Protecting our Protectors: Protecting Our Protectors - Why Sachin Suryavanshi...

THURSDAY, 28 MARCH 2013

Protecting Our Protectors - Why Sachin Suryavanshi cannot be left to fend for himself

You can choose to be indifferent, but not forever. Your misplaced hope that someone else, somewhere, some how will fix this society for you while you keep trying to make the most of your life may well be driving you down a path of future regret and failure - In the eyes of yourself, your family and your society.

What is to come of you should tomorrow your daughter be molested, son murdered, parents heckled or worse? What if these acts were to be committed by someone who cannot be investigated and cannot fall within the realms of law? What if the perpetrators are one of the MLAs or their family member who just got a little more emboldened as ASI Sachin Suryavanshi lies at a hospital, suspended from police service, thrashed by MLAs in the Vidhan Sabha - all for ensuring that an MLA was duly challaned for over-speeding.

Go on, hope that the worse never happens to you or your family. Shirk your responsibility to the nation, your society and to yourself and fatally hope and pray instead. Donate to temples, give to charity and hope that because you pay a "moral hypocrisy" tax, bad will not befall you. Its not the first time for most of us. Lets shirk once again. Lets believe our life is more important and worthy of other things. Lets hope that someone else will fix the mess for us.

Well here is Mr. Sachin Suryavanshi. He is trying to fix a big mess for you! He is trying to uphold his sacred oath of duty to maintain the rule of law and to hold all people equal in the eyes of law. He knew what he was getting into, but he stayed course. He says that he will rather leave the force and return to his village than to take this humiliation that now awaits him - something for which you are giving your politicians a free hand. A fine foot soldier who wanted to make a life built on the foundations of courage and integrity will go back to his village, disgraced.

And what will you do? WHAT will you do?

Do you think virtues of courage and integrity should be protected in testing settings like the police force which is hopelessly under the political thumb? Do you believe it is the right thing to do to let these virtues of courage and integrity be subverted by power hungry misappropriations? 

If you know what is the right thing to do, if you believe that Suryavanshi was doing the right thing, then how can you console yourself into inaction? As you act, so shall be the society you will build for yourself and your family. 

No society is built by random accidents. Its people take decisions on what they will stand for and against. Little drops of convictions converge and build a stream that whips up an ocean one day.

You can look at yourself as one little helpless drop again today. Or you could believe that this little drop too can merge with other little drops and make a sum larger than their individual parts.

It is no longer about Mr. Suryavanshi. It is about what must not be allowed. A policeman tried to protect all of us by trying to uphold the law and treating all people equal within it.

The price of inaction is severe and more of us need to shake out of the delusion that the sins of our collective inaction will never boomerang back on us. As Mr. Suryavanshi pays the price of political retribution for complying with his duty, it is time for more of us to resolve to protect our protectors. 

Gouging the Rich never helps the poor...

 

I have always been concerned that too many of our people are simple, too willing to accept all the propaganda that is showered upon them daily by the politicians and the government’s propaganda machine. That is why I provoke people into thinking for themselves, and not blindly accepting all that they are spoon-fed by the media.

And this brings us to an issue close to our hearts, or rather to our wallets. Taxation! It is time to get serious and tough about the tax policies in our country. Look at the size of our deficit. It grows every year. We could cut spending and we need to do that, but there is clearly a need for more revenue. We cannot and should not reduce defense spending and we cannot cut all of the middle class entitlements. We cannot cut expenses on any major fronts. And, we cannot continue to try and rob the rich. Tax evasion has been a major activity in our lives specifically because the government has been punitive against the rich in India. Because of this entrepreneurs are not motivated to invest into modernization of technology or Research and Development and instead try to either invest into tax-free environments or into farmland schemes. And who are the people who are hurt the most by this? The white collared middle class suffers the most.

Instead of trying to bring down the achievers in our country, who make a lot of money; instead of trying to punish these people for working hard and succeeding; what we should do is teach others how to succeed. We have to keep trying to motivate others to put in their hard work rather than be pacified by indictments of the rich and promises that they will be made to pay more than their fair share because they are rich. Of course, the government’s answer to increase revenue is simple; just raise taxes on the middle class. One of the reasons that India has a constant recession is because the middle class does not have any more money to give to the government. The middle class has been taxed at a confiscators rate for 65 years and is now broke.

Taxes go up every year. And they go up the most on the middle class & the rich, because that is where the bulk of the money is, that cannot be hidden from the government. Consider the taxes we pay on cooking gas, petrol, food, clothing, and entertainment. When you add it all up, is it any wonder that we are perennially broke? The average middle class family cannot afford to give their children good schooling or health because, instead of using their money to support their children; they are supporting a giant, bloated cow in New Delhi called the Government of India.

The middle class coupled with the rich should make this country work well. Should, but never does. What is slowing this country down? I will say out loud what it is. The Poor. And the Farmers. I can almost hear the howls of protest from many people, but the reality is that the poor, the farmers and the so-called backward classes of our country have been having a free ride since independence. It has become noble to remain poor or backward. Look at how we treat those who shun money and wealth. We celebrate them, make romantic figures of them. We make movies about them and teach people that it is wonderful to be destitute. The poor of our country, combined with the farmers are the largest herd of calves feeding off the mother cow in New Delhi. They feed off the largess of our government and give nothing in return. Nothing! They get all the benefits and they are the ones always pandered to by the politicians. 

The government has been encouraging poverty by subsidizing the increasing number of poor. And politicians love giving money away to the poor because it makes the poor dependent on the politicians and helps to ensure re-elections. And do the poor pay anything back to the nation? No. Do they pay any taxes? No; because they are poor and cannot afford to pay taxes. They do nothing, but take from the nation. On one hand there is the middle class who are infusing everything into the nation’s economy. These are the people who work hard every day, throughout their life; always obeying the rules and contributing their fair share and more. These are the givers. And who are the takers? The poor, of course!