After quite a time during the COVID-19 pandemic and lock-down, I have picked up my pen to vent out some of my innermost thoughts - thoughts that have troubled me long enough. For those who are susceptible to being triggered by the honest criticism of Leftist ideologies, all those readers are free to abandon reading this post from this point onwards. There is a high probability that many would find it a typical rant of someone, who is tagged as a "Privileged-Elite" in social media, so that a good deal of brownie points can be earned for sympathizing with the suffering masses.
Off late, we all have come across heart wrenching images of people directly or indirectly suffering due to the COVID-19 pandemic. From the disease itself, where the dead get stripped off of their rights of a dignified funeral to contain infection, to the policies like lock-down, a countless number of human beings have died or have lost their livelihoods in the most tragic ways. Many of them belong to the economically poorer sections of the society. While the gut wrenching images of the dismembered body parts of migrant workers laying on railway tracks after a train ran over them is enough to make anyone feel sick, the heart wrenching images of a small child trying to wake up its dead mother can evoke tears even in stone sculpted statues, let alone human beings. However, the thing for which this blog post is intended, is the fact that, it has become a disturbing trend to slam the rich and middle class as "Privileged, Elite and/or Heartless" as a prerequisite mandatory ritual to empathize with the suffering people. Some have even compared jobs like IT (where Work From Home is becoming as the new normal) to the jobs of a Doctor/Nurse and cursing IT folks as the "Privileged ones who are minting tons of money by sipping Dalgona Coffee on their cozy sofas & doing something worthless on a company laptop".
It is true that the poor are suffering. But, the elephant in the room that everyone is scared to address is why are poor people poor even after 70+ years of independence. I am taking the liberty to take on this figurative elephant in the room by its tusks, head on. Below is a link to one of the lesser known Mahabharata stories - Story Time
Since Independence, our political class has been doing donations like Arjuna (freebie distribution for the sake of publicity and creating perpetually dependent vote-bank) rather than doing justice like Karna. The problem with the Socialist approach of donation like Arjuna, is that, the hardworking and the lazy, the entrepreneurs and the opportunists - all get equal amount of gold. This is gross miscarriage of natural justice. Just because a person's brain and heart are not equal, that doesn't guarantee that the brain is superior than the heart or vice versa. Brain needs the blood supply pumped from the heart, as much as the heart needs electrical signals from the brain to function properly. Both are equally important and a person's life exists only because of this natural inequality (precisely specialty). Besides, brain's energy requirements are vastly different from the energy requirements of the heart. So, any attempts to draw comparisons between the two is an absurd proposition.
The strange fact is that, forcing the notion of equality on people, is doing injustice to their inherent specialty. Those armchair liberals who are desperately trying to earn brownie points by demonizing the rich as a prerequisite step to sympathize with the poor are the biggest hypocrites who are wrapping up their gross incompetency and jealousy in becoming rich or doing justice with the poor. They are the ones who have got selective amnesia of the fact that the electricity and the electromagnetic phenomena that runs their computers, phones and all communication devices was discovered by a poor blacksmith's son Michael Faraday, who himself started as a book binder. These people are totally ignorant about the humble beginnings of two Presidents of India - Late Dr. A.P.J.Abdul Kalam and Dr Ram Nath Kovind. It is true that every poor person cannot become a Faraday or a Kalam, but they can certainly become one Dashrath Manjhi or a certain Haldhar Nag. These hypocrites are blisfully ignorant of the fact that being born into a poor or rich parents is a coincidence. Nobody has got the choice to be born in a particular family. Hence, being born poor is an accident. However, it is a matter of concern when the same person dies poor. This is beautifully explained by the founder of Microsoft and one time world's richest man Bill Gates - "If you are born poor, it’s not your fault. But if you die poor, it’s your mistake"
In fact, the beauty of this temporary life and nature is that - "Nobody is equal, rather everybody is special".
But rather than appreciating the inherent specialty, our political
class and intellectual juntaa (specially capable in forcing the notion
of equality) created positive discrimination as a cure of retrograde
negative discrimination, which created more problems in the society.
Glaring examples of such lunatic ideas are caste based reservations to
undo caste based discrimination (positive discrimination in the name of
social justice & affirmative action), freebie distribution rather than employment
generation (positive discrimination in the garb of doing economic
justice), extremely biased female-centric laws which result in pseudo-feminism (As per the statistics of National Bureau of Crime, about 53.4% of rape cases were found to be fake in 2013) rather than feminism (which is essentially appreciating the uniqueness and specialty of feminine gender)
However, our Leftist Liberals don't want any poor or underprivileged person to work hard and rise above their unpromising beginnings; because if poor people become privileged, then who will give two hoots to their selfish ideology ? Hence, they believe and advocate for freebie schemes which essentially destroys the very motivation for a poor person to work hard and become rich. Also, in a civilized society, everyone's rights are taken care by everyone else's duty. My right to have a quality food is guaranteed by the farmer's duty to grow food-grains. A farmer's right to food is ensured by my duties to pay taxes honestly and the government's duty to assist the farmer in enhancing his production capabilities. The moment, a farmer is provided with free cash, food grains and essentials, he loses the motivation to grow crops because now his basic needs are fulfilled. So, that essentially translates to a violation of my rights of having a quality food. Besides, the freebies distributed to the poor and downtrodden are not essentially free, because it has been paid for by the narrow taxpayer base.Rather than empowering the poor to earn a living and contribute to widening the taxpayers base, they are purposefully kept poor by preposterous schemes like Nyay Scheme so that these people would again vote for that political party who doles out the maximum freebies in the next election. As it goes - "Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.".
