Integrity Crisis
A country can be as good as its countrymen. It’s tough for a country to prosper if most of its population doesn’t care about their civic duties. It is impossible for a nation to become great unless it is loved by its citizens.
Men didn’t love Rome because she was great; Rome was great because men loved her.
I came across footage of a highway in Japan full of traffic. The vehicles couldn’t move. Surprisingly, none of them were honking. They all somehow knew that honking wouldn’t solve the problem. I have never seen this in any other city or heard about it in any other country. Humanity cannot operate on collective consciousness. And yet, in Japan, we see the opposite of this.
They feel honor in their work, they are highly organized, methodical, and most importantly, they possess integrity. India, on the other hand, functions quite differently than other developed nations. It has been said that India progressed not because of the government but despite the government. India is a nation where people distrust the government but want to work within it. Their dream is to make money off of corruption. Their dream is to weaken the system further.
A vast majority of Indians still see the government as an authoritarian figure who must take the load off them. They place the onus of their lives on the government. The idea of citizen awareness, civic duties, collective moral values, and integrity seem to be values of a bygone era. India is seen as a country of immense potential. I respectfully disagree with that assessment.
When a majority of the population requires stringent rules and someone to enforce those rules by inflicting brutal punishments, then Indians don’t have potential; they have an integrity problem. Stealing, corruption, and bribing are some of the qualities that even parents don’t mind imparting to their children because those are the values required to survive among the rest.
Less than 3% of the population pays income tax. 57% of the population survives on free food. People vote for political parties offering free money. When more than half of the countrymen desire freeloading, the country is doomed. No wonder the rich are branded as the enemy. This is the worst form of communism.
The country cannot survive and progress on the shoulders of the handful who slog themselves only to be taken for granted by the government. And yet it has to. The government has to rob them because they have to support the freeloaders who miraculously became powerful by having the right to vote.
Democracy becomes a disease in a nation that has no integrity. No wonder India’s integrity was at its highest when democracy was dismantled.
Despite this, India has made tremendous progress. The world is bullish on India. I, on the other hand, am bullish on those handful of working professionals, the entrepreneurs who are struggling, who are ignored by their government, and yet manage to find some semblance of success in life.