Of lately I have been bombarded by India’s 60th anniversary celebrations where the government has been at the forefront of spending tons of money to make its somnolent citizens realize the magnanimity of the occasion. Time and again people who have fortified news channels, been the cynosure of paparazzi have come out with exhortations for India achieving a developed nation status. But I believe they cannot be more off the mark than this. We are still not objectively aware of our shortcomings, for no one ever has dared to list them in all sense of enormity and certainty. I will like to therefore make my contributions to it and list down events and people more importantly that have pulled us down.
Leading the pack is the politicians who have never disappointed us with their disparagingly dismal show at governance and overindulgence in petty politics. The person who must come at the helm must be Jawaharlal Nehru followed by Indira Gandhi suffixed by Morarji Desai. This is because not of what they had done but because of what not they had not done under the circumstances. Imagine a united India brimming with aspiration, nation building zest engulfing one and all and yet not able to break the shackles of mediocrity, inefficacy. This solely is the responsibility of the leader who spent their time practicing hypocrisy, flawed ideals of socialism which look appealing though infective and ineffective. In fact cupid struck they were during the tenure, leading governance to more a game of chance. Morarji Desai and the subsequent government got an opportunity to present a formidable alternative to the demands of social, political revolution with stalwarts such as JP heading the charge. The failure of this alternative not only impressed on the Junta the chimera of TINA (There is no Alternative) factor: to the merriment of the Congress and much of its sycophants.
Despite being a people of over a billion talented and diverse people, what strikes me is the dearth of ideas and the enterprise to execute them. The blame dear reader can be pinpointed on the colonial mindset that we have been subjected to combined with a deadly tinge of submission which Hinduism as a way of life mistakenly is taken to propagate. What we have produced are people afflicted with this ‘Yes Sir’ syndrome, the very antithesis of innovation, out of box thinking, a characteristic that makes great stand apart from the good. And this has stretched our tolerance levels of inefficiency, given a push to sycophancy and in a way prevented Renaissance tripping. It has left us in a time warp. For how else can we explain the super stardom bestowed on our Bollywood thespians who are no more than Tamashebaaz, yet yield power and influence to put to shame the top power mongers. It has only been recently that people have realized some anomaly when people started taking them for granted .However even this lacks the requisite ferocity .We Indians as, Arun Shourie propagates need to realize that being good and being patient to inefficacy are entirely two different things. To get work done, forget being good, just stick your neck out to get the work done. Had this not been so , how can we explain to have tolerated for so long leaders as unscrupulous such as Laloo , Paswaan , Mayawati. The lessons are beckoning to be learnt, we just need to expedite this.
