Lest we think our own struggles are unique, here's what one Indian journalist had to say about her own government's corruption and the results of a collapsing caste system's government rule. She is noticing a significant change, and it sounds VERY familiar:
Power To The People...And How!
by Tavleen Singh
....It is my view that it was because the upper castes provided such incompetent, ineffectual governance that we have seen the rise of political leaders who speak illiterate Hindi and whose absence of anything resembling real education is scary.
In this caboodle I count the lot. Mulayam, Mayawati, Kalyan Singh, Rajnath Singh and all those other forgettable creatures who had so much to say about ‘principles’ and ‘governance’ last week in such excruciatingly uneducated Hindi that I found myself wondering if any of them had ever read a book in any language.
Since this column has no aspirations to political correctness let me spell out exactly what I am trying to say. Governance is such a complicated business that even highly educated, sophisticated, intelligent people can make terrible mistakes. It is not something that semi-literate and semi-articulate can handle so we have a situation in our largest state in which all that is left is politics.
Politics and a scramble for power so shameless that it made an Aaj Tak anchor laugh outright when Amar Singh said that his party (Samajwadi) was not interested in power. But, hold the laughter a moment and you might see signs of hope in the terrible mess that governance has been reduced to in the state that has given us more prime ministers than any other.
Hope comes not just from visible social change — power has shifted into the hands of people who would have found it hard to win a panchayat election in the old, Brahminical times — but also because the simple ways of the new ruling elite make it easier for ordinary people to see through the cant, through words like siddhant and sewa. This is just as good that corruption has become so unashamed that it has become easy to spot. So, some day soon Mayawati could find herself indicted for nearly allowing the destruction of the Taj Mahal for personal pecuniary gain.
Much better undisguised corruption, though, than Rolex watches and Mont Blanc pens hidden under khadi....>>
http://www.indianexpress.com/full_story.php?content_id=30615
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