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Public life is getting more and more poisoned by the corrosive effects of distrust playing havoc with organisations and human relationships. The maxim, once widely accepted and acted upon, that trust is the one pre-eminent cementing factor that unfailingly contributes to the vitality, strength and success of any human enterprise, is going out the window. Even families are falling apart because of disputes over property or suspicions over handling of money matters.

According to recently conducted surveys in the US, 80 per cent of the Americans do not trust corporate executives and roughly half of all managers do not trust their own leaders.

Not a day passes without reports appearing in the print and electronic media of shocking instances of rampant cheating indulged in by sections of society — religious denominations, financial companies, academic establishments, business-houses, you name them — which were highly regarded as exemplars of honest dealings. No one literally can be taken on trust any more. Society as a whole, not to mention the various institutions holding it together, seems to be tumbling down the disastrous slope of "Each person for him(her)self, and the Devil take the hindmost".

The crisis of trust is getting out of hand. Eminent public figures, educationists and youth leaders imbued with idealism need immediately to get together to adopt countervailing measures to pull society back from the brink of utter degradation. Trust begets trust is an old saying. Logically, then, the response to a situation vitiated by loss of trust is to go all out to put one's trust once again in fellow humans and the institutions meant to sustain and nurture value systems capable of combating the present trends.

The process of regenerating trust has necessarily to start with oneself as a parent, a teacher, a student, a citizen and a social being, determined to be a role model deserving of implicit trust in each of those capacities.

B. S. RAGHAVAN

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