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GUEST ARTICLE

        As India seeks to celebrate its sixtieth year of independence - in human context we call it shashti-abdhapoorthi - it is time to ask ourselves where we stand for. What are we? Assamese first and Indians next? Tamils first and Indian next? Mao-ists first and Indians next? The utter irresponsibility shown by our 'leaders' is unbelievable.

        The truth, if it be told, is that we have no national leaders. We have only political leaders. Not nationalism, but power is the goal and the people, under poor leadership, are prepared to kill, loot and devastate the land without showing any concern for Hamara Hindustan. Aren't Biharis Indians? Haven't they the right to go anywhere in India to make a living ULFA obviously doesn't believe so.

        It would rather seek shelter in fundamentalist Bangladesh and operate out of there to drive Biharis out whose only crime is that they are poor. Or take the most recent case of the Cauvery river waters award. Mercifully there have been no killings, but automobiles have been burnt, dozens of vehicles have been set ablaze in Mysore and a dharna was staged in front of the Mysore railway workshop to demand the closure of work. There was no 'national' figure around to call the citizens to order. We don't have a Mahatma Gandhi, let alone a Swamy Vivekananda. Mud-slinging is the name of the game, not leading the nation.

        The country is going to the dogs while our media is focussing attention on the future of Abhishek Bachchan and Aishwarya Rai. In one day Karnataka suffered a loss of over Rs 500 core on account of the bandh called to protest over the Cauvery Dispute Award. But let us face it. Karnataka is only the latest example of citizen misbehavior. Violence is the first approach everywhere as a form of protest.

        Citizens are not taught to behave themselves. Our political leaders, our so-called 'gurus' stay at home while murder and mayhem become the order of the day. What India urgently needs today are a Vivekananda with an unchallenged moral stature, a Gandhi - the then Governor - General of India Lord Mountbatten called the Mahatma his one-man Army who have the courage to face angry crowds and tell them that violence is no way to solve problems. Currently the problems are on the rise and nobody gives them any thought. Inflation has risen to 6.58 percent spoiling the feel good of a 9 percent industrial growth.

        Our industrialists are spending billions of dollars to buy up equity in foreign industrial units while unemployment is steusily rising in the country. Crime is on the increase. Only the other day CBI Director Vijay Shankar released a document whose contents make shocking reading. Apparently a total of 2,276 cases of crime have been gathering dust for the past ten years. Of these 244 are awaiting trial for more than 20 years. By the end of 2006, the agency had 8,297 pending cases while it was 6,898 in 2005. In 438 cases charges have not even been framed by designated courts for over ten years! There are cases where people have been languishing in jails for between 10 to 20 years. Corruption is so widespread that in 2006, the CBI had booked 1,917 public servants, nearly half of whom were gazetted officers of whom, again, 25 were of the level of joint secretaries and above. And think of this: Officials from 130 departments have been booked under the prevention of Corruption Act. Political parties - especially the UPA - seem unconcerned with these facts.

        Media hype is what matters. How many tribals have been transported to listen to the Congress President? A meeting to remember the 60th year of the first introduction of satyagraha as a means of protest is held in Delhi and word is put out that the BJP leaders did not attend the meeting. The truth is that the BJP was not even invited to the meeting by the Congress organisation. Half truths and lies are spread by those in power because elections are nearing. The media is more interested in presenting glamour to sell its wares than to present India as it is today.

        Think of this: Amar Singh reportedly 'gifted' a Bentley car to Abhishek Bachchan and paid a hefty customs duty of Rs 85 lakh. The very thought is sickening. Amar Singh is the Samajwadi Party's General Secretary. The value of the car has been noted as Rs 1.76 crore. In other words, Amar Singh spent Rs 2.61 crores as a present. If this is not the height of vulgarity, what is? What sort of sense of values do we have? And that, too, against a background of over one lakh farmers' suicides? That doesn't seem to matter to our Congress leaders: they are more concerned with grooming a successor to the party leadership which has now become a family affair.

        The Indian National Congress of a different era in due course became the personal property of Indira Gandhi, aptly named Congress (I). For all practical purposes it is now Congress (S) and the boneless wonder known as Congressmen want to look forward to the day when it will be Congress (R). And damn democracy. Thousands of villages lack health care. Of the 9 lakh nurses registered with various nursing registering councils, only 40 per cent work, according to Dileep Kumar, president of the Indian Nursing Council. If only an Indian village could be supplied with two nurses we would need only in India some 4 lakh nurses who could very often do the work of both doctor and nurse.

        The World Health organisation estimates a shortage of more than 4 million -or forty lakh - doctors and nurses. But where are they? The sad part of it all is that we don't take governance seriously. Suffering is part of our system. So is corruption. So is indifference. The future of Rahul and Priyanka is more important than the fate of a farmer. Justice can wait. Human suffering can wait. Vehicles can be burnt.

        Railway coaches can be set on fire. Trade and commerce can box halted, at a moment's notice. Strikes can be called. India has become a stage of a great tamasha and no one dares call the government to order. And all this because we need not political, but moral leadership, strong filled highly principled people, who will call a spade a spade, travel extensively on support of a principle - as Gandhi did during his Harijan tour in 1935 - focussing on morals, ethics and the spiritual rejuvenation of the country.

        This calls for a change in the mind-sets of our leaders whether political or spiritual. For a brief time there were men like Vinobha Bhave and Jayaprakash Narayan one could depend on? No we have only Shahrukh Khans and Abhishek Bachchans as role models for the young. The nation is on its way to commit suicide, and not just farmers. But who is to bell the citizens and warn them of impending dangers? The media? The UFA? Forget it.