What's the next scam?

I am very busy with the preparations for my daughter’s wedding. Hence, I find hardly any time to read the newspapers or blog my thoughts. But the term ‘SCAM’ screams so loud on all newspapers and news channels that I cannot miss anything! Wherever I go to invite for the wedding, people are discussing of one scam or the other! What has happened to Mera Bharat Mahaan?

The first time I heard this term SCAM in my life was when the Boffers Scam was unearthed. In my childhood, I remember how my parents used to talk in a hush-hush voice, when they spoke about corruption in my father’s work place or elsewhere. We children were not allowed to participate in such discussions, even when we were in high school. Corrupt people were ‘bad people’. The society almost shunned corrupt people.

Today, the criminals and corrupt officials are not ashamed to be beamed live on television to the entire world. Maybe they enjoy their name and fame! That is why, when one man finds his name in a scam of hundreds of crores, the next man vies with him and surpasses him, indulging in thousands of crores, while yet another one reaches astronomical figures of lakhs of crores! I don’t even know how many zeroes are to follow the first digit in case of the current scams!

The ex-DIG involved in a cheap and brutal rape-cum-murder case poses with all smiles and his shameless wife fights for his release. Would she have done that had her innocent minor daughter been the victim? Where have the values vanished?

Chief Ministers justify their scandals, saying that their predecessors too have been corrupt. So, the morality has changed today. If you are corrupt, I jolly well can be corrupt. If you murder three people or rape ten minor girls, I can murder thirty and rape twenty minor girls! Whom should the voters vote for? A party supports the most corrupt Chief Minister and lets him go scot-free when thousands of acres of land belonging to innocent voters are gobbled up in various scandals. The very fact that all of a sudden hundreds of developmental projects are taken up all over the city of Bangalore is proof enough of what is the motive behind all of them! Citizens are not that foolish to believe that the Government and BBMP are suddenly so concerned about the problems of the citizens!

I just read about how the greenery of the whole city is being attacked by land sharks, timber mafia and greedy politicians and officials. The common man is fed up and has started taking all scams in his stride. He just reads the newspapers, sipping his tea in the morning, discusses the issues with a few of his like-minded friends and takes care of his life. Everybody knows what happens to whistle-blowers. Who wants to sacrifice a life for the sake of an issue, because the people who want clean governance are the weakest in terms of wealth and power, though they are majority in number!

Just as the number of deaths in bomb blasts and wars no longer affect us as much as they used to forty or fifty years ago, the amount of money involved in scams means nothing to us today, because both have become the order of the day! It's as though they are playing the game, 'what's the next scam?'! In all this, if we are able to lead a normal life and die silently, we are blessed!

Sudha Narasimhachar