A Republic of Transgressions!

Are we a nation bereft of collective social conscience?

Psychologists say that unchecked behaviour, left to spontaneity to develop and shape up, would grow into a stereotyped pattern over two to three years. It seems true for individual behaviours and collective societal trends.

Think of India and the US, two societies far apart but broadly falling under similar social governance realities. While the US traditions and practices are over two centuries in the making, Indian democracy and its volatility, inhibitions and obsessions have been a work in progress for over seven decades. It is therefore safe to assume that both these societies have found by trial and error, omissions and overdoing, their unsettled equilibrium and broad social personality as functional democracies.

This brings us to the hard reality of excessive permissiveness, an overload of unaccountable freedom to berate and display sectarian antipathy that the free democracies tend to tolerate. This aspect is often misused and manipulated by the elements bent upon playing up fissures and differences rather than curate compassion and accommodation.  

As for India we seem to have skipped too many pigmy steps in social stabilization and maturity and have seemingly broken into adopting cynicism, hostility and blurred narratives of social equity as the framework of our normative citizen narratives.

Lawlessness, segmentation, unfair lobbying and appeasements of a perverted and unproductive nature seem to be our agenda for social justice and empowerment.

To say the least, this prescription is powerful enough as myopic social anesthesia and can eat into the social fabric’s calmness and maturity like termites feasting on weak foundations of edifices, outwardly imposing and standing tall!  

No wonder, India remains a Republic of Transgressions. Law Breaker is the image that most of those in politics prefer as opposed to being known as a positive lawmaker and reformist.

Most Indians have little qualms about making what they believe as small, innocuous and unnoticed transgressions of regulations, procedures and laws. This behaviour has got so ingrained in us that we often see it as ‘normal’. The main reason for this aberration in our social psyche is that we hardly see someone being punished, fined, ‘named and shamed’, ordered to do social service or barred from enjoying social benefits even if that citizen makes serious transgressions!

The quality of average, typical, political persona in our democratic governance hierarchy has sunk to an abysmal low, compared to the upright and committed Indians who responded to the call for freedom and plunged into our freedom struggle. 

Look how decayed our leadership across institutions and agencies has deteriorated! All because we hardly pull up, punish or disenfranchise even the most obvious transgressors of our conscience and national ethos. The only hope is that more and more educated and empowered citizens, across social spectra of diversity should volunteer for political services. We should ideally have a culture where a substantial majority are into politics not as a primary vocation but as part of their social commitment.

Those who see politics as a means of bread and butter would push society into an orbit of mediocrity and entitlement!  

Is this vision too utopian? Can we banish the pests who cling to democratic edifice like leeches out to such the social blood? Will we ever have a tempered and regulated governance protocol? Let us hope we as a people would over the coming years say goodbye to parochialism, nepotism, casteism, communalism and linguistic fanaticism. We indeed have miles to go to become an evolved and balanced democracy.