Candle March & Posters - Then what?

On 3rd of December, young and old India, concerned India, awakened India, joined hands to fight terror, and collectively marched for the souls who died, saluted the braves and condemned the politics and politicians for this country. People thronged at Gateway of India (Mumbai), India Gate (Delhi) Cubbon Park (Bangalore) and other places in Hyderabad & Kolkata, in One Voice "Enough is Enough" 

It was overwhelming to see so many people, youth, old and concerned stand unitedly. One of the poster that caught my eyes said "Terrorists United Us, while Politicians Divided us" ; media was there and common people were being questioned, and they came with frustrating answers against the politician, the system and of course our neighbours. Few made sense, few were showing outflow their emotions, few were rude, and few cynical. One said, "Yes our system is a failure, our politicians are a failure, but we cannot blame only them, it is US who have elected them, so the onus is US also." I endorse it. 

I was asking to myself, good that people are out, people are aware, people are angry, but does this population make any difference to those politicians, whose vote banks are NOT Us. They may be sitting in their couch, and laughing at us.  Is 80000 people at Gateway of India, an answer to lakhs of people they have in their rallies. 80000 in a country of 1Billion is 0.08% of the population. We need much more to make things happen....

Lot of us will have similar sentiments and it was so annoying to know, where our corruptions have gone. Other day I saw a report, that low quality bullet proof jackets were supplied to armed forces, even when they failed the tollerence test!!???!! Are we so low, so cheap, so hungry for money, that we are not even ashamed to give the right kind of instruments to protect us. There may be a handful of politician at the top, who have "been there done that" and has a will to lead correctly ... but most of them below are just awaiting there chance even if it is to hold the post for a year, month or days.  Two things I can think of where we can ourselves contribute is ..

Awareness should be our 1st priority; if we need to make things happen in this country. We should form a citizen forum, take help of media, to have a detailed profile of each nominee standing for election, do background verification and then decide to vote. If our employeers can do background verification when we are selected for employments, we as employeers of these public servant we should enforce a similar rules. Educated the mass and bring the change.

Accountability, that should be our next objective. Make people accountable and start it at the grass root level. You cannot start at a PM or Home minister level, clean it at the bottom. No bribes, No chai pani, no babugiri for whatever work we need to get done at government depts. I know we are challenged for time, but our employeers should cooperate in either facilitating clean transaction or sanction leaves in a year to deal with this mess. Once the mess stops at the bottom, it shall stop at the top. 

There may be many like me who feel the same, but are directionless.  Let us join hands, let us bring change!!

Yes We Can... 

Terror!! What here after?

I hate it when the news coverage say “India’s 9/11” to me it sounded, that we have been outsourced the job of facing terror. I agree that 9/11 was one of the worst days of terror on this planet earth and so was 26/11, then why do we Indians fancy having tags which are so western or has a western symbolization.  
As a country we have faced enough terror and just by adding adjectives what do we want to prove to us and others!! To me Mumbai Terror of 26/11 is something aghast, cruel and an incident of shame for its government, its politicians, its security agencies, its people and above all India as a country. But are we up against doing something?

 Are we happy with..

  -          Peace March, candle march?
-          Talking of Mumbai’s Spirit. What is that Spirit? Minding our own business?
-          Drinking to Lepold Café reopening ceremony?
-          Politician’s offering resignations?
-          Politicians trying to politicize these issues and make a political agenda for election?
-          Four NSG hubs being created?

 What are we happy with?  For me they a good for bytes and median news but will this solve the problem at large? Can we for once think of a solution?

 For me, solution is a Change and this will not happen

  -          Unless we people demand and accept the change,
-          Until we demand and show aggressive stance,
-          Until we stand up and show them “we are the people” amongst “by the people”
-          Unless we ask tough questions to our local politicians
-          Until we come out of the mindset “Mein kyon is jhamele mein padoo”,
-          Unless we spread the word, make people aware
-          Unless we demand quick justice and change the judiciary system
-         Unless we demand for changes in the “Constitution” making crime free and minimum educational qualification background for people in power.

