A Civic Society That Never Sleeps

Dear Friend and Fellow Citizen

The Indian citizen has been incessantly buffeted and bullied over decades by the political and corporate class of the country.

Over sixty years we have mutated from citizen to mere consumer. We have been reduced to a herd of cattle, milked frequently off votes, while we are prodded to further nourishment on a diet of consumerism. As a consequence we citizens have been anaesthetised into apathy and indifference. Our minds have been progressively dulled by apparent prosperity into shirking our duties and responsibilities as citizens while the nexus of political and corporate establishments arrogantly pursue their machinations.

We are being marginalised within our physical, psychological and most importantly civic spaces, fed on an illusion of the greatest good for the greatest number while the contrary is happening.

We are terrorised from without and within our borders, expected to follow diktats on who is Indian and who is not, who is a patriot and who is not, who is secular and who is not, what we can read and see and what we cannot, what is and is not our heritage, who should and should not be our Prime Minister while the perils of the global economy keep us busy eking a livelihood.

It is time we proved our strength on the floor of the country by giving ourselves a much needed vote of confidence, proving our majority and using the same with responsibility to the greatest benefit of all.

In striving for that majority we citizens must conceive, design and implement strategies that are non-violent in word and deed; engage in dialogue and relentlessly pursue the path of conflict resolution towards consensus in a world replete with combative language and violent deeds.

In times of moral and ethical poverty in all walks of life we require to engage the conscience of fellow citizens and work towards a consensus no matter how cumbersome and insurmountable the task might appear.

We might not wish to engage in active politics for myriad reasons but we can easily restore to ourselves a citizens’ democracy built on the foundation of transparency, ethics and compassion.

Cellular Silence Day_ Why?

Dear Friends

I wish to share with you a letter I wrote to my fraternity of film-makers.

Thank you for lending your voice in support.

As part of the middle class we've been incessantly buffeted and bullied by the political and corporate class of the country. They treat us like cattle to be milked off votes fed on a constant supply of consumerism, confident that they will dull our minds into apathy and indifference while they arrogantly pursue their machinations.

It is high time we showed our strength on the floor of the country by giving ourselves a much needed vote of confidence, proving that we can be a majority to be reckoned with.

In striving for that majority we shall adopt strategies that are non-violent in word and deed; engage in dialogue and relentlessly pursue the path of conflict resolution. What we need to do in times of moral poverty is engage the conscience of fellow citizens no matter how impossible it seems at present.

We might not wish to engage in active politics for a myriad reasons but we can easily restore a citizens' democracy to ourselves built on ethics and compassion. This we can do with a 'zero tolerance' for corruption beginning within the four walls of our home, zero tolerance for tainted officials and peoples' representatives; respect for the rule of law; respect for rules of the road; ethical investments only in companies that have best practices in fair trade and social responsibility.

We show our 'zero tolerance' through sustained campaigns like Cellular Silence, gaining in numbers as we go along,

I have remained quiet for way too long and I want to find my voice. Most importantly ,I refuse to "say die" without trying.

So, let's wake up India and be the change we wish to see in the world

Cellular Silence Day_30th January 2009

Dear Friend

The collective amnesia of the captains of Indian industry with Ratan Tata embracing Narendra Modi and Messrs. Sunil Mittal and Anil Ambani endorsing his candidature as future PM of India, disturbed me immensely.

This petition is my humble effort to engage the conscience of corporate India and make it known to them that the Indian citizen is not to be trifled with.

Just as we can vote for or against the politician, we can pinch the corporate bottom-line in order to engage their attention to mend their ways.

It is not an easy task for us to keep our cell phones and Blackberries switched off for an entire day on January 30th - the 61st anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi's assassination.

However, it ought to be sufficient to get the message across to corporate India that we will not tolerate the endorsement of fascists as future Prime Ministers.

May I request you visit the link below to sign and thereafter circulate the petition, if you feel as strongly about this matter.

Remember, if we wish to" be the change we wish to see" we have to have a few million signatures on this petition by January 30th 2009

sincerely
Ranjan Kamath

PETITION

To: India Inc.

Dear Messrs, Ratan Tata, Sunil Mittal and Anil Ambani

I am one of a billion Indian citizens.

I am somewhere in the middle of that pyramid that you wish to give voice - from bottom to top - through wealth creation.

I am proud of the brands you represent that have made India proud.

I am one of the burgeoning Indian middle-class that share your aspirations of mutating India from indolent elephant to thundering tiger.

It ends there...

I have hitherto been accused of being indifferent and apathetic, simply because I am overawed and felt overwhelmed in a system replete with Goliaths.

But when I saw you embrace the fascist mastermind of state sponsored genocide as a future Prime Minister and endorse the Modi-fication of India, it was disappointingly apparent that the brands that aspire to make India rich shall continue to languish in ethical poverty.

While I am filled with revulsion at your endorsement of Narendra Modi, I must respect your right to do so as a fellow citizen.

In writing this petition I am a mere David amongst the mightiest corporate Goliaths but I feel empowered to address your collective amnesia - through recollection of the Gujarat pogrom of 2002 - by the true Goliath among Gujaratis in particular and Indians in general - Mohandas Gandhi.

All those who sign this petition will switch off their Tata Indicomm, Airtel and Reliance cellular phone and broadband connections from midnight on January 30th 2009.

It is eminently possible that I might be the one voice in a billion who will observe the 61st death anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi on as Cellular Silence Day.

Then again, there might be close to a billion who could join me on January 30th, 2009 expressing their solidarity and silently insisting that the captains of India Inc adopt an ethical, compassionate path to wealth creation rather than the single-minded pursuit of the bottom-line.

We shall know that by the end of 30th January, 2009