Random Musings

Thursday, September 22, 2011

The Anna Hazare Movement: Maybe I should have given it more thought

The Anna Hazare Movement: Maybe I should have given it more thought.
The whole of last month the media was only talking about Anna Hazare. His campaign against corruption was on full swing with the whole country talking about it. Unfortunately, I did not seem to care too much and just wanted to go on with my life. Corruption is so ingrained in our daily life that I was disillusioned about one man fasting and trying to eradicate this.
Nevertheless, a recent article in the Hindu “The Union Cabinet gets healthier” has got me thinking.  The article talks about how sitting MPs have multiplied their wealth over the last two years.  Based on the article by P. Sainath, the average worth of a union minister has risen from Rs 7.3 crore to Rs 10.6 crore over the last twenty eight months. I was reading this article and was really stunned. On one hand we, the salaried class, are slogging for ten hours a day to earn a decent living and for a measly 10% rise in salary each year, while on the other hand our elected representatives are doubling their wealth, even as they make no substantial contribution towards making our society a better place to live. Cost of food items, house rents, fuel and just about everything else have sky rocketed over the last year. But obviously this does not seem to be affecting our elected representatives. And why would it? Their wealth seems to have grown at a rate faster than most of these basic necessities that we are worrying about.
I think this article has been a wakeup call for me. Maybe we do need more campaigns from the likes of Anna Hazare and maybe it is time that we the educated middle class start questioning our elected representatives.
P.S: I have quoted from Mr Sainath’s article which was published in the Hindu on September 21, 2011. The link to this article is http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/columns/sainath/article2470835.ece

3 comments:

Smita said...

Sorry State of Affairs!!!!

Dexter said...

Visited your blog after over six months. I was pleasantly surprised to see you have been prolific. Nicely written!

Kaushal said...

don't see any updates here now.. Delhi's keeping you too busy i guess?? :-)