The India of My Dreams

Call it childish but I have a dream for India, a dream that I want to realize more than anything else. Now let's see what I want in the India of my dreams. Eradication of poverty, equality, universal education, opportunities for all....No! That's what the communists wanted and they failed miserably. Volumes of literature has been written on the reasons but the one thing I think was instrumental in its failure was that communism de-emphasized the importance of labor, the need to work hard. There is a stream of thought that says that working hard(or working at all for that matter) is of no use. And believe me this stream of thought is nowhere more dominant than in the country of my birth, India. I think that we, as Indians, have become slaves to the "babuism" that the British left. I have no problem with people assimilating English, but assimilating the babu mentality, that of not working, is something that I just cannot understand. Now what's my basis for saying that? Ok, I'll explain. There is this statistic that says that more than 70% of India is agrarian. In this context, I question the use of education given in the schools of India. They start off by teaching basic languages and then progress on to teach mathematics, sciences, sociology etc. In a country with more than 70% people living in the rural belt, depending on agriculture for their existence, I think that an education system without the basics of agriculture, is pathetic. And ironically nobody questions this. Why? Because education is considered, unconsciously, by us as a way to escape doing hard work. All we, as Indians, want is to escape the tough conditions of our country and probably land up in Europe or USA. What we fail to realize is that all that the Indian education system prepares its subjects for, just like in the British age, is to become clerks. Of course, now we are much more efficient clerks and the word officially recognizes us by outsourcing a lot of their work to our country. But then who feeds the clerks, who keeps their cities clean...? What we, as an independent nation, have not been able to do is to make our citizens appreciate the importance and the dignity of labor. As a developing nation, we have a lot of people who would do these supposedly menial jobs. But what of the time when we become a developed nation(as our president foresees in 2020)? With the kind of disrespect we have for work, I doubt that we would ever become developed. The chances are that we would starve ourselves to death before becoming developed. This is certainly not the India of my dreams. I do not want my countrymen to die of hunger. I'd rather they lived in a more primitive way, but with dignity and respect, even with the most "disgusting" of the jobs. That is the India of my dreams. I dream of an India where, we would, as Indira Gandhi said " work more and talk less". This is not to undermine the rich tradition of Indian debating, which I very much respect and am proud of, especially after reading "The Argumentative Indian" by Amartya Sen, but I think that a time in history will come when we would have to choose to come out of our reverie and start pure and simple hard work. Only then, I think would we be able to live in a world as Rabindranath Tagore describes as :"..where the head is held high...".
PS: This stream of my thought was triggered after I read the autobiography of Booker T. Washington(Up from Slavery).

Clockwork Orange

Today two of my friends went home. It feels pretty lonely here at college with most of the friends at home, the remaining few of us just pass our time lazily. Of course, I am to blame for it as I doomed myself to the toughest and the most hectic three months of my life with a workshop and a really grilling internship. But then I wonder if it is worth it. The "rational" mind that I have been destined to develop through my 18 years of education says that that's the best I could do. After all I need recommendations and papers in order to get through to good universities abroad, don't I? But then I really wonder if its worth it. You know, working so hard, living away from parents and all. I guess I am doing all this because I enjoy putting myself into trouble, that's the only way to make one's life a bit interesting(and challenging), otherwise its all the same. Its just like being a clockwork orange. And believe me, that's something I really dread.

I Dare to Dream Big

Today, 6th July, is the death anniversary of one of the greatest visionaries of India, Dhirubhai Ambani. I am really proud to study in the only institute of higher learning named after him. Probably it is this relationship between us that makes me dream big for my country. Just imagine, a petrol pump boy taking over the reigns of the complete market of India within a span of few years. Converting the country into a net exporter of petroleum and running an organization with discipline in a country famous for just the opposite. Sam Pitroda might have created the PCO revolution but it was the vision(and a Gujarati businessman's drive) that propelled India to the next level, that of mobile telephony. This person had the guts to think big and not be weary of making profits wherever possible(I don't think he believed that business was for charity). Hats off to Dhirubhai.