Till then politicians will separate us, terror will rule us and we shall live and die like non existence rodents and minorities in this country.  We shall be happy watching so many debates and TV shows where eminent people come together and speak, and we shall echo most of the sentiments, which shall make us proud. It is good to discuss, and finally the debates end, “we know, but what to do, people like you and me cannot change such a big country”.

The question here to ask is can we take up the leadership? Leadership for me here is not standing in election, joining a party or participating in Lead India initiatives. Leadership for me is to adopt good governance and make people adopt it, create awareness, literacy, casting your vote and be counted!! 

I stand for it… Do you?

26/11 Mumbai on War!!

I finished my meetings at the World Trade Centre in South Mumbai and I came out to find my cab had been towed away from cuffe parade. The driver perplexed, requested we went to church gate to get our cab back. Finishing the formalities I asked the driver to drive me around South Mumbai. It is always a pleasure to see this part of Mumbai, tall buildings, iconic structures, and million dollar business happening, may be with very tide lashing the marine drive.  From structures and property worth billions, to road side shopping at the fashion street, to the iconic café’s or a sandwich walla’s, or our own dabbawalla’s it is a pleasure sight and hustle bustle around this place is very enjoyable.

But who knew the fate of this place in another couple of hours, when it transformed into a battlefield. The lashing waves bought some unwanted people to the city, who took over this place, its buildings, its people, held up guest at Mumbai’s most prestigious hotels and created chaos and rampage for the last 40 hours and still counting.

It was in the morning, when I started from my hotel near the international airport for a meeting in South Mumbai, and spent most of the day around here and headed back to my office at Prabhadevi and then to the airport for a late evening flight. I left the city, with fond memories of a family function, some good meetings and an eagerness to be back with family after a week, only to know about the horror that started in Mumbai once I reached home. The feeling of being there just few hours before, was itself scary imagine the horror innocent people and our braving soldiers went and are going through even when I write this!! My family is happy to have me back home, but I fail to get answers to how? why? & what for?

The answers to this may be a long silence, but what we lose in midst of all this is reputation as a nation, innocent people like Maloy Banerjee, who happens to be a known face to my inlaws and was getting married after a week & above all few brave sons of the soil like Karkare, Salaskar & Kampte, one of the best men we had in our ATS & police forces. These brave men stand up and face the music when it comes to real war, and sadly, they are same men who gets bashed, condemned and humiliated through our dirty politics when ever these men do their job honestly.

Today the brave of the brave politicians are numb. Where his Raj Thackrey and his band wagon of goons, always standing up for Mumbai and its people, or is it that since its foreign nationals, they have shoved up their bravery. With country facing one of the worst terror strikes, with operations happening over 40 hours, the home minister Mr. Shivraj Patil has not opened his mouth. Is he waiting for some kind of a political agenda to speak up, and I guess his time for speaking up is over, he should own up and resign immediately. I have lost count of terror attacks in last few months.

I fail to believe that such a large scale of activity from teens terrorist is not a one day affair. It is a planned activity and carrying it out in such secured place and in such iconic buildings is sheer lack of negligence or involvement of people within. It is a planned attack. I was surprise to find the Maharashtra CM giving excuse that people could come from sea route is because they do not have speed boats to do vigilance around the dock area. He claims it is under approval. I fail to understand such security issues being “under approval” status co.

Today we all are wishing, it comes to an end, but is it really the END. Have we become so used to such events or become so complacent that today we only wish for our safety, our family, our state, our caste, our religion and hindsight to problems at large. I am sure; our media will unearth more masala out of this issue, and our politician will try to gain mileage and point fingers at each other, but do we realize that all this points at Us, after all we are still democrats, remember By the People, For the People, Of the People.

May Peace Prevail and payers for all affected in this unfortunate incident.