No Prime Minister or Parliament can alter the flaws in our national psyche unless the masses join in the effort
Today is an important day in all our lives and the life of the nation. The election results will be known today. Hopefully, the country will have a functioning Government — a Government which does not chase the last wagon of the train by engaging in acts such as trying to appoint the next Army Chief on the last day of its work; a Government which will not condone losses of the public exchequer in the name of coalition dharma.
Presumably, it will be a Government which will not have political ‘chants’ instead of public action. Hopefully the international business and finance will not take this huge ‘sub-continent’ for granted. India will perhaps become central to all international business. Scores of educational institutions will presumably not be created just to score brownie points. Expectedly, different political combinations will come together, not to draw upon the booty of political largesse, but to give to India and its governance a sense of direction and a purpose.
Hopefully, debates on matters of public import will not be led by an expatriate tribe which visits India with a tourist mentality to collect compliments and enjoy the limelight and adulation which their adopted habitats do not provide.Perhaps then, career will be open to talent and not contacts. Indians will take pride on using Indian things and not derive a misplaced sense of having arrived by a denial of their heritage. There is no moratorium on hope and the election results day is a good day to go public with it.
It’s not going to be easy because many of these aspirational statements can be confused with an utopian dream. Creating such a governance system will not be easy because the problem is not just of governance but something much deeper.No Prime Minister, no Union Cabinet and, one might even add, no Parliament can alter some of the essential trends of working patterns and thought processes, without the willing cooperation of the masses. Many habits have been engrained in the national psyche through decades of practice, connivance and even political patronage.
Rebuilding India is something much bigger to contend with than dealing with just the basic concerns of bijlee, paani, sadak, makan. I went through Chandan Mitra’s immaculate write up Haarenge ya loosenge in Agenda on May 11 describing the conditions of his constituency, Hoogly, in West Bengal, from where he is seeking election. I have myself toured through parts of West Bengal, typically around Malda, and what the author is saying is brilliantly accurate.
What is the net result in several parts of the country, of trillions upon trillions rupees worth of resources poured into developing IndiaIJ This is not a rhetorical question.To understand the situation, one needn’t travel to remote areas of ladakh, the North-East or the interiors of Bastar. It hits us in many places as we drive down the challenging roads, and as we peer out of our vehicles. We need not even have to stop to see the desolate nature of many parts of the country.
The average Indian has to learn to be far more pro-active than he has been so far. If India, as a democracy, continues to function with whatever jerks and jolts, it is obviously this average Indian which needs to be complimented.But the time has come to push far beyond that. The generation which was born around independence was born without participative memory of the freedom struggle and will have passed out of the scene, by the most generous estimates, in less than another 25 years.
Their children have soaring aspirations and perceptions, which are tempered only by economic and technological boundaries. The third generation of citizenry of independent India in their late twenties sometimes come across as definitively brilliant, on other occasions they seem footloose. One does not want to be judgemental, but one thing that is clear is that we are entering a seminal era.
The national sport of competitive backwardness and the constant of pushing of boundaries in the spaces that we inhabit, must give way to a more vigorous goal-oriented activity of creating a more credible and sustainable India.