Switch on the radio, watch television or read a newspaper, you see a chorus on a civil society movement or a guru egging his followers to condemn corruption and black money through satyagraha and there is a whole din and melee caused by political dialogue around the subject of graft.
For those among us who call ourselves thinkers, it is crystal clear, we have lost almost all the values that we cherished as a nation or society. Slowly and steadily we have built a society or rather attempting to build a society which is looking to build material wealth and slackened the rules around the path of material progress. Lenders are happy to lend without much scrutiny, borrowers are not keen to assess their ability to repay or assess the risk of income loss on account of job-loss and other unknown phenomenon. In a growing economy everything is hunky dory until the economy is heated to ultimately melt down. We have seen this happen is other economies in the first world and the repercussions of mindless consumerism. While those nations have already built a social welfare structure including a well developed medical insurance programme, we have none to write home about. Can our fragile social fabric take the pain of economic meltdown along with deterioration of the value system? All the din about graft in the media are signs of rapid deterioration!
Our strength has been our way-of-life and support system built around a strong extended or joint family system, which allowed resource pooling and resource regeneration. In the new way of things, families have become nuclear and our social welfare systems, if they exist, are dysfunctional. In such a scenario what are we communicating to the individuals? Every member of our society is made to believe that he is on his own and he needs to save up and the message everyone has clearly internalised this message "save up as much as you can". There is a thin line distinguishing saving from hoarding!
There is a deep rooted insecurity. This insecurity is driving individuals to mop up as much resources as one can, and the means don't matter. Slowly but steadily "mop-up-as-much-as-up-can" has become a motto of people from all walks of life. The traditional value systems around honesty, truthfulness, courteousness and generosity are steadily eroded. Elasticity to accept dishonesty in day-to-day dealings steadily erode the foundation of true value system. Value system is created through word of mouth and significant demonstration through practice. A father who is dishonest at work everyday, cannot preach honesty to his children. The result is evident, there is ready justification for violation of our own values, all this leading up to large scale corruption. The beauty is we are happy to jump queue using influence, however it hurts us when someone else does it, leaving us in the queue (sometimes for ever)!
As responsible individuals, all of us need to revisit our own values. Start practicing them and also preach them day-in-and-out to our circle of influence to establish a sensitive and generous society. Loka samasta sukhino bawantu!
