What are u going to do about it?

Finally I have started writing blogs... at least I have written the first entry. Every time I would decide to write a blog but never could I write...

But from last three days what all that is happening in Mumbai has triggered so much in my mind that it has become impossible for me to hold... somewhere I have to express it. It’s been more than 60 hours and even while I am typing grenades are still exploding, guns are firing, and more than 160 people have died. We have lost some of our best police officers. Entire country is keeping an eye on what is going on in Mumbai. Everyone is following, In common room TV is on continuously and some or other person watching news. But after all this is over, within couple of days everything will return to normalcy, routines will resume, life will move on, Public memory is always short lived. People will forget everything and so will politicians, everybody will start living in peace and the country that became united for a while will get divided again in number of parts, Hindus- Muslims- Christens, Marathi- Bihari, BJP- Congress, again somewhere bombs will blast, country will come together to condemn, discuss and debate... that’s how it has happened always! The attack on parliament was not just an attack. It was meant to be an attack on our democracy and national integrity. But what did we learn? After the attack on parliament, in six years there have been more than 60 attacks in different places of our nation. More than 1050 people have been killed. One of the most brutal attack was the 11/7 bomb blasts in Mumbai which took 209 innocent lives. Naxalism has spread in 13 states of India. From 2001 to 2007, within just 7 years there have been more than 10,000 events of violence by naxalites. Around 4200 people have lost their lives. Are these statistics just numbers? Where are we heading to? Every time we can’t just blame ISI or terrorist organizations, it is ultimately we who have failed to take strong actions. Some thing is severely wrong in our foreign and national policies. It is not just the failure of intelligence or security forces. All the flaws in the system, policies, and major problems in front of the nation have contributed. We know it, we know that the entire country is under the threat of terrorists, Maoists, naxalites and we do nothing. We know that the system is rotten, the corruption has spread from top to bottom but we do nothing. We watch RDB, we watch Swades, we get inspired and after coming out from cinema hall we do nothing. We just sit on the chair and curse the politicians but do nothing. We do nothing because every one of us believes that he is a common man and a common man can’t do anything! One of my friends once said that "We need a good leader“. It’s true, we need a good leadership but we can’t just sit idle and keep waiting for a good leader, some where we have to start acting...

But how do we actually plan to do something? What all can educated, skilled youths like us do?

1) If we think that the system, legislation lacks, the policies are wrong then who can be better than us to correct them? We can enter into the politics; there is a need of young and educated people like us. But then before that we will have to groom ourselves, think of the nation, know the issues, problems, ground level realities and that we can do now!

2) We can enter into IAS or IPS where policies are decided and implemented and that’s where a lot of mess that we can clean is!

3) We can enter into the social field. It’s a great job to do, lots of challenges, lots of work and lots of satisfaction. There are many social problems that our society is facing and trying to solve them definitely can create a huge impact. There are people who have literally given up everything for this work. If we can’t give all of our time at least we can work for few hours a week.

4) If all this is not possible for us then at least we can support those who are trying to do something, Support can be in any form, in form of resources, in the form of money, in the form of spreading word.

5) Even if you keep aside all the above points, through small small actions we can do something. Strongly resisting for the corruption wherever we face can create an impact, filling an RTI application wherever we see something wrong can change something.

There can be many ways by which we can actually start doing something. What we need to do is to start thinking, come out from safe cushions and be ready for sacrifice. Just give it a thought… if these terrorists are so motivated and are ready to give their lives for what they believe in , why cant we be ready for little bit of sacrifice for our own security, integrity and development. If you think that all the above ways are not going to change much then this is my request to you, Please find some or other way which you think will be able to change the situation, suggest it and start following it, but for god’s sake please don’t be idle.

Changing system is not so easy, but it isn’t impossible either...after all Hemant Karkare, Ashok Kamte, Vijay Salaskar and all other police officers and commandos didn’t die in vain! We have to prove this.