Today, the mood in India is to march to the border and slaughter those who killed our twenty brave men. And in the midst of this bristling rage, has come a call to ban all things Chinese!
For most of us this means checking if a product is made in China, then not buying it, which gives us very little choice but to buy one made locally and which brings me to the question, why did we stop buying our own products in the first place?
We did, not just because those made in China, were just cheaper, but also and more importantly that their products for that low price could also be relied on.
Ours cannot! And why not? Because, we have not made, ’reliability’ and ‘dependability’ a brand. Because, everything we do is built on compromise, which is just another word for ’corruption!’
As a nation, we think we hate corruption, and we did root out the previous government for this. I do believe that our PM on a personal level is not corrupt, but are we as a people corrupt?
Ask yourself! Because it’s not going to be soldiers or muscle that’s going to win this war against our heavily armed neighbor, but how we handle corruption in our backyard!
And where exactly is our backyard?
Our churches, temples and other places of worship, our housing societies and places of work, even our homes where we whip up, shape and manufacture this product called ‘corruption’.
I’ve sat on boards of religious institutions, housing societies, social clubs, and seen how openly we bluff, manipulate and fudge the truth!
We have made all these institutions, manufacturing hubs of dishonesty and corruption, and finally when the same minds move from their clubs to their workshops, from their housing societies to their factories, they use the same methods to create products!
And those products fail!
I’ve sat at homes where the telephone rings, a child picks it, is asked for his or her father and the little one turns and asks, “Daddy, are you at home?”
And there! We’ve done it: Made lying official!
The ‘made locally’ products we compromisingly prepare with our broken, worthless values, are as broken and as useless, also, as worthless!
If you and I want to fight the Chinese, the battle starts in our backyard. Your weapons have to be guns of truth and shields of integrity. Then and only then will we win these battles.
Practice fighting against injustice, pit yourself against dishonesty, stand against bullying of the weak and helpless, and as you build muscle doing this, that same new character in us, will manufacture products that are world beaters. This, and only this will help you tackle the aggression from our hostile neighbor! This, and only this will bring victory to our nation!
Anything else, is plain hogwash..!
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