The Hindu Business Line : Signs of decadence

I Met, the other day, a highly successful young Indian American professional, who is comfortably settled in the US. He is obviously of the thinking type and while leading a prosperous life, has been closely studying the trends and developments in his foster country.

He told me with a good deal of finality that America had touched its zenith quite some years ago and was going downhill, and would, in another 50 years, be no place to be enamoured of. His main contention was that the US would soon be overtaken as an economic and technological power, with its fundamentals taking a nosedive. Inefficiency and corruption were rampant in both Government and business, and as the series of corporate scandals and the total collapse of administration following the Katrina disaster made it plain, the self-styled supercop and management mentor of the world was unable to cope with stresses and strains which would have been child's play for a district officer in India.

The wasting away of a civilisation or culture is largely because the people are indifferent or unaware of the warning signs of looming decadence, creating a crisis resembling the terminal throes of the Roman Empire so very revealingly described by Edward Gibbon in his monumental classic on its decline and fall.

Foremost among the causes pulling a people or nation down is self-indulgence and self-aggrandisement borne out of the love of ease, luxury, pomp and show and a morbid obsession with filthy lucre.

Second, patent coarseness, intolerance and violence aggravated by a mix of paranoia and megalomania in personal and social life. Third, values being stood on their head: Adulation of the corrupt and the wicked and denigration of the worthy and the accomplished, giving rise to a society in which "talent sinks and merit weeps unknown... ostentation... with tawdry art pants for the vulgar praise which fools impart" (Oliver Goldsmith).

Supervening all is a malady that, like hypertension, treacherously sneaks into the polity and remains unnoticed until it brings about the destruction of the edifice. That is the decaying of institutions meant for keeping a body politic strong and healthy: Schools, colleges, universities, bureaucracy, civic services, police, judiciary, armed forces, regulatory bodies, media.

Where would you say India stands on a scale of 0 to 10 in all these respects?

B. S. Raghavan