As I sit down to write my first piece for the New Year, I wonder what I should write about. Should I continue writing about how we need more innovation and entrepreneurship to change the country and the world? Or about how women are set to conquer the corporate world? Or share my tips on what you should do to climb the corporate ladder even faster?

But then, how do I write as if life is normal, when it’s not? When every news medium is filled with more and more data about our depravation? The number of rape cases in the capital city is enough to earn Delhi the tag of ‘the rape capital’ of the world. Wikipedia’s entry on named scandals in India (refer http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_scandals_in_India#Named_scandals) lists over 40 scams in 2012 — in troubled states like Jammu& Kashmir, to supposedly well-managed ones like Gujarat. We have been moving from one protest to another over the last year, from anti-corruption to women’s safety, to God-knows-what-next; India Gate has started resembling Tahrir Square, except that we are a democracy, and, therefore, have no one ‘dictator’ to overthrow for our redemption!

Where have we gone wrong? Are we right to place all the blame at the doorstep of our political leadership, as we are doing now?

I surely don’t believe so. When we find things going so wrong, perhaps it is the right time for each one of us to sit down and introspect within ourselves. Let’s face it. Today, most of us are running non-stop, chasing higher and higher targets, without pausing much to think about the means we are using to achieve our goals. We participate merrily in the consumer revolution, without a thought for the extent that we degrade the environment around us.

We fund and sell dubious micro-finance products even as the beneficiaries commit suicide. We celebrate and deify personalities like Vijay Mallya, the Ambani brothers, and many others, even when we strongly suspect that they have bent every rule, and bribed every babu, to succeed. We feel for, and defend, Rajat Gupta, despite the irrefutable evidence against him…after all, did he not manage to climb to the pinnacle of the corporate world….so what if he had to take some shortcuts! I know…perhaps, I am being rather harsh. But I worry a lot about what example we are setting for our children, and the next generation of Indians? We push our children to do well in life. While we make sure that they know how important it is to earn money, do we spend an equal amount of time and energy to teach them values, to emphasise that money at any cost will not do? I believe not. Neither do our schools teach them values. I remember the time when my son was in a prestigious school in Bangalore; one day he came home and told me about how their school principal had been arrested by the police for beating up his wife! I was completely horrified. But then, was I not at fault for paying donation to get my son a seat in that school? What did I expect from a school that gave away its seats to the highest bidders?

But why do I, and people like me, pull all the strings we could, and spend way beyond our means, to get our children into such schools? We are really a generation in a hurry; a generation of Indians who grew up feeling that we have to succeed — dare I say, by hook or by crook! Our role models showed us a path where you could break all rules to win the race. Idealism was for the losers. We were street smart. If we had to copy in tests to get that unfair advantage over our friends, we quietly did it. We grew up, went to college, and actively participated in eve-teasing, binge drinking, and bullying, all in the name of ‘ragging’….something that every cool kid was expected to do!

Parents looked the other way, because they did not want their kids to be ‘losers’. They wanted them to make friends at the right places, so that they would get the right breaks in life. We went to work choosing jobs that paid us the most, quite willing to shut our eyes to what our employer did, or did not do. We chose our bride or bridegroom based on his/her earning capacity, and many-a-times, paying capacity.

We ‘network’ with folks of questionable credentials, because we want their favours. We ask our sales team to do what it takes to get the orders, and we take them along to demonstrate what we mean. One board member that I met recently said to me, “We have to be practical and appreciate that there is a cost to doing business in India!” This was in response to my query, on how the board had looked the other way when executives in the company were siphoning off money.

Today, we are all protesting, feeling enraged and agitated. The cynical in me thinks this is because the cumulative effect of all our actions are finally coming back to bite us. Now, it is not somebody else who is getting killed, but one of our own — a GM (HR) in Maruti-Suzuki; now, it is not some unknown person going to jail, but one amongst us who happens to be a director of the Reliance Group; now, it is not some hapless rail passengers, but hi-fliers, who are paying the price for Kingfisher’s shenanigans; and, it is not some poor tribal girl getting raped, but a middle-class student in a residential colony in Delhi, who is with a person she is engaged to marry in a month’s time. So, we have been stirred out of our apathy, and we are out there in numbers, making our outrage known.

Please don’t get me wrong. Protest we must, most definitely. We have to continue to protest until our voice, and outrage, is heard, and taken seriously. It’s, indeed, heartening to see the extent, the spontaneity, and the peaceful nature of the protests underway today. It gives me hope that the first signs of change are around the corner.

However, for any real sustainable change to come about, it is important that we, each one of us, also start taking stock of our own sins of omission and commission, and begin taking stands. As consumers, can we start boycotting newspapers & TV channels that regularly give us ‘paid’ news? As journalists, can we perhaps take stands when our media bosses expect us to collude and bargain with businessmen and politicians? As sportsperson, can we refuse to ever throw away matches, and vow to expose those in cahoots with betting gangs? As parents, can we refuse to succumb to the temptation to pay money to buy seats in medical schools for our children?

As facilities managers, can we insist that the transport companies we engage to run buses and cars for our employees only employ trained and licensed drivers, who don’t run amuck on the roads threatening lives, every day? As managers, can we stop, forthwith, the pernicious practice of employing agents, paying hafta and commissions to get our dirty work done in order to run our operations smooth? And as home-buyers, can we refuse to pay the builder a part of the money in black, even if it means we don’t get that ‘special deal’?

If there is one thing that we should set out to do this New Year, I submit that it should be to start a process of serious introspection, and to resolve to change our society by changing ourselves first. I have made a start with my New Year resolution which is to watch what I do at work and at home so that my actions set the right example for my kids and my employees.

I am reminded of what our poet-philosopher, Kabir Das, said in one of his dohas:

“Bura Jo Dekhan Main Chala, Bura Naa Milya Koye;

Jo Munn Khoja Apnaa, To Mujhse Bura Naa Koye”

Translation:

“I searched for the crooked man, met not a single one

Then searched myself, “I” found the crooked one”