We Indians have come a long way since our ancestors first
arrived from Africa 70,000 years ago. We had our ups and downs, but we
survived. For other countries winning is necessary for survival. But for us
survival is winning. Kingdoms rise and fall, invaders invade flourish and
perish, but we continue to survive. One thing that we have learned through the
struggles is that survival is not about planning or being organized. That might
help you win battles, but to survive you need to stay alive each and every
moment helped by your intuition. Indians were never good with chess. But when
Anand defeated the highly organized Russian chess players he did that through
intuition and not through tried and tested formula of rigorous planning and
strategy. He showed the world a new way of winning chess, the Indian way. Yes,
we are short sighted like our policies. But when the opponent is strong no
planning helps you. Instead we take one step at a time surviving the moment. We
survived the Greeks, the Afghans, the Mughals and the Europeans. Not many can
claim of surviving such an onslaught. But we did it, one invader at a time. Probably
that is why we love cricket so much; it is played one ball at a time. It is
obvious in the way we walk or drive, one gap at a time. While developed
countries are slaves of rules, true democracy can be seen on Indian roads -
power to people.
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| REF:Pixabay |
Many people woder about the identity of India. Some even say
that India has never existed, and it was the Britishers who created India from
various different tribes/kingdoms. Even today India struggles to find one
single identity for itself. What defines India? Is it Gandhi’s non-violence,
Nehru’s secularism or RSS’s Hindutva? None of them is the true answer. India is
defined by its lack of identity. India never had a true identity, and that is
what separates it from the countries bodering it.There are 6 major religions in
India and 356 indegenous languages. It is that uniqueness of diversity that
makes India one country. Many different cultures came to India and tried to
mould India in their fashion. Absence of identity meant that we never had an
identity crisis. Contrasting cultures were never a threat. While the Islamic
State today struggles and fights to hold on to their identity, instead of
resisting the change India on the other hand accepted and assimilated all the
differences. India has always been a culture, a way of life, a concept that is
not defined by its borders. It gave India its amazing disorganized diversity. It
is this chaos and the extravaganza that defines India. The plethora of colour
sound and smell, good bad and ugly, is an assault on the senses for an
outsider. It can excite and exasperate a visitor, both at the same time. No
wonder India is called the mystical land of the East.
Close to seventy years of freedom and India still have the
problems of corruption, illiteracy and poverty. Looking at India today one can
come to the conclusion that we have failed as a nation. But, we often forget
the condition of India when we achieved our independence. It was a fragile
nation and very few thought that it will survive. Our biggest achievement
post-independence has been the story of our survival. We survived as a nation
without breaking down to pieces despite the struggles, and today we can dream
of becoming a global power. As Shekhar Gupta puts it, the concern of most
Indians evolved from roti, kapda aur makaan (food, cloth and shelter); through
bijli, sadak aur pani (electricity, road and water); to padhai, sehat aur
naukri (education, health and job). That itself speaks of growth. Though lots
of concerns still remain, our once biggest threat of surviving as one nation is
now eliminated.
We are a population of 1.2 billion people and growing, 70%
of whom are below 36 years of age. As high as 26% of the population is
illiterate despite being a number that decreased substantially from 88% when
British left. 70% of Indians live in rural areas of which 300 million are below
poverty line [1]. A large majority of our countrymen does not have access to
basic facilities like health care, sanitation, education and infrastructure.
Though 18 % of world’s population live in India, our country only has access to
just 3% of world’s drinkable water. As population grows the farmland, whose
yield is just half of that of China, becomes smaller. Though India’s GDP has
grown, just 14% of that is spent on agriculture. The conditions of our farmers are
amongst the worst in the world. Not unexpectedly the farmers have started
moving to cities for a better life, if they have not committed suicide. They are
changing their profession to take up low skill informal services as vegetable
sellers, car washers, maids and taxi drivers. Most of them live in slums, a
home to almost 70 million people. The growing population of the cities along
with water and space shortage, increase in consumption of energy, increasing
pollution and unmanageable wastage is making the cities unstable. This is a big
problem and with growing population these conditions are going to get worse. Add
to that our lack of homogeneity, high corruption, and poor governance. Sashi
Tharoor rightly said that India is not a developing country, but a developed
country in advance stage of decay. This is a problem unique to India, and hence
needs a unique solution. To make progress India needs to stop following the
models of other countries and create one of its own, harnessing her strengths
to mitigate her weakness.
Over the centuries we have found a formula of stability.
