India needs elective CSR: Complete Sabha Restraint

Posted by: 'karmayog - tanya' info@karmayog.org
Wed Jul 23, 2008 4:17 am (PDT)

'Mail a tranquiliser to the Speaker'

It took one telecast, beamed into millions of homes, to negate everything we have taught our children ... Nirvik Singh

What one saw on television makes me want to do a new campaign titled India Crying.

Are these the people who have the right to represent us? Are these the clowns who will take us forward as a nation? Surely, errant children in kindergarten shouting like banshees will not take us anywhere. Thank God for small mercies that the nuclear document in question was titled 1-2-3.

After the initial shock and anger, I just sat there laughing and cringing. Cringing at the complete cluelessness of some of our representatives, and laughing at the naivety of people running around brandishing notes as if their younger brother was beating them in Monopoly. This entire telecast was an insult to the collective intelligence of our country.

This is not the India I want my children to grow up in. What we saw is a breakdown of the basic code of civilised behavior. We spend hours teaching our children not to interrupt, to listen, and to respect someone else's opinion. It took one telecast, beamed into millions of households, to negate everything we have taught them. It demonstrated to our young, that to participate in democracy in India, one has to be uncivilised, loud and animal-like. Therefore, there is no point in keeping history, civics and other useless subjects in the syllabus. We should now start including shouting, screaming and misbehavior as part of the curriculum.

Can I make a few suggestions? Each seat in parliament should be sound-proofed, caged and padlocked. The speaker should be given a whip.There should be a technology that lowers these peoples' decibel-levels to something inaudible, as anyhow most times, what they say is incomprehensible. This should be our elective CSR - complete sabha restraint.

If you were as disgusted as I was, mail a tranquiliser to the Speaker for him to administer. This will not be seen as an attempt to bribe,but as a heroic attempt to save our nation.

With apologies to Rabindranath Tagore: 'Where the ears are without drums, And the decibel-levels are too high, From this cesspit of corruption and meaninglessness, Let my country awake.'