National News Service, Kolkata - 25 February 2005: The moral degradation that the average Indian has gone through and continues to go through has reached new heights. The inability of Indians to shine in anything has lead us to celebrate mediocrity.
The latest example being Sania Mirza. We wish and hope that she becomes a great sports person, but to celebrate her rising to the third round of the Australian Open and being ranked 99 th in the WTP rankings is totally out of proportion with her achievements. The achievements of Ramanathan Krishnan, Jaideep Mukherjea, Premjit Lal, Naresh Kumar, Ramesh Krishnan, The Amritraj Brothers, Leander Paes and Mahesh Bhupati were much greater than what Sania Mirza has achieved but, the Indian public, and more than the public, the medias' hype has gone beyond control. All the previous players received their dues when they achieved real success after years of toil, and their achievements real, but frankly speaking the press and the public are doing a disservice to Sania Mirza by hyping a non achievement.
The next example is the going of overboard at the simplest of pretexts is the nomination of Ravi Shankar for the Nobel Peace Prize. The Media hyped the event to such an extent one could believe that he had already won the prize. What they conveniently left out is that there are more than 1600 nominees.
The biggest celebration of of mediocrity is our overpaid under achieving cricketers. They have no real achievement and they are treated as semi gods. They are a creation of media and they are used solely for commercial purposes. What has been their real achievement in recent years. A big nothing. The media in India taking after P. C. Sorcar, has created a mirage out of nothing. The only real achievement that we have done is winning the World cup once in the dim and distant past. The Indian Hockey team in its whole history has far more greater achievements, but they have never been adulated like this.
The only real sign of hope that the celebration of mediocrity may be slightly abating are the empty stands in the cricket matches.
The media went overboard with Aishwerya Rai, because she was interviewed on the Letterman show. Every channel in the United States have late night shows, and Lettermans' show is just one in many, and every show has two to three interviews, and all these shows the interviewees are promoting for some film or book or plays. Ms Rai went to promote her film which is not critically acclaimed.
The Media hyped this interview as if it was an achievement that equaled the feat of sending a man to the moon.
This celebration of mediocrity means that the incentive for real achievement disappears, why should anybody work hard if glory can be achieved without doing anything. The hyping of mediocrity is akin to trying to make money in chit funds and other financial pyramids where ability, skill and hard work have no place.
This celebration of mediocrity has naturally worked its way into politics. It is only in a country like India where we tolerate Jaylalitha, Rabri Devi/Laloo Yadav, Amar Singh et al. In any other democratic country they would be behind bars.
Our much hyped IT industry is again just scam exploiting the lack of jobs and poverty in India. What is this industry in reality. Call centers where Indians are taught to ape Americans is the exploitation of educated Indians. They spend lakhs of Rupees to get a college education and then they are paid Rs.5000-Rs.10000/= to attend telephone calls for Americans. A dead end job which offers them no avenue of self betterment or brighter future.
Today jobs within that range mentioned above are considered because the other alternative is unemployment.
Infosys and the other much lauded IT Companies feted by Presidents, Prime Ministers and Chief Ministers exploit there staff in the name work ethics. Young graduates whose families are on the verge starvation trying to educate their children, are made to work 12 hours a day, then add to that traveling time they are out for 15 Hrs. When they go home they carry with them study material, and this timetable continues ad infinitum. Further they are continuously threatened with loss of jobs in case of deviation.
In future we will see a generation of stressed out people all suffering from cardiac problems, and other stress related diseases, a boon for our mediocre doctors. One wonders where are those mediocre Trade Unionists who are supposed to prevent the exploitation of workers. They are probably being feted by our mediocre business men, and sending their children abroad, at other peoples expense.
The mediocre of all is our Election Commission. They go overboard implementing a meaningless model code of conduct. The new trend is show over substance. They are incapable of generating correct voters list, preventing state sponsored rigging, observers who go to have a merry time, and eventually on retirement become Rajya Sabha MP's, and they ensure that we the continue to be a country where mediocrity is King.
