No judiciary, no police department, no political party can ever stop a man from commiting a crime. But what it can do is make an example out of him.. so everyone else learns from it. So everyone fears the consequences.
Every day on news channels, papers, blogs, university discussion forums.. every indian talks about the discrepencies in the system. about the rising crime rate. about women getting raped. And yet. Mysteriously. All we ever do is complain. We blame it on the civil servants and the police. The discussion ends there. As citizens of this country. Every time we bribe someone. Every time we witness attrocites as innocent by standers. We fuel the fire that is so rapidly consuming this country. We cannot blame the road side romeo who whistles every time a girl passes by. We cannot blame the self proclaimedcollege "NETA's" for the doom that this country is running towards. We have to blame ourselves.. the common man who who let this happen.
This road side romeo who would only whistle and blow kisses so far.. is a rapist in the making.. our ignorance.. and perhaps fear of conflict have given him the assurance.. that he can get away with it. The babu sitting in the government office will not move a leg from his office until he is bribed. It has come to that soley because we as common people bribe willingly to get our work done quicker.. and then even boast about it in our friend circle.. claiming to know people at the right places. And let alone crime and corruption. The lack of respect we have for our country and our coutry men.. comes through in things like the way we drive on the roads.. the way we throw our cig butts and coke cans anywhere we want. The real villian of this socienty lies not in the robbers and muderers.. but perhaps within us.
Does this mean that we need to go out there in true bollywood style and start changing poeple.. or take law in our own hands to teach criminals a lesson?? No.. definitly not. The idea should be to discourrage the smallest act of crime or corruption. The idea should be to make sure that the next time the road side romeo misbehaves with a girl. we go through that extra trouble to report him to the authorites.. to the media. Whether something comes off it straight away or not is irrelevant. The very fact that it becomes a big deal.. will stop this man.. or atleast make him think twice before he retries it. If we just let it go.. coz we'll get late for the movie.. then it could be our sister.. or wife.. or gf.. who is caught unaware and alone at night.. by this very person. This country today stands at a very important cross road. From here. We can either become an example to the rest of the world as a country that rose from the ashes.. that rose from over 300 years of slavery to become one of the most advanced and powerful nation in the world. OR.. we can become the perfect case study for the western countries of how to waste a perfect opportunity and slip away into oblivion, into depression, into poverty. The decision lies in our hand. In the hands of every common man. Every indian. And all it will take is small moral and social changes in life. Nothing drastic. Nothing very heroic.
FOR EVIL TO WIN.. ALL IT TAKES IS FOR GOOD MEN TO DO NOTHING!!
