The last couple of weeks have seen a flurry of coverage in print and television media about Manjunath.
Details about his life are many, but the fact that people are aware of are that he was an engineer from SJCE and an IIM grad. So far so good. He joined IOCL. A job that many grads like him would be willing to give an arm and a leg for. He met a gory end on the 19th of November 2005...And that's from where this blog starts.
I have nothing against Manjunath...I never even met him...and if not for his death I would never have know him....This is not a tirade against him...This is a tirade for him and for all like him...
An IIM grad who could have got a job in any MNC of his choice, yet he choose to serve this country. Joined a public sector...not any public sector but one of the richest ones. I have just one word to describe his act 'foolish'.
it is indeed foolish to give up your life for honesty in this country. The biggest mistake made by the oil mafia was to kill Manjunath. If they had only beaten him till he was half dead, this fracas would have been avoided. Yes, I don't find anything wrong in the Oil Mafia's act. To put it bluntly it is this:
Manjunath wasted his talent in fighting the oil mafia. The best thing to do would have been to put his papers and walk away. What great outcome did we have of another brilliant chap, Satyendra's murder. The media treats it as a nine day wonder. The public write eulogies about the person. Except for the vacuum amongst the person's kith and kin is there any action. "IIM demands strict action" - one head line reads, ya sure...demand all you want...like you are going to get the killers punished. Trails will drag on for years. The killer in Manjunath's case will not languish in jail...he will be treated like a king at our expense, at my expense, at your expense- look at Abu Salem's treatment.
Worst case, Satyendra's case, no one is caught. The media loses interest, it has other fish to fry and the family is left on it own. We the intelligentsia recline at our work station and sigh and say, the country is going to the dogs.
Yes man, the country is going to the dogs, why shouldn't it? You and me and all of us in between have contributed to it. If voting is considered infra dig, if politics is for the corrupt, then of course there will never be a leader we can look up to. We have to be content with aging stalwart and greatness thrust upon dynastic heirs. Till the time that we let the Manjunaths and the Sathyendras battle it out while we sit at home sipping lemon tea, while bribing the traffic cop to avoid paying the fine, nothing will change. We have accepted that nothing works without grease. We have accepted that we have to pay to get work done. And the worst thing is we are ready to pay.
Maybe it is time to teach our future generations, that Satymeva Jayate is passe...Money rules is in.
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