A vigilant citizen ensures good governance. Certainly not!

Who is a vigilant citizen? Is it a person who truly guides the government with correct criticism or is it a person who in the name of vigilance tries to hog the limelight and actually acts as a deterrent to good governance.

Need I name such citizens to clarify my point? The likes of Medha Patkar and Arundhati Roy are way too many for me to be able to count them! One wonders whether the stir they created in the name of saving the environment was a sincere effort or just an eyewash. 

Allow me to ask you that even if the citizens sincerely tried to keep vigil upon the government how many of the vast Indian multitude could be considered fit for doing such a task? Statistical data clearly shows that majority of the Indian populace is languishing in utter poverty.  All that they are concerned about is how to procure two square meals a day. Do you think they would worry or care about who forms the next government?

Moreover the citizen’s vigil is done in fits and starts. It has never been consistent and cannot be for the simple reason that it’s not our business. Why would we elect and appoint governments if we had to do half their work? I’m of the opinion that we as citizens should be content and leave the government to the best of its capacity. Hobnobbing on the citizen’s part and unnecessarily bringing about the showdown of the government will definitely not help in good governance.

The long list of scams in our country bears testimony to the harsh fact that there are no vigilant citizens’s and even if there are they just cannot help.

And last but not the least I’d like to point out the dangers of mob psychology. In general the public does not discern between right and wrong governance. At times their review is biased or faulty. This is a direct consequence of their heavy dependence and blind faith in the media.

I would like to conclude with a very pertinent question: Will you depend upon the judgment of half-informed, half-baked whimsical citizen’s to manoeuvre the steering wheel of the country?

Think about it!