The moral landscape

We are indeed fortunate to live in times of great exposes of amoral conduct, be it financial fudging, looting public money or other crimes. Broadly, it indicates a shift in power equation between the ruling elite and ordinary folks regardless of their station in life.

Anti-social behaviour

Icons are crumbling to dust by the hour and nobody is shedding a tear. Every day, the TV channels project from all corners of India crimes of various magnitudes from simple house beak-in to financial skullduggery, sophisticated bank frauds, looting of public exchequer, on the one side, and sexual harassment, kidnapping, abduction, rape and murder, on the other.

It almost seems that an avalanche of antisocial behaviour has been let loose all of a sudden, giving an impression that the people have cast off all restraints and gone berserk. This impression may be an outcome of explosion of information and iterative visual presentation of reconstructed crime scenes rather than any sudden decline in standards of behaviour and conduct.

If one takes a critical look at the past, without wallowing in nostalgia of those good old peaceful days of British Raj, one would realise that we have got a legacy of a colonial system based on patronage and discretion. We wanted to change it by dialogue, discourse and democracy without disturbing the underlying foundations of power structures and we have failed.

People have been indoctrinated or brainwashed into believing that the top-most of the administrative authority can do no wrong and, if some transgressions were observed, they can be overlooked. If an ICS officer or diwan of a princely state in pre-Independence India allotted himself some land, nobody would know and even if someone did, he would not care as the people expected the person to live in style. Now, the TV cries foul, 24x7, if an officer or a minister were to help himself to a mere 1,000 square feet flat.

Brain and brawn

While browsing the memoirs of former ICS officers who served in the sprawling districts of India, it is interesting to come across the collector, also serving as magistrate, getting together daily with the Superintendent of Police for an evening drink. Under such convivial ambience, they would sort out all the crimes and disputes that came to their notice, as investigator, prosecutor and judge. The crime rates, reckoned in proportion to population, were less in those days since many did not dare to report against such a formidable combination of brain and brawn. No reporters, No TV, No tweets. No RTI.

Similarly, most of the financial skullduggery would go practically unnoticed except when the gang of thieves fell apart. Sexual offences against poor and low caste were not even considered as crime. If a rich landlord, though married, were to seek pleasure with women from families of landless labourers, it did not bring social ostracism.

Instead of bemoaning the current state of the nation, one should be sanguine that the consciousness of the society is being awakened and hope that this detoxification process has the desired effect all around.

(The author is former Member, Ordnance Factories.)

COMMENT NOW