Draw the parallel….

During the Soviet dictatorship of Stalin, he (Stalin) came to one Politburo meeting with a live chicken. He started to pluck its feathers one by one off.

The chicken quacked in pain, blood oozing from its pores. It gave out heartbreaking cries but Stalin continued without remorse plucking feather after feather until the chicken was completely naked. After that, he threw the chicken on the ground and from his pockets, took out some chicken feed and started to throw it at the poor creature. It started eating and as he walked away, the chicken followed him and sat at his feet feeding from his hand.

Stalin then told members of his party leadership “This chicken represents the people, you must disempower them, brutalise them, beat them up and leave them. If you do this and then give them peanuts when they are in that helpless and desperate situation, they will blindly follow you for the rest of their life.They will think you are a hero forever. They will forget that, it is you who brought them to that situation in the first place.”

Draw the parallel….

The parallel that I can draw is when we were made used to scams, corruption, misgovernance, uncleanliness, poverty… the list can go on and on. Even after more than 6 decades of independence, we are still comfortable in the monarchy akin system where political leaders are not chosen on merit but purely on the basis of lineage and surname. We have been battered and bruised so badly, that we accept it as normal, and even an attempt to correct the wrong, is viewed with suspicion, status quo is so much acceptable. And then the doles in the name of schemes such as MNREGA appear superly divine. The parallel, of course!!