Is India free of Racism?‏

The recent attacks on Indians at Australia have brought the issue again with both the countries heavily involved in solving this.

Our news channels line up and flash pictures and videos of whatever they could get and repeat them, until they grew tired of it and get a fresh one. But honestly, does anyone think racism is happening only in Australia and not in India? It happens, in our country albeit in a different tone and manner. Let me cite few instances.

Whenever water sharing problem arises between TN and Karnataka, the same “friendly Indians” clash against each other, abuse public property and cause huge loss of time and money to everyone. Rajinikanth apologizes on what he thinks as a mild remark after his pictures are burnt and movies are stopped from being screened.

The North-East student / people were beaten and driven away at Mumbai, because Raj Thackarey and Co thinks they don’t deserve a place there.

Last, but the giant comes in the form of Government offices. The list of people seeking help after submitting forms at government offices are tested to their limit of their patience until the “officer” himself grew tired of this and “clears” the file or the well-to-do applicant “smartly” treats the officer and gets his work done. Not even one department is untouched. If you achieve what you wanted to do in one single day, in any of these below, it is a miracle

1. Property tax, water tax, Electricity Boards – Bribes are well-defined if you make a “smart” approach and still, they will make you visit their offices more than once to get your files “through”. By that time, apart from bribe amount, you would have also spent few hundreds to treat them with snacks and coffee at their canteen
2. RTO offices – Without a driving school, it is next to impossible to get a license on your own.
3. Ration shops – You need to bunk office for at least 2 full days to get some thing done. One for submitting the form and another time to collect. They will make mistakes (spelling, wrong address being printed) and ask you shamelessly to come again to correct it. And they don’t work on Saturdays!
4. Passport offices
5. Police station – At the Pazhavanthangal police station, my neighbour had a servant maid who was staying and working at their house. When she passed away due to health reasons and when the hospital declared it as an accident by mistake, we had to go to the police station to certify that her death was due to natural ailment. The police babu asked us to come one morning at 7 AM with 5 witnesses. We were asked to buy 20 A4 sized papers (because that bloody station didn’t have papers). Luckily, I had some A4 sheets at home which they used to type out the content.

Aren’t we ashamed having this and criticize another country? As long as our country is with the white clad, un-educated, rowdies in the name of political netas, it will never change. Yes, I do vote, but do I have an option to Say ‘No’ during voting? There is a form which can be filled and given. But it is not kept confidential and my life is dear to me as they will come to know with full details of the person who have said ‘No’ If the number of such ‘No’ reaches a certain number, will that politician be disqualified as he is not fit to contest?

Who will change these? The legislation has to be passed in the parliament to make this happen. But it is the same group of rowdies who are sitting there and deciding; how can we expect them to pass this legislation which will put them into difficulty?