On Losing Ground of Ethics

It’s easy to speak about ethics and also difficult to speak about it in India. Anybody can speak on it – from layman to lord man without even observing it in their life. People speak about somebody not behaving ethically and when comes their turn, they play hide and seek. You can speak about anybody’s ethics anytime in any way but what about hiding your own unethical movement? We, as a nation, have overgrown in size and simultaneously we have overgrown in downfall of our ethics. It’s pity when we hear about Kalmadi, (yet again?) A Raja, Nira Radia and Adarsh Society etc. It’s shocking when we find our government providing them shelter but worse is yet to come and it’s unacceptable when we find people around us, who used to talk about ethics, are found feeding such corruption hungry mammoths. When a person resorts to bribe, may it be a Rupee or crores of Rupees, it’s unethical in every sense but we term it as need of time because it concerns us. We love to blame others of illegal acts but are not ashamed of doing it ourselves. We want Ramrajya but we want personal works to be done in Ravan style. This changing mentality of people is leading us to a disastrous status of losing ethics. Our forefathers used to warn people on their misbehavior and illegal acts leading to unethical existence but now as most of them have left and the means have become easy, short cuts of reaching height are at supreme priority level. So the coming advice enchants people to deviate from their real path and in this way the whole pattern of ill bred people has come to existence.
Recently, while talking with some friends, I happened to meet a young man (a friend’s relative) of about 20. He said, “now if you want to succeed and become reach 2 number (be numberi in Gujarati) business is the key. Sala, working with principles will make us tramps running after money. After all who is not immoral and extremely reach?” It’s not a question about his knowledge of such people but about changing mentality of our youth in a drastically terrific manner. The lot of ill bred mongrels like Raja, Radia and Kalmadi has not only corrupted our system, they have also corrupted the system of young India’s thinking. And it is even more dangerous. Can we bear more of such people in our society? Can we bear our youth getting inspired by them? Can we bear our children following their path? If the answer coming from us is yes (I say, answer coming from us which is not audible to all, so must be true), we must clearly understand it that WE’RE STANDING ON THE LOSING GROUND OF ETHICS.It’s visible almost everywhere- the race after currency has heated up. We teach something and we behave something else. A society saved from moral degradation, is a country saved from getting extinct. Morality has been made limited to sexual issues only and ethical treatment is sarcastically limited to animals only. Isn’t it pathetic? Working for PETA is another thing and behaving unethically with people is real thing (Rakhi is one such). And unfortunately we have bad examples much hyped before us.
Just today, I got the news that my villagers surrounded some PGVCL officers and thrashed too only because they had come to find out who were doing malpractice with electricity; and woken up (?) villagers gathered immediately and protested against the officers. Such scenes have become usual. People fight for wrong means and unite speedily too. People love it when their misdoing is ignored, avoided or goes unnoticed. They also love this virtue (?) to be imbibed in their next gen, pathetic, isn’t it? In such condition we can’t blame others for our degradation. Why should we blame politicians when we also want corrupt means? Aren’t we responsible for what we are seeing in this country being observed and happened? Do we deserve better treatment? Aren’t we dangerously standing on the losing ground of ethics?

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Klpesh Bhatt