Political bankruptcy

The other nations are suffering too. Europe's problems are not going away even after formation of a Union. Japan is in the slow lane; and galloping S Korea, Hong Kong and Thailand are panting after hare-like gallops. Nature's brakes are working automatically, call it WMD or environment control. Arsenic poisoning in water in West Bengal and Bangladesh are man-made blunders (dam it!). The spirituality in science is evaporating the sacredness we attribute to mother earth. Religion is not more than rituals at places of worship. The harmony in Nature must not be disturbed. We are pre-empting Nature itself.

Politics must suit the mood of the times. The question is whose mood. Leaders at the top of the ladder lose their credibility rather quickly in these days of fast food and hazmi lozenges. Alliances do not last, and liaisons are fragile and temperamental. Even one's own self cannot be trusted not to betray at the last moment. Even then the lure of leadership is like Medusa's coil; and coiled coils are mighty stingy.

Back to the lowly hartals, a subjective choice of small minds, trying to look at the big world. The pose is belligerent, the intention threatening, and the beneficiaries are a very small minority safe in their cloistered havens. Protect thy self or the teeming masses?

Corruption and hartal are now entrenched in the established institutions. Even the Khulna Chamber of Commerce has issued a multi-point threat of hartal for meeting its demands! If hartal becomes a daily operating tool, all other methods become redundant.

The simplification is too grand to work absolutely undemocratic (no option). Hartal is also being observed in parliament by the opposition for a decade. Now parents may face hartals from children on the slightest pretext, not to speak of the educational institutions (the right to copy, for example).

We are facing a grave moral crisis. This crisis has been artificially created by sham leaders who are misleading the simple folks who have been brought up for generations on the simplicity of plain and honest living.

Complex life raises the cost of living. Only black money can meet such contingencies. Is that the goal?