No to doom and gloom

Media exists to vend doom and gloom. The simple goodness of 999 persons out to 1000 on this planet apparently interests no one at all. How else can you establish a mastery over simple minded consumers of daily pap without being a control freak ? And how can you be anything else other than a control freak except by warning everyone of continuous rape, murder falling rate of growth, corruption in high places, imminence of war and destruction of values that are taken for granted by most of us.

With all the horrible headlines every morning electronically and in print, I see only hope and rose tinted optimism. The Delhi gang rape is awful but it has lent a huge point to crimes against women. The murder of the Deputy Supertendent of Police hits the very dregs of Mafia political terrorism in our largest state known for its medieval way of life in this day and age. The resultant clean up

Will be long and permanent. The National rural health  scam has already taken the lives of honest doctors. What will result will be permanent improvements to health care in the country side. The percentage of money going down the pockets in writing off for farmers, now that it is exposed ,should cleanse the system once and for all.

It is not as though there was none of this in the days gone by.Droughts were ideal for siphoning of funds except that hardly anyone got caught. There is as much corruption in media among lawyers,  doctors ,tinkers tailors and soldiers xcept that these have now  begun to surface like bubbles in a steaming cauldron. The recent upheaval in the phenomenal complex army canteen service in Mumbai has been brushed under the carpet but it is indicative of what has been wrong all along in this cosy closed shop of serving and retired service personnel.

The next to hit the headlines will surely be the referral system in the medical profession. You go for a ear ache to a doctor and he sends you for a CAT  scan and gets 30%  off the top .Pioneered by two of the leading doctors of Mumbai, this is a multi  thousand crore racket now spread all over the country and waits for a flash point. Each such laying bare of crookedness in our service sectors is the impetus where the doom and gloom merchants see the end of he road. If you look at the other side you know that the worst is almost over and you are on your way to the crest of he hill from where the view is splendid and serene.

Economic fetters are being hacked by the compulsions  of elections in our democracy. The race is started for the party in power  to prove within a year that all their misdeeds were passing aberrations and they have crossed their hearts and swear to be better next time.

A 9p.c. annual rate of growth should be a walk in a park with growing awareness for the rigorous need to be clean in public and personnel life . We as minor brothers and sisters watch everywhere.Our genius for entrepreneurship is as good as the Chinese and we are certainly hugely more democratic and generally less devious. As some one who has been in the thick of public service for half a century, I have seen our values plunging in the last  fifteen years.now with no more rock to hit at the bottom ,the only way to go is up. The strong decisions taken lately on nuclear energy, FDI in retail and bringing in partners into the aviation sector are more than tiny indicators that it is no longer necessary to ask every mother, son and daughter before an important economic decision is taken.

The doom and gloom merchants seem to have long outlived their utility in making us unhappy about all that we see around us. There are too many flares coming through the prism of our archaic social and economic transparent glass houses that gives a huge amount of hope every day of our lives to come.