Now, when the economy is shattered due to the pandemic, the government along with all politically correct economists are caught with their pants down. However, armchair economists and social media warriors have pitched in to sell alcohol during lock-down like an essential commodity, and grow state revenue by heavy taxation. These armchair economists are intellectually handicapped enough to foresee that the growth in state revenue due to taxes on alcohol is heavily outnumbered by the financial & human cost of law & order and health problems due to unabated consumption of the overrated hydrocarbon.
Leftists were supposed to be the voice of the poor. Rather than focusing their energies on formulation of proper labour laws which would transform unorganized sector into the organized economy, prevent exploitation of poor while providing them avenues to collaborate with the rich and transform their lives, Indian Leftists have found it very convenient to be anti-rich. Since the beginning of time, starting from journals to movies, everything has the same cliche plot where the villain happens to be a privileged, arrogant, authoritarian, selfish, cunning, manipulative, scheming, eternal sadist, and above all one of the filthiest characters in the world whose every inch of the body reeks of elitism. The hero is a typical poor and innocent man who is consistently victimized & traumatized by the rich villain (a Lala, Baniya, Muneem, Seth, Thakur or even a business tycoon who has murdered the hero's father, raped the hero's sister and now is planning to forcibly marry the heroine) till our hero takes the law (both laws of the land as well as laws of physics) into his own hands, beats every henchman to pulp, defies laws of physics & chemistry to have an immortal biology, dodges bullets & bombs like a child's play, and finally kills the villain in some of the most gruesome ways, only to surrender before the police at the movie end. Out of the overwhelming majority of Bollywood movies of the same cliche plot, how many have shown the story of a poor person working hard & smart and ending up as a rich guy (movies similar to The Social Network which depicts the beginnings of social media giant Facebook and it's founder) ?? All of this indicates of a long and strong propaganda being continuously hammered to our heads - that the stereotypical notion of rich guys or those who are working hard to lead a comfortable life are inherently evil/selfish while all the poor people are victimized souls; when the fact is quite opposite - not every rich is a privileged elite villain, and not every poor is an underprivileged victimized soul. If Nirav Modi is rich, then so is Ratan Tata. If we have poor people like Dashrath Manjhi, then we also have poor like Nirbhaya rapists. If we have politicians like Late Vajapayee Ji, then we also have opportunists & convicted criminals like Laloo Prasad Yadav doing politics. If we have true feminists like Late Sushma Swaraj, then we also have pseudo-feminists like Jasleen Kaur & Rohtak Sisters. In other words, there are only good people and bad people in every sphere we look at. Rest all comparisons are totally absurd and out of context.
Consequence of all this - We are a bunch of people who slam Salman Khan for driving on the footpath and killing people, while we find it convenient to overlook irresponsible bikers driving on the footpath to avoid traffic signal. We see a terrorist inside Sanjay Dutt, but find romanticism in seeing a misguided son of a school teacher in a slain terrorist Burhan Wani. If our anger is against the flawed system which acquitted Salman Khan in the infamous hit-and-run case because of lack of evidence, then where does this justified anger & rage vaporize when irresponsible bikers ride on the footpath to save a few nanoseconds in front of the red signal?? However, if our anger is based on the fact that Salman Khan was able to buy justice out of the money power, while a common man driving on footpath is unable to get away and ends up paying huge fines, then that anger is totally unjustified and is simply a manifestation of our gross incompetence and jealousy that we are not privileged like SK to buy courtroom justice.
Consequence of all this - We are a bunch of people who slam Salman Khan for driving on the footpath and killing people, while we find it convenient to overlook irresponsible bikers driving on the footpath to avoid traffic signal. We see a terrorist inside Sanjay Dutt, but find romanticism in seeing a misguided son of a school teacher in a slain terrorist Burhan Wani. If our anger is against the flawed system which acquitted Salman Khan in the infamous hit-and-run case because of lack of evidence, then where does this justified anger & rage vaporize when irresponsible bikers ride on the footpath to save a few nanoseconds in front of the red signal?? However, if our anger is based on the fact that Salman Khan was able to buy justice out of the money power, while a common man driving on footpath is unable to get away and ends up paying huge fines, then that anger is totally unjustified and is simply a manifestation of our gross incompetence and jealousy that we are not privileged like SK to buy courtroom justice.
Enough of rant for a single blog post. From the perspective of someone who wants to work hard as well as smart to become rich, here is something worthy to watch:
Hence, in times of a Chinese virus, ending the post with the words of a famous Chinese philosopher to keep things in perspective -
"In a country well governed, poverty is something to be ashamed of. In a country badly governed, wealth is something to be ashamed of" - Confucius
