attack we need intelligence info but if the hands of intelligent agencies are tied by vote bank politicians how they will be efficient?
So now the question is WHAT can we do about this?
Join politics?
Great idea ! movies always float this idea and it used to be a great success!! but so sad that in movies only. In my opinion as long as Indian political scenario focused on regional and vote bank politics it doesn’t make any difference whether you join politics or not. Even if a political party comes up with a very good agenda it won’t be able to survive in Indian political waters!
So then, is there a solution?
Yes , Stick to the basics , try to change the vote bank and regional politics itself!. They depend on us, and people like us. So if we decide, we can change them. It is the information that changes the mindset of people and what can be a better medium to pass information than internet and multimedia in this 21st century? I agree that only 20 % people have internet exposure in India but 92% have multimedia and printed media exposure! Dont forget that now a days almost all multimedia and printed media tracks online social networking sites!
My friends used to ask me "Do you think VS(previous Kerala chief minister) read your blogs and buzz and take action? My answer was “YES directly or indirectly they do , and they have to “. Now i can say literally YES. After Egyptian rising almost all governments track all social networking sites. In china they have a special cell that read and blocks those posts which criticizes actions in Xinjuang region. Our own India has also a special branch to monitor social networking sites which is used to gather intelligence about anti National elements
So my fellow netizens , keep socializing and your posts also can bring about changes ,but of course change depends on your actions.
