Today we are celebrating the 65th
birthday of Modern India. We call it our
independence day. I should feel happy to
be part of this auspicious day but I don’t know why the kind of enthusiasm I
used to find in my heart at the time when I was a school or college going
student, the same zeal is missing now. Does it happen with most of us? Young minds definitely happen to be different
than the more saturated minds like ours now.
Younger minds are filled with innumerous hopes and dreams and with the
time some of these hopes get translated in to the reality but many remain
unfulfilled or simply remain distant dreams.
We always discuss in our conversations that Bapu had dreamt about our
nation or similarly other great leaders of our nation did the same. They really had dreams of a great future for
our nation. I don’t know if they could
see and gauge how post-independence India progressed since then, but definitely
had they been here they must have put their head down in shame for the way the
nation has been lead to by us, the generations that came after them.
We had a subject called Moral Science in our
syllabus in our school days, every day we had to read a lesson before our
teacher standing before him and he used to make us understand the significance
of those stories. Those stories made us
feel proud then. They taught us to
respect elders, to behave with others.
They brought discipline and character in us. Today I don’t know whether this subject is
part of the syllabus of our school going children or not, probably not because
every now and then we come across instances of intolerance by the teenagers
against their teachers, parents and their fellow students and friends. Today’s children do not know what they are
heading to. They are very confused about
their identity, whenever they turn to someone for the moral and emotional support,
they find everybody busy in his or her own problems or own business. Neither their books guide them nor the people
surrounding them. As a result we also
come across the widespread depression among today’s teenagers. The suicidal tendency due to this depression
is now not uncommon among them.
We need to find answers to these
problems which we are not prepared to handle.
These need immediate attention and the changes need to come at the grass
root level, in our education system. But
our political class, the brain behind all the plans and their implementation,
what has happened to them? Why are they
so insensitive to such issues? Why is
this lack of leadership before us? Why
we don’t find anyone to whom we can turn and say that yes, he is our leader who
will solve our problems, who will bring prosperity in our country?
Today what we see in our parliament
is the complete mockery of our democracy.
Leaders elected by us are behaving like we find two women fighting in
our neighborhood on petty issues like throwing garbage in front of the other’s
door. Parliament does not look like a temple
of constitution rather that look like a fish market, more of a shout and less
of a business. Most of the time
parliament sessions are not allowed to run either by the ruling party or by the
opposition. And when the focus should be
on the important issues which they need to address for our people and our nation,
the focus of these elected parliamentarians happen to be on blaming each other
for what they did in their previous or ongoing governance whether in center or
states. They don’t want to solve the
today’s problem rather they just try to compare the state of the affairs from
one governance to another; they remind the failure of others to justify their
own governance. As a result nothing
moves from there. Hundreds of public
litigations are filed in the courts and now courts direct the government to take
action on several issues. Government has
now become habituated to this, despite several admonishments by the courts on
several occasions, government still seems in inaction. General public bewilders what is happening at
the center. Is there any democracy left
in the system? Democracy means rule by
the common people for the common people, but is there any rule now left in our
country? By looking at today’s style of
functioning of the government, it seems like there is a complete void at the
center.
A phase was that when I saw India
progressing ahead in the field of Science & Technology, agriculture, Trade
& Industry and many other fields.
But suddenly since almost a decade, we have started decelerating very
fast. Sometimes I wonder whether those
statistics given to us by the government and their agencies were untrue or
today we have become so developed that we can’t grow at the rate of 8 or 9
percent in terms of our GDP. In fact we
have started looking our negative growth in trade and industry. Our GDP growth of below 6 percent is a reality
now and is heading towards worse than this in the coming future as the
economists are predicting. They are
talking about growth in the range of 3 to 4 percent if corrective actions are
not taken by the government. The extent
of inaction for last many years are so intense that the foreign magazines and
newspapers are also echoing with the sentiments of the general public of India
apart from the government and industry bodies who have trade and diplomatic
relations with us.
After 65 years we are still dependent on rain
gods to bless us for our agriculture and as this year was not so good, so our
agriculture is also going to show a negative yield. We had so many 5-Year plans, one after
other. Every year worth several thousand
crores of rupees’ schemes are unveiled by the governments for the development
of the nation and the people, but when we see the progress made at the end of
the year, we find nothing. Poor is still
poor, farmers are still looking for rains for their farming. Irrigation facilities are still not available
to most of the farmers. Most of the
villages and small towns are still eluded with the electricity. We
must have made some progress in education or health but it’s also true that the
speed is extremely slow. We don’t have
sufficient number of schools, college or health centers to cater to each and
every village and small towns. On the
top of it is the widespread corruption which has taken the roots of these
institutions that even those government- run schools, colleges or health
centers do not have the adequate facilities for what they are meant for. Teachers, professors and doctors often remain
missing from the duties, but they get their salary is credited to their
accounts regularly at the end of each month.
On one hand our constitution
provides us so many fundamental rights, on the other hand in reality we can hardly exercise
them as our nation is not yet prepared to provide us those rights. For those rights you need to fight, go to
courts, go to human rights commission and till you get the justice for
yourself, it will take years and that too if you are prepared to face the pain
and sufferings of our slow moving or rather I should say crawling judicial
process which have lead the brokers of this system to exploit us like anything.
I have discussed very simple
things that we suffer in our lives in our independent India, modern India. Many more things, many issues are left or
willingly I have left otherwise this will become a whole book. As a common
citizen of India, I thought to express my feelings to you which I sense most of
you will have more or less something in common.
It’s actually partly failure of the system and partly lack of our
willingness to do something, to bring some change, be it the change in the way
we think about us, about our neighborhood, our politics, our duties. We don’t just have to think and forget. We need to do what we think is better not
just for ourselves but for others too, most important for our nation. We need to inculcate discipline and moral in
our young generations. And for this
first we need to give time to them. We
need to communicate. Wherever we can’t
make the changes, we need to strengthen those forces which can bring those
changes. Differences of opinions may be
there because all human beings are different, so will be groups. But for the sake of humanity and for the sake
of our nation, we need to forget our differences and need to support the hands
of those whom you think are better poised to lead our nation. We need to forget the differences in the name
of caste and religion, language and region.
We need to show that whole India is one and united. We lack patriotism and this is a reality. I may look rude to many of you but this is
true. We can’t escape from this. We have some duties towards our nation and we
have to recognize them and we should be willing to fulfill all our duties
selflessly. Only then we can ask our
next generations to be patriot.
At the end my sincere appeal to
all the readers of my article that it’s not to hurt anybody’s sentiments. It’s my own realizations that I have shared
with you and if anyone finds it offending, I apologize to them.
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मित्रों यदि मेरा यह पोस्ट आपके दिल को जरा भी छू कर गुजरा हो तो मुझे विश्वास है कि आप मेरे इस प्रयास को लाइक दे कर मुझे और भी अच्छा लिखने की प्रेरणा, स्नेह और आशीर्वाद देंगे। आप अगर मुझे मेरे फेसबुक प्रोफाइल पर फॉलो करते हैं तो आपको मेरे शेयर किये सारे पोस्ट्स आपके नोटिफिकेशन्स में मिलते रहेंगे।
