Is Aarakshan possible in Corruption?

Education is the best business today - dialogue from Aarakshan.
Corruption is the best practice - mentality of most humans

I just watched Aarakshan. Its a movie about how corruption has seeped into something as noble as education as well. Future of Young India is decided by those who have money and those who would go to any lengths to make money. The movie had all the regular subjects that would complete a typical Prakash Jha syllabus. But the after taste of this movie, as is with most such kind of movies, felt a bit unreal, stretched beyond the realms of practicality.

For example, one man standing against the entire system comprised of education big-wigs, politicians, police and running a parallel education system in a satyagraha kind of way would seem rather impractical and far removed from reality.

Immediately after watching the movie, my mom told me of an incident that has left me sad, angry and yet again, cynical. When in Chennai, she used to teach at one of the most prestigious schools of the city. The school had an impeccable reputation and prided itself for being a non-biased school. Only the really good students got in and all of them passed out as even better students. No donation, no reservation, no reference was known to work at school.

Today mom told me a story of how the answer sheet of an influential man's son was changed during board exams!!!!!! Apparently when the answer sheet was collected and taken to the staff room, all teachers were asked to leave. The student was called in, his paper removed from the bunch and he was made to correct/ fill in all the answers that he had written wrongly or left incomplete. And we are talking here of 12th standard Board Exams!!!!!!! He was the son of a movie star! How does he even care about marks? Its not clear whether this was done under pressure from the father or by the school to protect its own reputation of being the number 1 with no failures ever.

Either way, I am disgusted. My mom quit the school soon after but that is all she could do. She is a common (wo)man. She didn't know any better. She was no Big B who challenged the whole system and got the entire city together to stand united for a tangible common cause.

She also told me of the time when she heard of the principle taking bribe from a student, of him having his son being taught by my mom and thus telling my mom to make exceptions with his son. And the same principle orating profuse speeches during the assembly, coaxing young students to always chose the right path, by being the mentor to young impressionable minds! Such double standards!

Today the nation is a-buzz with chants of Anna Hazare. The timing of me watching the movie was bang on. As I sat in the theater watching the movie unfold and thinking to myself, "Oh its just a movie and no common man can give in to the political pressure, blackmail and avoid the dirt of corruption", I was immediately reminded that right now, at this very moment, one man in India has done exactly this. Anna Hazare has done what most movies have shown year after year, the rise of a common man against the powerful, dirty, loathing political system.

You know how thoughts are - contradicting, conflicting all the time. I have not been a supporter of the Anna Movement that India witnessed in the last few days. I don't mean I have been against the man himself, on the contrary, I applaud the spirit of the man for having brought the whole country together the way he did. No news of violence anywhere, people fasting in support, people taking to the streets day after day, it was all really really fantastic. My grouse has been with the unprecedented support and hype that the movement got. Like my friend Arundhati Ghosh mentioned in her article, my grouse has been against the externalization of corruption. And it remains thus.

The whole country is joyous with what is being called the Anna-pendence Day. People are on the roads celebrating today like its a festival. They say Indian has won today.

I wish I could be a part of this celebration too. I wish I could feel the way the whole country is feeling today. But I don't.

My mother supports Anna Hazare. With a hope that tomorrow will come a day when she and many like her will be able to openly oppose corruption. After days of speculation I have understood that the masses are supporting the cause because they think that with the Lokpal Bill, corruption will find a punishment center, a court where justice will be granted.

But who will justice be granted to against whom? The school principle who accepted bribes for personal gain or the teachers who were forced to change the answer sheet of a film star's son? Will justice be done for people who pay bribes for convenience or will justice be done to those who are forced to pay bribes because there is no other option?

Corruption seems to have touched everyone of us, in some way of the other. There are times when we have been a part of it and then there are times when we have been spectators to it. And today is a time when we are protesters against it. But the actual revolution will happen when we decide to change our own ways so that we, in no way, allow ourselves to be perpetrators of it.