Is South Asia social responsibility a reality or myth?

South Asia is a geo-economic region with more superlatives than any other area in the modern world. While most of the world has changed, progressed and advanced South Asia has remained behind.

That is a fact and one must admit it but we don't want to do that. We prefer to believe that we are the best, the best of all but we are actually at the bottom of most. We are the most corrupt, most scheming, religiously fanatic, blind almost idiotic and ready to kill.

The progress doesn't mean here only the techno urban progress that is seemingly visible in certain few quarters, but even in spirit we have degraded ourselves. The living proof of this can be seen daily on the streets in all major cities in Asia. We literally kill each other every day. If we are not terrorising each other nature does its toll to compensate us.

Yes, we South Asians have grown up and done some tremendous advancements in various fields; yet we have failed miserably on most basic fronts like education, economy, industry, sanitation, basic amenities, technology for public welfare and even on Internet services.

We are denied our most basic rights. The rich and famous that form about 1% of this 1500 million people area live to their best and show off to the world that we are better than Europeans or Americans. Yes they live better than the richer people of the west but the of a rest billion and half live a miserable a life worse than a dog in the west. We lack behind almost every other Asian nation or group. We are close to African nations in most welfare levels.

We love to print huge mammoth mega reports but they are useless junk. They only show our stupidity, lack of concern for poor people. Our legal systems are pathetic. Law enforcement is for sale.

If you are a rough, mafioso, thug you can buy any number of police and paramilitary, you can even train private armies of terrorists, you can virtually get any one killed, you can rape anyone and still nothing or nobody can actually shake you. We rever our bastards and our crooked gangsters.

In Mumbai the top gangsters are protected and they protect in return others. We have the most chaotic of lives but we sleep like there is no tomorrow. We sleep quite well even though most people have no roof. Next day we take a very strong milky tea and we are ready to cut each others throat once again with full gusto, vigour and animation.

Innumerable excuses are given for this scenario. Everyone knows the answers but questions are always asked in innocence and God is invoked every 5 minutes but we don't give a gaddamn about our poor little things. Our cities stink, garbage is piled up, civic services are totally gone, basic services are always out of order but we manage to survive.

Most of us South Asian people including the top leadership live in constant denial and few want to accept the reality.

In place of facing the realities as they are, identify and recognize them and work on them, resolving them, we simply prefer to ignore them and that is what is the root cause of our misery.

And if by any accident we happen to recognize a reality we simply keep digging on it, debating on it till we finally keep it in our archive for future review. This is the crude reality. We even entertain ourselves with these things. But we never take any decision.

We prefer that Americans or British or some other people like Japanese should come and do our dirty laundry and then also give us a few dollars in alms. This is exactly what our governments do. They love to worship the richer nations for more aid and help.

Most of the few million here or there end up in creating a bigger garage, a more lavish palace or fun trips to Dubai and Singapore. Most of the money of so called common fund banks is plundered and distributed among few. Swiss bankers love us really. Actually you may not know most free ports actually thrive because of our 1% population that keep inflating the pockets of tiny paradise islands by depositing the loot.

Our misery is not caused by over-population, lack of resources, lack of solutions or lack of people but by simply ignorance. We religiously ignore the realities and love to live in a dream world full of fantasy. The hyper imaginative mind of South Asians constantly work how can we run away from the misery around us. The poverty, social and economic in-equalities become just political slogans and there is no genuine mass oriented system participated by all sections of society.

Just a 'democratic' form of electing a public office executive doesn't mean that we are truly democratic. This is a very basic democracy not a full blown democracy of West European states sort.

What is the use of this democracy. What does it matter if the votes are given to one or the other; they all end up in the same rot and they all corrupt by a mere name and picture in the media. The politicians backgrounds are never checked nor their credentials.

A simple bureaucrat has to pass exams, test and interviews and a long agonizing wait while their supreme boss may be the most illiterate and crooked criminal; we accept him as a deity - an addition to our database of leaders. Is this democracy?

Our systems are simply rotten and our institutions are a copy of the western ones. We have failed to contribute anything original. The greed, the fear and insecurity has made us idiots. Shall we accept this reality. No. We will not.

We will continue in the fantasyland and keep ignoring the realities. Our most intelligent and cream goes abroad.

Our top functionaries are forced to keep their hands crossed in the medieval offices and are forced to be impotent by an outdated system of Laws created by the British fiction writers sitting in London to run the British exploitation upto 1947.

British laugh at us as we love to be their puppy dogs. How crooked and stupid we can be! Oh we love our masters.

Even a white shoe shiner or barber is considered like a deity in South Asia. We love to be white. Many of us actually think we are whiter than the white of the races. Wow. What a racial complex.

We have adapted the same obsolete laws. Our constitutions are mere photocopy of others.

The whole scenario simply ignore and leave aside the masses of South Asia. The our people are nothing but used as fodder as basic raw material to keep the elite fine tuned and in great shape from all angles. Is this freedom?

We are still enslaved as we have been in last 1200 years or more by invaders, by ignorance, by foolish realization that we are the greatest and the best and the rest of the world is simply new civilization.

What use an ancient civilization has; if we keep repairing our ancient buildings while we have 40 percent of our population virtually homeless.

We have some big mouthed intellectuals who are pathetically lost in un-ending, outdated and useless issues' debates and rhetoric while thinking nothing for future.

The future planning or a thought for future is never in our agenda.

What original is left. The world of religion is sunken to narrow mindedness and smaller and smaller groups which is further creating chaos.

We have not learned from our history. The day we stop living in fantasy world and come to reality of today and plan for tomorrow - we have future as a prosperous region. If we continue to hate each other and live as divided people as we are we will continue to be on the margins of the world economy.

Shall we start a new chapter?

(Courtesy: South Asia Network)