Ironically it is something that has been much loathed by the west and our own
people - the caste system. More than the system the problem has been the
status, the hierarchy, and the exploitation of the poor. It wasn’t meant to be
that way. But some professions had more demand and thus the people in those
professions grew rich and powerful. With power came greed and exploitation. There
were always people who challenged the system and changed their profession, but
they were exceptions. In that system, however, everybody had a job and they
became an expert in their field as they received training from their own
family. Compromise of freedom for stability had always been the model of
civilization. Just like its people the country itself was divided into numerous
small village republics where the elected elders had the power to decide the
fate of their own village. They had to make the right decisions as their
decisions gave them respect in the society, and thus power. The whole country
was divided into smaller and smaller fragments, each dependent on the other.
This complex system was very difficult for the British to understand and they
tried to break the system and remold it to a shape they were more comfortable
with. It was a recipe for disaster. Time has come when we move back to
Mahajanapadas, to poorna swaraj. Once the power is returned to people, they will
become responsible.
We have to find a way to educate our youth. The old system
has to be removed by an even older system like the Gurukul. Teachers should
help students develop not just knowledge but personality and free mind.
Students should be able to choose from different schools of philosophies and
not forced into one. Average number of years of formal education in India is
just 4.4. That number should be at least 12 years. Once the basic education is complete people
should be given training to develop specific skillsets. India had huge number
of unskilled labour. But for the country to grow we need industries, that in
turn requires killed labours. Only by developing skilled labours can we hope to
compete against China. A bit of investment on this people will yield a lot
better result for the government. Instead of spending huge amounts on the
subsidies that leaves scope for corruption, that money should be used on things
that directly benefit the people. This includes not just education, but also
health care, social security and sanitation. Greek writers once wrote about how
clean the Indians were. Oldest flushed toilets have been found from Indus
Valley Civillization. Yet our cities are dirty and majority of our population
defecates in open. That will change only when we take up the ownership. We will
take up ownership only when we will be made responsible for it.
Agriculture sector has a lot of scope in India. Government
should collaborate with other countries and help improve our yields and also
manage the storage of grains. Our farmers have the potential to feed the whole
world. Majority of Indians will get out of poverty once the condition of
farming improves. What India also needs badly is energy. We currently spent a
lot of money importing hydrocarbons increasing the trade deficit. The solution
might lie in the rich thorium deposits of South India. India has one of the
largest thorium resources and currently a lot of research is happening in BARC
that will help create a nuclear reactor that can burn thorium as its fuel core.
Once these nuclear plants are up and running it will solve a lot of our energy
needs. Even though our research organizations do not have enough funds we are innovating.
We are able to produce nuclear weapons, we have send satellite to
Mars, all of these totally made in India. India produces a lot of usable patents. Think of
the amount of innovation Indians can do once we get enough funds to develop
research and technology. Birla is Asia’s biggest aluminium producer, Airtel has
world’s fourth biggest subscriber base, Tata, Reliance and Mahindra has made it
big globally. Indian generic drugs are saving millions around the world [1].
Young Indians have led top companies like Google, Pepsi, Motorola, HP and
Microsoft. Given the opportunity Indians can excel in any field.
But above all we need to create people who respect and take
care of each other. The lack of respect
is evident in the way we drive on the roads, or irresponsibly litter in public
places. There is an increasing trend of orthodoxy that is coming back into the
society. We have to throw away the
Victorian conservatism and become liberal once more. We have to start
respecting our diversity and difference in opinions. Unity in diversity is our
strength. Despite all odds we can develop into a rich and happy nation in our
own way. But for that we need to free our mind as Tagore once wished. Being the
hero worshiping people that we are we need our heroes, including those in
Bollywood and cricket, to step forward and help free the mind of Indians. For
long our country has been known for its potential, it is now time for
execution.
It is still true what Mark Twain wrote about India on 1897
in his book ‘Following the Equator’:
“This is indeed India; the land of dreams and romance, of fabulous wealth and fabulous poverty, of splendor and rags, of palaces and hovels, of famine and pestilence, of genii and giants and Aladdin lamps, of tigers and elephants, the cobra and the jungle, the country of a thousand nations and a hundred tongues, of a thousand religions and two million gods, cradle of the human race, birthplace of human speech, mother of history, grandmother of legend, great-grandmother of tradition, whose yesterdays bear date with the mouldering antiquities of the rest of the nations—the one sole country under the sun that is endowed with an imperishable interest for alien prince and alien peasant, for lettered and ignorant, wise and fool, rich and poor, bond and free, the one land that all men desire to see, and having seen once, by even a glimpse, would not give that glimpse for the shows of all the rest of the globe combined.”
