Fwd: Fwd: [SAJA] Shortcut to Setting Things Right?

[Kush Khatri <free_voice@yahoo.com>]

I got the following from the South Asian Journalist Association (SAJA)
discussion list.  Although the Pakistani journalist who wrote this
does not mention  the name it is about S. Ganguly.  It directly
relates to what was discussed on this list about this unique suicide. 
I am not sure where this was published but I can certainly find out if
someone needs that information.  I liked it because it is a frank
admission as to how corruption is as rampant in this "Islamic" country
as it is in "socialist" secular India.  In a way supports my point
that corruption has nothing to do with ideology.   Kush Khatri


> >Shortcut to Setting Things Right?
> >
> >by Masud Akhtar Shaikh

> >A young Indian engineer recently hanged himself in Calcutta as a
protest against widespread corruption prevailing in his country. He
took this desperate
action after his failure to get his dead telephone restored without
greasing the palms of the relevant Telephone and Telegraph Department
officials. The poor 
soul struggled for a full 20 days, trying to convince these officials
that it was their duty to restore a subscriber's faulty telephone
line, but they
simply refused to oblige without the usual illegal gratification. In
his suicide note, the man is reported to have written: "If we cannot
fight corruption in society, it is better to die".
> >
> >While appreciating the spirit behind the young man's drastic
action, one cannot resist passing a few unfavourable comments against
him. Firstly, he must
be an ultra-sensitive individual who went to the extent of taking his
own life merely because of his bitter experience with just one of the
government departments of his country. I wish he could come to
Pakistan to see for himself how corruption has seeped deep into almost
every government department, and how it has made even
the most sensitive individuals utterly insensitive. Leave aside the
illiterate common folks, even our intellectuals do not bother to take
any notice of this
omnipresent phenomenon. 
> >
It seems our long and bitter experience with corruption has taught us
that it is in our own interest to co-exist with this evil. This is why
nobody in
Pakistan has ever committed suicide to protest against corruption. And
we must thank God for that, because if we had not adopted this
couldn't-care-less attitude, more than half of our people would have
hanged themselves within half a century of our independent
existence. 
> >
Secondly, the young Indian engineer must have been an extremely
impatient person by nature. Apparently he did not have the endurance
to wait for more than 20 days
for his telephone line to be restored. Maybe the Indian T&T Department
is so efficient that it normally does not test the patience of its
subscribers beyond a few
days. That would make 20 days appear to be a fairly long period for
Indian telephone users to wait. 
> >
If that is the case, the Indian T&T Department is certainly pampering
its subscribers. Let them send a high level delegation to Pakistan to
study how long
> >their counterparts in this part of the world make their subscribers
wait before the faults in their telephone lines are rectified. If the
Indian telephone
officials go as slow as their Pakistani counterparts do, telephone
subscribers on the other side of
> >the Wagah border will also become accustomed to long waits. There
will then be no more cases of suicide on account of delayed
restoration of faulty telephone lines.
> >
Thirdly, the gentleman must have been eminently naive, if he believed
that by taking his own life he could put the collective conscience of
the Indian nation to
shame, resulting in the launching of a nationwide campaign against
corruption. To the best of our knowledge and belief, this is the first
case of any
individual committing suicide in India to protest against corruption.
It is like the first drop of rain that by itself is never sufficient
to soak the soil. 
> >
In a country inhabited by over half a billion souls, one man's life
means nothing at all, particularly when he does not happen to be a
person of extraordinary eminence or the brother-in-law of some VVIP.
It would not be out of place to mention here that if a case of suicide
of this nature had taken place in our own
country, it would have definitely gone waste because the collective
conscience of the Pakistani nation has long been dead. Also, we have
been slaughtering our fellow countrymen so insensately, and in such
large numbers, that we would hardly take any notice of
a person hanging himself from the bough of a banyan tree, even if that
happened right in the middle of the town.
> >
The Indian engineer seems to have been under the mistaken notion that
his suicide was going to produce positive results as far as the
elimination of
corruption from the Indian society is concerned. It must be this
self-assurance due to which he remained content with merely ending his
own life, rather than taking some other measures as well, before
hanging himself. 
> >
For instance, he could have exterminated a dozen or so corrupt
officials of the department which had caused him all the mental
torture that ultimately led him to
take the extreme step of hanging himself. 
> >
Had he been wise enough to do that, he would have got some
satisfaction for having rid the Indian society of at least those many
corrupt individuals, before
leaving this world forever. That would have been a good start as it
would have acted as an effective deterrent for other corrupt elements.
Also, all brave victims
> >of corrupt practices in India would have got inspiration from this
noble precedent and followed in the young engineer's footsteps. Thus,
the ball would 
> >have been set rolling, leading ultimately to the rooting out of the
curse of corruption for all times to come.
> >
Does this unfortunate incident have any lessons for us in Pakistan? I
have my doubts. For one, we are an Islamic state and Islam does not
allow individuals to
commit suicide. Secondly, We are lucky to have got a heavily mandated
prime minister who is fully determined to rid the Pakistani society of
the menace of corruption, despite his whole-time craze for motorways. 
So determined is he to fulfil this mission that without taking any
ostensible steps in that direction, he is already reported to have
succeeded in eliminating
corruption from the higher tiers of government. And since corruption
always starts from the top, we can take it that nine tenths of the
PM's mission has been
accomplished already, within less than a year and a half. Isn't that a
miracle in this age of science? For elimination of corruption at the
lower levels, the fertile brain of the worthy PM has come up with the
unique idea of Khidmat Committees.
> >Simultaneously with their launching a few days back, these watchdog
committees have started honing their weapons and sharpening their
teeth in full earnest, to
> >launch a massive operation against all corrupt officials working in
the lower tiers of the government. 
> >
> >Except for a few cynics who have vowed to oppose every new idea put
forward by Nawaz Sharif, everybody is confident that the Khidmat
Committees will be able to work far bigger miracles than the Ehtesab
Bureau, and that we will soon become a nation of pious bureaucrats,
pious police officials, pious politicians,
pious businessmen, and pious awam. Will there still be a need for
somebody to commit suicide in Pakistan? Let us hope and pray that the
prime minister does not
countermand his own orders on the subject, under pressure from vested
interests, as he has been doing ever since he took over the reins of
government.
> >

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