The Weakest Link

Invariably when I sit down with friends and talk the conversation ends up in the mire of the state of the nation. We end up cursing
the same people, the same system, the same problems using the same language. I overhear total strangers do the same. It sounds
like a scratched record, like an echo, like an irritating buzz in your ear. It feels kind of like talking to your self. The same thing over
and over and over again. Try and avoid it but there is no way to get away from it here, there or where ever you are right now.

What has happened to us? Why are we where we are today? Why are things the way they are today? Why are we so angry, so
frustrated? Why doesn’t the moon turn green?
And why……..I could go on and on and on.

When the anger of the why’s builds the need for scalps, heads arise. That’s where we get on to the ‘Who is responsible?’
part. Yeah who is responsible? Let’s first deal with the most irresponsible: the people who have been handed responsibility. It’s
strange, I don’t know if it is a coincidence but of late I have heard more people shirk responsibility than ever before. Here are a
few recent examples:

- At a privately operated phone booth I tried three numbers; only one worked. I am handed a bill for three calls. I explain and am
told it is probably an exchange fault and there is nothing I can do about it. The man who owns the equipment isn’t responsible for
the malfunction of his own equipment! I glare at him and pay for all three calls. I know better than to try and deprive a struggling
man of money.

- The other day there was a power surge in a part of the city. Any sensitive electrical gadgets that were plugged into the mains
was blown up; TVs, refrigerators, CD players, light globes…the works. The electricity department puts out a statement-requesting
residents to unplug their electrical gadgets as power surges happen and there is nothing they can do about them. There we go
again, the great Indian surrender to the escape of inevitability, fate, karma, destiny…….whatever!

- When questioned about the power situation in the capital, the Union Minister for Power, says it is not his responsibility. I repeat
the Union Minister for Power says he is not responsible for power.

- The Delhi Chief of Police says there is nothing they can do about the law and order situation in the capital. Old Mark Twain was
right, reality is indeed stranger than fiction.

- This is the best one: the head of the BJP, Khushubhai Thakre says the BJP is not responsible for the failure of the government to
achieve anything significant. Well that’s all we needed, a government saying they are not responsible!!

It’s always someone or something else: the foreign hand, the ISI, the invisible hand, the congress, the BJP, DMK, LTTE, CIA. All this points in one direction – BS!

Now why do I feel like kicking the wall? Why do I feel this fist bunching up in my chest? Why do I find it so funny but at the same
time and deeply disturbed by it all? The best part is, I wonder why we even waste time discussing this? I don’t know why they
don’t just press the button and set off all those bombs we are all expected to feel so proud about. Tabula raza. Finito. Khallas.
Samapt. Sat Sri Akal. The end. The beginning. The can be no construction without destruction. We, the ones that survive, can start
all over again. But then again, going by our track record the chances are that even those bombs won’t work or would simply leave
the job half done.

When I was in school, I was taught a few things about democracy. You know the whole idealistic speal about the government ‘of,
for and by the people’, the constitution, judiciary, legislature, PM, President, etc. etc. etc. This is democracy, right? There is some
sort of system in place, isn’t there? There is a process of accountability? There is a system to ensure justice, isn’t there? And why
am I asking these questions in the first place?

I don’t know. To me it seems like all this exists in theory alone. Correct me if I am wrong. The promise of heaven and the after
life seems more of a reality than the promise of democracy. Somewhere I read a critic of communism say, ‘communism’s greatest
fault was that it promised heaven on earth’. Maybe democracy’s greatest fault in India is that it promised, get ready for this, -
democracy!

What we have today is a joke; hypocrisy instead of democracy. The government is a joke. Justice is a joke. Law and order is a
joke. The politicians are the jokers.

But we all know that, don’t we? The strange thing about this is that if there is so much humor
in the situation why don’t I see too many people laughing. Why aren’t you laughing? Why is anger and frustration simmering below
the surface; erupting every so often? I’ll tell you why – because we, the people are the punchline to this great joke. And no one
likes it when the joke is on then, especially when it is practical joke. We all know it. Each and everyone of us is aware of it at one
level or another, whether or not we admit it.

Now how is it that even though all of us are aware that a great joke is being played out at our expense, none of us – not one in a
billion, reacts against it? The answer is simple – responsibility, or rather the complete lack of it. We are all reacting to the situation
in exactly the same way the man in the telephone booth, the electricity department, the minister for power, the chief of police and
of course, Mr Thakrae of the BJP.

This is a classic case of crowd psychology: the more the people the less the responsible the individual. Think about it: How
responsible do you feel in a crowd of 10, 100, 1000? Now imagine how responsible the individual feels in a crowd of one billion! I’ll
tell you. The individual feels just as responsible as you feel right at this moment. That’s right, just as responsible as you feel for the
situation right at this moment! And do you know what’s worse? The individual is going to do only as much as you are going to do.
Yes, only as much as you are going to do!

Think about it, then think again!

“It is only by his acts that the individual in a crowd differs essentially from himself. Even before he has entirely lost his
independence, his ideas and feelings have undergone a transformation, and the transformation is so profound as to change the
miser into a spendthrift, the skeptic into a believer, the honest man into a criminal, and the coward into a hero.” The Crowd, A
Study of the Popular Mind, Gustave Le Bon.