Published in 1999
I have always wondered – why does India not make progress like the rest of the world? Almost all nations in the world started off at the same or similar level after WWII. Given India’s rich history and knowledge we should have leapfrogged the world and should have been one of the leading super-powers somewhere in the last century. We gave the world ‘zero’ and, looks like we ourselves got stuck right there. Our epics and Vedas talk about nuclear power, airplanes and we let everyone else build them much before us. Even today, we are the acknowledged leaders in brainpower but unfortunately that is confined to four walls of our office and is never applied for our nation’s benefit.
Contrary to the media and our esteemed leaders who would like to blame all this and more on some enemy, I am of the opinion that these wounds are self-inflicted. The question I ask is – do we really need enemies? Looking at the political, environmental, infrastructural, and economic progress of our country, I would say that we do to ourselves what our worst enemy could never imagine doing to us. In fact, I would not hesitate to declare that we are our enemy’s best friend.
Terrorism is rampant around the world. Consider the difference in reaction to a terrorist attack in the west vs. India. When there is a terrorist attack in the west, the political leadership goes into overdrive to hunt down the terrorist groups and nations that support these groups. Consider the equivalent event happening in India. Handful of terrorists kill few of our people and then our political leaders go into overdrive to kill hundreds more of our own people, burn our own shops, bring our own country to a standstill with bandhs that inflict economic losses in crores and not to mention the black eye we get from world attention. The people we kill in riots are not the enemy, but Indians. The shops we burn, the women we rape, the houses we tear down and the businesses we impact are OUR own and not the enemy’s. Ironically, our leaders proclaim all this nonsense as a victory against the enemy. How stupid can we get?
The second demographic I would blame is the public. We are too complacent and too uninvolved in making of our own country. The educated class does not vote and then cries fowl when the crooks become the leaders. We watch everything from the sidelines and not do anything to fix the wrongs we see. Whether it is garbage on the road or pollutants in the air and water; we refuse to take ownership of our living conditions. It appears that hope is our only strategy, and we keep hoping that someone else will come around and fix our problems for us. We keep doing what we have been doing and expect different results every time. We spend more time, energy and money on breaking laws than abiding by them.
Democracy is built by people, and their contribution does not just end with elections. The citizens of a democratic nation have equal responsibility in building and managing the nation and serve as a watchdog to keep the elected leaders in line. The citizens of any nation can impact its progress in simple ways by actively participating in doing what is right for the country and shunning away the bad practices.
Next time you pick up the newspaper or a magazine read closely. Analyze the decisions and actions of our elected leaders. Check out the details of stories that the media is reporting. Think deep and think through and then decide; are we serving our own interests or the interests of our ‘so-called enemy’. Before you think about the short-term gain, think about the long-term losses and then, I am sure you will understand my point of view that we are our enemy’s best friend’.