Thursday, November 25, 2010

Holiday Blues!!!

Finally, four days of bliss. Months of hectic media monitoring had left me craving for some personal time, time to introspect, time to indulge myself… you get the point.

First off, I would like to congratulate my friend Kiran K on getting married. Kiran has been with 80 Feet Road since its birth, helping us with the template coding and designing header images. On behalf of the 80 Feet Road bloggers, I wish you a happy and a prosperous married life.

Oprah giving away cars to the audience had grabbed a lot of eyeballs everywhere, making it one of the hot topics to discuss at the water-cooler gatherings. Pamela Anderson’s entry into Big Boss was the most popular.

Thanks to a very learned friend of mine, whose scholarly knowledge in almost all disciplines leaves us spellbound; I’ve been and continue to be treated to classic movies of different genres. As a result, I have now a huge collection of movies lined up to be seen this long weekend. Thank you KB!

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Moving on to my favorite topic – Corruption. Not any more! Looks like it has become the favorite topic of an entire nation, instead. At least, that’s how the newspapers and the news channels making it look like. Reams of print and airtime are being allotted to the spectrum scam while closer home, it’s the CM’s largesse in allotting land to his family members hogging the headlines.

Now, I am not against the newspapers and the news channels making a big hue and cry, after all the government should be held accountable for its wrongdoings, right? But the point here is what does it accomplish? Committees will be set up to investigate these allegations and after a decade or so they come up with their findings, by which time, the perpetrators would have moved away from the limelight (or better - dead), nobody would be interested. Someone else would have taken their place; someone who having learnt from their predecessors mistakes would be more careful to not to get caught.

What does all of this accomplish? Does it kill corruption? Will it go away?

NO!!!

Let us be smart and go after the small fish. I mean the small ones. Kill the small ones and the big ones will cease to exist. Makes sense right?

Charity begins at home. But unfortunately, it has lost out big time to Corruption. Yes, these days we are most likely to indulge in corruption rather than charity. The delivery man, who brings in the gas cylinder when the one at the home runs out, demands 20 to 40 rupees extra on the bill. It is extortion. Refuse at your own peril. The next time your cylinder runs out, you will have to run from pillar to post to get the replacement on time. The garbage man demands anything between 10-20 rupees at the end of every week. If you refuse, then don’t be surprised to see your garbage lying un-collected at your doorstep. So, you learn the hard way. When the electricity conks off in your area, better be prepared to pay the repairmen something when they are done or learn to do it the hard way. The same goes for the sewage repair, water leakage, and the list goes on.

Do you think anyone would be interested in charity after being forced to pay thorough the nose. I am not talking about taxes here!

Let us begin at our homes. Let the media highlight our problems. Let the authorities take action against these perps. Once these problems are taken care of, lets move on to something that’s a little bigger. Let us take baby steps in fighting corruption. However, we need to dig in because it will be a long, hard and a dirty fight. These greedy bastards are not going to change (give in) that easily.

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Enjoy the long weekend. Happy Thanksgiving!