S Manjunath an alumni of IIM Lucknow was murdered by goons of the oil mafia last week .
He worked for IOC as a sales officer in Lakhimpur and was shot dead on Saturday for daring to complain against malpractices in a petrol pump.
Last year around this same time another bright young man of our country Satyendra Dubey was murdered after he sent a complaint to the Prime Minister’s office about alleged corruption in the national highway project he was working on in Bihar.
Two brilliant students, 2 young lives , two people who wanted to make a difference to our country . Two people who could’ve got into any organisation anywhere in the world .Two people who met the same tragic end .
People say IIT / IIM graduates never do anything for the country, never join PSUs. Look what happened to ones who did . I say , ’’why should they ???’’ . They have the skills , the opportunity to build a nice life for themselves abroad , in better places , in places where their lives have some worth , why shouldn’t they ? I’m seeing emails floating across condemning the killing of Manjunath , asking for support etc. How long do you think it will last ? a couple of weeks or a month at the maximum ....Who among us remembers Satyendra Dubey’s story anymore? There was a similar uproar last year after the incident , but today ?? Only his families and really close friends miss him as they go about their day to day life . If the IIT/IIM graduates want a better life for their close family , can we really grudge it againt them ? I don’t think so ...
Politicians didnt do much in Dubey’s case since they were hand in hand with the road contractors /land mafia and couldn’t afford to act against them . They wont do much in Manjunath’s case since they cant afford to anger the Oil mafia . We all know this , but still bring these same people to power , just because all of them are equally bad .
The media believes in sensationalism . They will rush to be the first to report the incident , put in all sorts of senstational juicy stuff and then after a few days when the story has run its ground , will chuck it in the bin . I have been watching reports of some police officer in UP who’s dressed in drag and thinks he ’s a gopi for somewhere around a month now . He’s so obviously a schizophrenic ..Can’t they just leave him and his family alone so that he can be treated ? what’s the point of showing it again and again ?
So are politicians and media only to blame for the ills plaguing our country ? No. All of us are equally to blame . We have become a nation that’s obsessed with making money (our fav shows all talk about becoming a crorepati and our fav soaps are set only in rich households) . Our attention spans have become tiny . We are ready to praise our heroes to the sky when they do well but dont have the patience nor have the respect to stand by them when they are not doing well . Values like honesty , loyalty , care for others have become things relegated to books .
We need to change , we need to make sure that people who have wroned our real heroes like Manju and Dubeu need to be punished . IIT/IIM alumni need to take the lead in this . A lot of our corporate czars are ex - students of these revered institutions . They need to come together for one of their own and take the lead in making the government accountable to get justice for the bereaved families of these young men . They have the power . Do they have the will ? It is upto you and me to support them in this . Unless we don’t , we won’t be able to stop the ’’brain drain ’’ out of the country and our dream of making India a superpower will remain just that .