Managing the masses

Five parts impacting climate all over the earth namely temperature, humidity, atmospheric pressure, wind and precipitation, amidst rain and shine, are reckoned by meteorologists in their routine act of forecasting weather and rainfall. Even as nature has its say by not conforming to their advance announcements, ostensibly to inform people, particularly the farming fraternity, the air is abuzz with debates on the burning topic of climate change in various circles of both the informed and the uninformed. While the debates have fascinated the discussants and climate has continued to be volatile, the top brass in the nation’s Government at the Centre has most appropriately turned heat on transforming the land and its masses from its present climate of unclean conditions all around, indiscipline of the populace, fraudulent acts of individuals with seemingly conspicuous profile having a hold on their coterie, unabated rise in the number of unruly disruptive noisy outfits staging outrage on roads and a plethora of unpatriotic anti-national public statements misleading the land’s impressionable millennials, without realising the disastrous consequences for the nation and its people even short-term fallout.

Our ancestors of a distant past have bequeathed the simple rules of life for individuals, families, society at large and also the land as an entity comprising masses with backgrounds as wide as an ocean spelling out a set of do’s and don’ts ensuring welfare of all life forms in a sustained state of happiness, harmony and comfort. Not complying with those rules has proved the undoing of later generations.

Thanks to satisfactory monsoon this year, the nation’s food basket is expected to provide adequate food to the masses while the industry scenario has belied the goal of making the country a five trillion dollar economy. The world has been informed that India has realised the dream of an ODF (Open Defecation-Free) nation with 100 percent households having toilet facility. Devastation caused by flooding rivers in many States, including Karnataka doesn’t seem to have dimmed the efforts of armed forces in rescue work. Yet, there are pockets of Government’s functionaries not rising to the expectations of the people, particularly by sulking and acting perfunctorily in expediting the projects of restoring the damaged public infrastructure as well as shelter for the displaced people.

Managing the masses by enacting relevant laws and levy of penalties for violating the rules seem to have some salutary effect on the conduct of people at large. While lethargy and ignorance about the benefits of cleanliness of body, mind and living spaces are taking a toll of lives, the trend of the land’s transformation to what is desired tends to be worrisome. In the matter of bringing round the undisciplined sections, one is prompted to invoke the Kannada idiom Dandam dashagunam bhaveth.