It’s been saddening to see Mumbai, a city of a million people, being brought down to its knees by 10 insignificant people so easily. Its been even more disheartening for me personally to see places that I frequented for the past 20years of my life – Nariman point, gateway , G.T and Cama Hospitals (my mom and dad worked at G.T and Cama respectively for more than 10 years), colaba and vt will now bear scars forever. They won’t be the same again.
There are a hundred things that we could discuss about- inadeptness of the police in gathering intelligence or to benefit from it, the relevance of their equipment (or the lack of it), the ability of politicians to govern (or the lack of it) and play politics in serious times, our foreign policy and USA’s benevolence towards Pakistan and a lot more which have been discussed thread bare as I sat glued to the television coverage over the past 3 days. But what we need now, more than before, is a direct involvement of citizens in their own governance. Till now it’s been left to politicians by the educated who thought it too muddy to get dirty in and too shallow to benefit from. It was always a better option to get educated and earn your own money while being indifferent to the state of governance. If you didn’t like it, you could always move to greener pastures and leave the ‘lesser mortals’ to live through the deeds of their actions. What this attack on the affluent has done, is to jolt up the elite and tell them, you are no different and as responsible in the state of affairs as anyone else. When the chairmen of your banks are held at gunpoint and Board of directors as hostages, you ought to see reactionary pressures on the government to mend their ways. Heads will roll, no doubt but what I’d like to see is constant pressure on the ‘new heads’ to provide good governance and transparency.
I’ve always believed the average citizen in my country is more intelligent and smart than our politicians think when they connive them into voting for them or believing their actions. What has gladdened me the most is the refusal of the Karkare and Unnikrishan families ( who lost their sons in the gun battle with terrorists) to meet Chief Ministers of Gujrat and Kerala respectively and scuttle any plan of taking political mileage out of it besides rejecting the lure of money. It’s a big slap on these Chief Ministers egos and I hope they learn from it.
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