Mumbai terror-attacks a catalyst for change

Our attempts to find answers to Mumbai terror attacks might benefit from our shopping habit.

When we go for shopping, we look around, visit shops, and check out different products. Sometimes, we end up buying the products we don’t need or forget to buy those we need. When we go for our shopping with a shopping list, we know exactly which shops to visit and which isles to walk through in the supermarket. We come out happy, knowing we bought everything we wanted, nothing more.

This is because we were very specific about what we wanted, we went out looking for it, and we came out happy because we got a sense of fulfillment. To feel fulfilled, we must first know what we want. And we must be specific. For example, instead of saying I will go and buy a new television, we should be able to say, I want to buy a 50-inch wall-mountable plasma. You may throw in a brand name if you want to be more specific.

Being specific not only helps us focus better, and thus achieve better results, it also gives us a sense of achievement since we can measure it.

Now, what’s this got to do with Mumbai terror attacks? The violent attacks has given us a cause. A cause to improve our lot. We need to improve our security and put in place systems to check such lapses. But more than that, we need to overhaul the political machinery and clean the system.

While the wide reaction has been one of anger against politicians, there is an undertone of awakening among people. They have started to think. While nine out of ten voices are still busy criticising politicians, there is often one voice, not so weak, which suggests a civil movement. This is good. It’s a good start. We need civil movement.

How to mobilise public opinion is a subject of different article at a later stage.

But here we must first form a public opinion. As someone once said, “In India, we have far more opinions than information.” In such a noisy environment, it is as much important as it is difficult to form a common opinion and vision that is shared by a majority, if not by everyone. We all must think collectively. Normally it is a role that is played by a leader - to provide common vision.

In this instance, there is no single leader to play that role. We don’t have a visionary among us to look up to.

But we can’t move ahead until we have that common vision. In this case, each one of us has to be the torch-bearer. Each of us will come up with an agenda that we want to see the government fulfill.

We must collectively agree on that agenda and ask our political leaders to address. And this is where we must be specific. Let's not just say: get rid of corruption. That’s too abstract; and it’s too vast a goal to achieve. It’s like saying “let’s clean the house” when the whole house is in a mess. We must set a smaller, achievable goal first. For example, “let’s clean the kitchen”, or even, “let’s tidy the cupboards in the kitchen.”

If getting rid of corruption is our first goal, then let’s identify a government department and start from there, instead of trying to get rid of corruption from the whole country all at once. Let’s tell our politicians that we want them to clean the tax department, or the police department, or the ministers.

We collectively have to agree which one department should be cleaned first.

Once we have identified the issue to be fixed (corruption), and a specific area to be fixed (the tax department for example),we must add a timeframe to our goal. We must give our politicians a deadline to meet our demands. For example, we could say, “Make the tax department absolutely corruption-free by March 2009.”

We should be prepared to explain what we mean by corruption-free. What is the extent of cleanliness we want to achieve? Do we want every single staff member of the tax department to be corruption-free, or do we want to start at the top first? Should we target only big cases of corruption involving millions of rupees, and tolerate paltry cases of corruption, or do we want the whole department to be absolutely corruption-free? Corruption is like cancer; even a single cell of cancer left in the body can re-grow and infect the whole body fatally. If we agree with this, then we must get rid of corruption completely from the tax department, in this example.

But who will be the judge on whether the department has become tax-free or not by the deadline? Each of us. We should be able to walk into a local tax office and expect to receive the service which is rightfully ours. The clerk or officer should be polite to us, if not friendly, and assist us in filing our returns without having to be bribed. He should be honest in his tax assessment, and should not harass the tax-payer unnecessarily.

Finally, we should be able to tell the government what happens if they don’t meet our request by the deadline? We must define the consequences for the government if they fail to get rid of corruption by the due date.

What can an ordinary resident do? Non-cooperation. We have effectively used this noble weapon against the British. It is time-tested; it is non-violent; it doesn’t harm anyone. And most important, the results are long-term.

The fuel for government’ s survival is cooperation of its citizens. No government can survive without our cooperation. It is not only our right to stop co-operation with an inefficient government, it is our moral duty too. A passive onlooker of crime is a perpetrator of the crime.

Not paying taxes could be one way of non-cooperation. But for this to be effective, it must be a nationwide movement. Every person must participate in it. But it should not be for an infinite period. It must be time bound. It should be carried out for a week or for a month. Only then it will be controlled and it will be effective.

But above all, each of us must be prepared to stay non-violent.

As a Chinese proverb says 'journey of a thousand miles begins with a step. '

(Vaib Gangan is a social commentator and the managing editor of Auckland-based The Global Indian magazine.)

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