By Gregory Shullai
There is a report circulating on social media about the Adani group receiving an investment of ₹30,000 crore through the Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC). While the news does not categorically state that the government has provided ₹30,000 crore to the Adani Group, there are allegations from opposition parties that the LIC, a government-owned insurer, has made a large investment in the Adani Group, which they claim is not in the interest of the people.
Everything that matters on trade and tariffs has been lost sight of by this devastating disclosure of how terribly low our politics and the whole of the great Indian culture that has been passed down to us in the Manu Smritis, the Bhagavad Gita, the Vedas and the Upanishads and their lofty teachings have been discarded with one stroke of a pen that guarantees ₹30,000 crore to the Adani group. Yes, it does appear that whatever ends our culture teaches us, and the means to those lofty ends actually mean nothing in the face of money. As Indians we have forgotten that the goal in life and everything we do to get to that goal is a process of the cultivation of the human spirit and not the attainment of wealth, because as things stand right now there is every reason for us to believe that the goal in life is the attainment of wealth by whatsoever means because that is how we Indians are looking upon this ₹30,000 crores that has been transferred from the LIC to the Adani group for upgrading Airports (we are told). We have forgotten every lesson contained in every noble book of Indian culture, and look instead to our leaders in society and our politicians that sit in Parliament to take us through this journey of life. Here, it is necessary to revive a memory that will be more painful to every Indian above the age of fifty viz the time when an Emergency was clamped upon the citizens; because compared to the pain we faced during the Emergency this scam that we are now hearing about is a pain magnified a thousand times over. We thought that a renaissance had come to the country when we elected the Janata Party and Morarji Desai as leader of the Party in 1977, and we heaved a sigh of relief knowing that power was back in the hands of the ordinary men and women once again. Does anybody of the present generation understand what that fight was for? Because with the recent revelation of the fraud in the electoral roles we have another situation which must be straightened out. It is a battle everyone must fight for because our democracy depends on it. And if that isn’t enough, we are now confronted with this ₹30,000 crore scam.
Now, the people of India are once again called upon to question what should be done to triumph over the kind of politics that dominates our lives. The people of India from 50 years ago, and even in the recent past made it clear with all means available at their disposal, instinct and genius, that what they wanted was better values, nobler values, a trans-valuation of every existing political value, a clear unequivocal message that corruption of the ruling political class was not tolerable and that regardless of caste or status a clean man of the streets was better than a well educated, glamorous but corrupted person of the polished category. Now once again we are called upon to look into the why and how we are being defrauded by our leaders, and on this occasion the how and why our hard earned savings deposited in the LIC have been paradoxically handed over to a businessman for the improvement of the Airports which not only perplexes us but is capable of perplexing even the gods as to how people can function in such an uncanny manner – in such an infernally corrupt manner, because no matter where we search for something that equals or explains to us what is happening now, there is nothing that can be found in the Sanatan Dharma for those that follow Hinduism or in the Quran or the Bible for those that follow Islam or Christianity respectively. What we are seeing now is unprecedented – of that there can be no doubt, and attempting to find anything similar would be like searching for a needle in a haystack. No living person can ever remember anything closely similar to this spectacle that is so devilish in its conception and so wonderfully devious that it could cause every one of the three crore gods in India to rock with immortal laughter.
Very well then if all this that we are hearing is true, because as of now we have not heard anything from the Governments’ side, it deserves whole scale condemnation and I am certain, judging from the thousands of comments on social media, I am not alone in coming out with such an open criticism against something that has ruined our happiness. What happened? Coming into its third term it seems the Party in power lost all sense of morality and good governance. The Party that came to power in 2014 came with a big win and they came with all the vindictive instincts of citizens who were fed up with what was going on and for the winners it must have come as a big shock to discover for the first time what it meant to be a leader of the Indian Parliament. One cannot say with all confidence that they deserved to be the leaders of this great country but that it was thrust upon them because of the “policy paralysis” of the then ruling party that had been in power for too long and which didn’t seem to see anything beyond what it had already established. These new leaders foamed with rage over the way our neighbours were taking advantage (counterfeiting our currency) of the progress that we had made and which they hadn’t: and instead of understanding with the profoundest gratitude the miracle that had taken place by way of which power had virtually been handed over to them, they set about raising a religious agenda to infuse intolerance and hatred against the minority groups, and the strength in numbers of the majority group propelled them to do whatsoever they felt like doing. And perhaps this is how this folly of the ₹.30,000 crore has come about. We have to be cynical about politicians and the things they do especially when they concern money transactions. Anyone holding charge of money is likely to corrupt it and we must not remain mute spectators to it all.
Political leaders who rely on religion to stay in power inevitably dump religion when they come to power. They come to realise that “power” is what sits on the priests’ chair as well. Suddenly they are enlightened to the holy corruption they turned to, to rid themselves of their guilt, so much so that now when they are confronted by a priest or a Brahmin, they realise that the reverse is staring them in the face and that the power of the priest and Brahmin is secured in a manner no different to the power secured by a political leader. The “original sin” of greed is no longer attributed to kings and monarchs only who seek redemption from their greed by calling upon priests and pundits who themselves face the same sinful feeling but have learnt how to overcome guilt by turning to the most natural cause of it all…life. Life triumphs over politics, life triumphs over religion, and life triumphs over any kind of philosophy that ever dares to claim power over it. Only after many years in power as a politician does one come to understand that power comes from the money one wields and the Vaishyas, the businessmen of the Caste System, learn this very fast.
Meanwhile entangled in all this debauchery is the Adani Group who have announced that they do have major investment plans worth a total of ₹30,000 crore in the airport expansion sector. This coincidence is reason enough for suspicion. The low level to which political morality has stooped to in India is deplorable.
