When I was about 22 years I started reading a book on the French Revolution. I could never finish it and finished it after 20 years. The reason I mention this is because of one quote in the book, "Each and every people gets the government that they deserve"

Living in Mumbai today makes me doubly aware and wary of this quote - and fearful that the daily events make it all the more apparent that we are getting the government we deserve. Consider:

1) We spare no effort to hit the like or share button on facebook on any event of note, but think nothing of not taking out the time to go and vote. The society I live in - Dosti Acres is considered an upscale society now with upper middle class professionals. It is surrounded by Antop Hill - a slum area. WHile in Dosti Acres the voting percent in the Municipal elections was in the low 30s, that in Antop Hill was in 70s. Is it that the slum-dwellers are more politically literate than us upper class people, or is it that we just don't care. Let us move to the next few things.

2) Every day when commuting, there are a few minor signals on the road. Any time during the day, you will find a lot of cars crossing the red signal on the traffic lights. Earlier it used to be only taxis, but now some of the most expensive cars also do the same. Perhaps stopping at signals is below their dignity. Yet we are the first one's to complain loudly (on Facebook again) if someone is killed in a road accident. A few months back, I had this experience, where a car in front of me braked suddenly when the signal was just about turning yellow. The result I hit the car from behind. Not badly, and the person in the car just did not bother to get out. I went to talk - his explanation - he had to drop someone off and that person asked him to drop there itself - so he thought nothing about stopping in the middle of the road.

3) Due to monorail work, a lot of traffic has got diverted from the main road to a society internal road. Recently a 14 year old boy fell from his cycle and was crushed under a bus tyre. A lot of hoopla was created, meetings held within the society, with the traffic police and with MMRDA (the implementation agency for monorail). Some of the key actionables identified were getting traffic wardens posted by MMRDA, no parking of taxis and private vehicles on the road, erection of speed breakers. While the government agencies posted wardens, speed breakers were erected and taxis were stopped from being parked on the road, within a week of the accident, the private vehicles were back to being parked on the road. When I stopped one person from doing so, it became a minor fracas and later the traffic wardens thanked me for intervening.

I could perhaps go on narrating such incidents - but then I am also a middle class person and perhaps I too deserve the government I am getting. I have a illegal shop which has come up, against which I have been meaning to file a complaint with the municipality but for the last 3 months have done absolutely nothing about it.