Collective Conscience

Conscience is an aptitude, faculty, intuition or judgment of the intellect that distinguishes right from wrong. Moral judgement may derive from values or norms (principles and rules). In psychological terms conscience is often described as leading to feelings of remorse when a human commits actions that go against his/her moral values and to feelings of rectitude or integrity when actions conform to such norms. The extent to which conscience informs moral judgment before an action and whether such moral judgments are or should be based in reason has occasioned debate through much of the history of Western philosophy – Wikipedia

My friends, I mourn the near death of our collective conscience in Indian citizens. Once in a while like the IAC agitation, it does show some signs of recovery but on the whole I think any good doctor would pronounce it almost dead.

There are many of the symptoms of the disease all around us, one such symptom is the article in the newspaper where traders are complaining that the cargo facilities at Mumbai Airport are so dismal that goods are stored in the open air for lack of space. Since it rained a few days ago unexpectedly, valuable life saving equipment like imported CATSCAN machines were badly damaged.

On the other hand just a couple of days before that there was an article that the slums are being cleared around the airport to make way for shopping malls. AND NO ONE BLINKED AN EYELID. In a society where the collective conscience was alive and well, people would have poured out on the streets screaming that airport land should be used for Airports and passengers and cargo , not malls.

Another symptom visible, was the attitude of people when the Kiran Bedi fudging of the bills came out. It seems Kiran Bedi one of the leading lights of Team Anna, is usually invited for lectures, etc. The normal arrangement for such invitations is that the hosts pay for the airfare, etc. In Ms. Bedis case she has recd a gallantry award which entitles her to airfare @25% ( 75% discount) of the standard fare.

It has been reported that despite the fact that Ms. Bedi was invited for being a prominent person , exactly the same reason for which she recd the discount award, this discount was never passed onto hosts and they were billed for the full fare. Since this bill was a re-imbursement of expenses, technically this is a misrepresentation which could in certain ways be interpreted as a fraud on the hosts.. AND NO ONE BLINKED AN EYELID.

When this came out, people howled in her favour from the rooftops saying things like:

She never pocketed any money herself ( eg excuse used by Manmohan singh)

The benefits of this mis-billing went to the NGO ( eg excuse for all sops, rob rich to pay poor)

What was the harm, who lost money, people who were aware of the arrangements and would have paid that much anyways ? (eg excuse of policy decision on 2G)

The best and most revealing dialog on this was from Mr. Ram Jethmalani, that old fox, said “Fudging of bills is in Indian blood, everybody does it” (paraphrased). For example, The peon fudges his expenses to the boss, the boss fudges his income tax and the govt is creative with its figures to the public. Everyone does it.

The death of the collective conscience is there in the fact that a group of people are able to enter the Supreme Court and assault a senior lawyer and then crow about it to the world with impunity. The silence of the same rabble who screamed from the rooftops about the supremacy of the Parliament and how it was being subverted are now deathly silent on the insult to the sanctity of the Supreme Court.

The closeness of the death of this conscience is visible from the  fact that Indian citizens are sitting arguing for and against the death sentences of the People who attacked the same Parliament with weapons and in whose attack brave jawans died. A large amount of these people arguing are the very same who felt that an old frail man in a khadi cap was a threat to the same Parliament and were screaming at the top of their voices against him.

Another glaring example of this rot is in the open murder of a couple of youngsters at Amboli ( Andheri W in Mumbai). It seems that a few youngsters boys and girls went to a restaurant at Amboli  for dinner. After dinner they went to eat paan outside. While buying the paan , a drunk man fell on one of the girls and pawed at her. Naturally the boys did what any person would do, they pushed him away and threatened him with a thrashing.

The man seeing that he was perhaps going to be thrashed ran away but within minutes he was back with three autorickshaw loads of men with rods and chains and a sickle. These people set upon the youngsters and slit open the stomach of one and has injured another fatally. The bystanders stood around gawking and fearing for their lives silently instead of rushing to their help, AND NO ONE BLINKED AN EYELID

The rot shows in the fact that the drunk was able to gather 3 autoloads to come and kill young boys, The rot shows in the fact that when he cops went to arrest the accused, the slum dwellers attacked the cops.

I don’t know about you, but I have a young son, and everytime he goes out, I’m afraid of what incident may end up costing his life. Friends, we are all playing Russian Roulette with our kids. We are counting on the numbers to say it will happen to others and not to our kids, there are so many other kids in Mumbai to get killed, mine never will.

>>> BREAKING NEWS >>> As I write this the papers report another incident of similar mob violence against a young boy who refused the advances of a young girl at Mulund. It seems this teenage girl was besotten with this boy and hen he refused her advances she got a gang of boys to attack him with rods etc in broad daylight. Not only that , its now reported that knowing they had not finished him off , they had the guts to enter the hospital with weapons to finish the job there, but ran away when they were detected.

Lets face facts. Mumbai is dying. Forget the glitzy towers, the big cars, the flash of jewellery showrooms, the air conditioners in slums. The real life of a city is its culture and homogeneity, ours unfortunately is being sacrificed on the altar of greed.

The irony is we may blame the whole stinking mess on our politicians but the real culprit is all around us , its the death of all our collective conscience.

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The curious case of Ms. Bedi

An interesting twist in the Ms. Bedi case is now it has come out that he bills for the FULL amount were raised by a travel agent and not the NGO. So I am eagerly awaiting the news of how the extra amount was transferred from Travel Agent to NGO and if the whole amount was given or was a little something held back as arrangement fees?

To the supporters of Ms. Kiran Bedi who are blindly thrashing out, let me point out that the Govt is in the habit of making us overlook things by putting a grey cloud over it and confusing the hell out of us, if we allow others to do it shame on us.

We cannot condone one kind of corruption and condemn another.