LEADERS DESTROYING THE NATION

Rs.58,00,00,00,00,000, that is Rs. 5.8 lakh crore. And that's the amount our netas have siphoned off in 8 years. - This is the banner heading on the front page of today's The New Indian Express. Citing from the US based research and advocacy group, Global Financial Integrity (GFI) (2010) it introduces the topic thus: " A whopping $ 125 billion of public money has been siphoned off from India by corrupt politicians and officials between 2000 and 2008, as rampant corruption plagues the country that has been rising inequalities despite unprecedented growth levels. "A quote from a GFI economist, Karly Curcio, further states " Much of the funds flowing out are generated at home within India and then sent illegally abroad. So the growth of corruption and India's underground economy contributes significantly to illicit financial flows from the country"

Corruption thrives because the vast majority of the corrupt can get away with it as either the laws are weak in dealing with them or laws are subverted or those who have to deal with it such as law makers/politicians, law enforcers/police, bureaucrats/officials connive with the corrupt to partake in the loot or being themselves indulging in corrupt practices - fence eating the crops - or erosion of moral fabric of our people, especially in the rulers. More important reason is the casting away of the values that nurtures and ennoble life of all beings that exist - living and non-living - as enshrined in Ancient Indian Thought/Vedas.We are made to think that those values are outdated not in tune with the times and would remain barbaric if we follow them without realizing that values sustaining modernity and progress is destroying the lives and the nation by promoting greed and selfishness. What is worse, the ills of the society (such as caste and gender discrimination) of the last hundred years is attributed to Vedic values and a caste group supposed to uphold those values without realizing that it was either a reaction to the alien rulers misdeeds or the unchecked human greed and selfishness among the natives with the connivance of the foreign rulers.

Universal and Eternal Values that promotes good of all beings on earth alone can help us regain our past glory and become once again a global leader, certainly not by fooling those values.