The last couple of months have been some of the toughest months that most of us have faced in our entire lives. Just when we thought that life was about to come back to normal, the second wave turned everything upside down. This second wave has affected every one of us in some way or the other; some of us have lost our close and dear ones while some of us have seen family and friends battle this with all that they have got. And there are probably more amongst us who have seen the suffering and have volunteered to understand the situation and help others in need. I have also seen cousins and friends who have used their time to coordinate much needed help to those in need. From coordinating beds, to supply of oxygen cylinders and concentrators to getting medicines, people have stayed up well past the midnight hour to get things done. Infact, in most cases, it was strangers rising to the occasion and standing up for another fellow human being.
A lot has been written about these known and unknown heroes and I am not going to dwell into that nor am I going to dwell into the collective failure of our Governance system. We have been witness to multiple view points both for and against the Governments both at the States and the Centre. And all of us are entitled to our opinions, and so I am not going to use this space to give my version of it.
I have personally not done much to help during this second wave except for an odd phone call or two to coordinate for friends and family but staying in Coorg during this time has helped me introspect and look at this entire scenario from the outside. Infact, the most I have probably done during this lockdown is ranting on social media on the ill planned lockdown measures implemented by the powers that be, especially in Coorg. This lockdown has once again helped me introspect and look at things from a much needed holistic perspective.
Over the last 4 years or so, we have been faced with one disaster after the other. 2018 and 2019 saw mother nature unleash its mayhem on us and then 2020 and 2021 has seen this Pandemic further turn our lives upside down and in all these cases ordinary citizens have come up to support another human being irrespective of the relationship they share with the other person. The disasters in Kodagu saw many people take a break from their regular jobs so as to devote time and money to help rebuild people's land and lives. Even during this pandemic, we have seen strangers helping each other to salvage a situation. And all of this shows that no matter what, humanity is still alive and when push comes to shove, we will always stand up for each other.
I believe this is where the problem is. In this pandemic, a lot of us started talking about the dismal state of affairs of our healthcare infrastructure only because we were faced with a situation where it didn't matter if we had our fancy insurance or access to the best of hospitals; all of us had to be a part of the system to get a simple bed in a hospital. And now we are taking vaccines in the first place that we have access to and this is making us understand the dismal state of affairs of our health infrastructure in the Country; the only health infrastructure that majority of our fellow citizens have access to.
For far too long, we have let our emotions and our humanity get the better of us. We have only been reacting to situations by jumping from one issue to the other. It's time for us to take a pause and look at this broken system and understand where we have gone wrong as Citizens; Why is the onus on us as ordinary Citizens to bear the brunt of the collapse of a system and support each other to make it work? When will the system do the work its supposed to be doing?
Time and again, we have let the system get the better of us by ignoring and looking the other way in our daily lives. We have let the powers that be get away with their corrupt practices and milking of the system to their advantage because we stopped or rather never questioned the functioning of the system. And even if we did, we do it when it trends as a hashtag on social media and even there, all it takes for us to move from one issue to the other is for another hashtag to trend, thereby making us less relevant in the running of the system.
We have been taught that the most important role that we play in the functioning of the democracy is our power to vote. Unfortunately, we also think our job as participants in the great dance of democracy ends with us exercising our right to vote. The truth is that voting gives us the right to question the system. The people that we vote to power are our representatives, they are supposed to be listening to us. Instead, we are made to look like fools governed by the most intelligent and well meaning people in the Country. The powers that be have used this against us by constantly hoodwinking us into believing that change will come. No matter which party is in power, the onus is always on the stupid common man to follow the system and be good model citizens. And if we have a problem with the system, we can try and petition our representatives and if that doesn't work, then we can always approach another pillar of democracy, our dear Judicial system. But is that all that we can do or should be doing?
The problem is that the powers that be, our Political, bureaucratic and official class have created a system where we as common citizens have become irrelevant, unless of course we belong to the high and mighty class who have direct access to those in power. We have to follow all rules and regulations, pay our taxes on time, don't default on our loans, follow traffic rules and regulations and so on and so forth. We have become submissive to a system of arrogant officials who make it look like they are doing us a favour by doing their jobs. We end up paying bribes for the most irrelevant things; like registering our own properties that we have either bought with our own hard earned money or that has been passed on to us from generation to generation. Almost no business can run without paying bribes to officials at some level or the other so much so that almost everything we do feels like its illegitimate. As Citizens, we somehow seem to find ourselves bowing down to a system that we know is not right just because we don't want to get our hands dirty. Whereas the powers to be are constantly abusing this system to get their right of way and what do we do? Nothing!. We curse the system, crib about it but then live with it like we have no other choice.
It is time for us to wake up. Let us not let the lives of those who died in this pandemic or those that lost their lives and livelihood during the natural disasters go in vain. It is time for us ordinary Citizens to take control over our destiny and that of our children. It is not enough if we just pay our taxes and follow all rules and regulations like good, honest citizens, We need to become more participative in our democracy. An MLA or an MP is not going to solve it for us. We need to get active at the local ground level. We need to question the system starting from the ward or the panchayat level. I strongly believe that we cannot change the system from a top- down approach, we can only do it if we start at the bottom.
After 75 years of independence, the time has come for us to value and cherish the freedom that our ancestors fought for. And we can only do that if we stand up for each other and be counted.
Democracy is not a spectator sport, it's a participatory event. If we don't participate in it, it ceases to be a democracy- MIchael Moore
