The issue at hand is not corruption or those in support or those who are against Anna’s movement. It is not the merit of these notions and arguments. It is something that comes before all this. It is something deeper, more fundamental, more subtle and primeval. It is opinion building.
The three instances above have a few things in common. Firstly a draconian blanket statement is doled out with an arrogance that often renders the person saying it blind to the fact that it is merely their opinion and not a fact. Secondly, their opinions are narrow-minded as they fail to see that corruption is not limited to bribing a cop or bribing a passport officer. They don’t see that corruption is not something “done in a nice manner widout troubling ny1”, especially when people don’t get to eat due to leakage in the Public Distribution System accounting to as high as 85% in some circumstances due to corruption. And finally, these opinions arise out of a nonchalant attitude amounting to apathy, because it takes much more than watching a couple videos shared by friends on Facebook before forming an earnest opinion on something of national significance.
We live in an era of instant gratification, of 140 character tweets and of T20s. We are all busy with the mundane activity of our lives and that and only that is the whole world to us. We do not take time to educate ourselves enough before forming an objective opinion and sadly, it is the other way. We transcend the path of logic and reason and form an opinion instantaneously after looking at something based on our emotions and no matter what we read after that, we read only to bolster our opinion and forever get stuck in this vicious circle.
A case in point here is paranoia driven opinion: - A friend of mine claimed that Anna Hazare should first start at grass root levels and that he should start by improving living conditions before coming up with fancy ideas. We quickly told him to Google Ralegan Siddhi and then he saw a BJP-Anna nexus. Basically, his opinion is unlikely to change.
On the other hand, we have a vast population, some of whom think they will support Anna until the end of the world not because they truly understand the merits of his argument but because they have been swept away by a wave of emotion sweeping across the nation thereby succumbing to mob mentality.
How many of us have truthfully formed an opinion after looking at the merits of different schools of thought? Have we all weighed the pros and cons of legalizing corruption, of Team Anna’s Lokpal, of the government’s Lokpal, of Nandan Nilekani’s idea of an effective UAD in combating corruption among other things and of addressing the underlying socio-economic structural differences as opposed to creating another potential oligarchy as claimed by Arundati Roy?
We all have the right of opinion. However, when we are living in an era of constant social networking where opinions spread like forest fires and build like mammoth avalanches, we owe it to ourselves to be more prudent in exercising this right by being cautious and well-informed by perusing credible and eclectic material.
