Everything Modi has avowed has sparked hope. Do we have the right to dream? Rather heft our options according to circumstances, than pursue ambition? Has the dawn dawned that Indians can find a clean toilet at the turn of a corner? Can the nation hope for comprehensive education system that makes us ready for the industry, not just varsities, even the polytechnics? That aggressive progress can be earned? Not just the middle class and the rich who already have that and more. I am concerned for those, whose eyes have dimmed scanning the bucolic pastures. Who hope their descendants will see more yield from life than they did.
The Indian farmer is fatalistically happy, because he isn’t aware of what has been denied to him. He has never seen the precision with which his counterparts work in the first world. He has no idea as to how much amenities, medical help and benefits are afforded to farmers in the first world. Yet, it is he who’s bringing in the moolah for the mobile companies, the Indian BPL is a big contributor to these multinationals. Do these poor Indians ever realise that they augur the equity health of these companies? The Indian farmer lives sadly content in his world of small mercies and happily connected.
Indians are smart and can achieve anything despite the gigantic population. The polio drive and our polling are initiatives and system well achieved. But on a comparative note the private and public sectors are obviously different, even in the way they commit to work. Ones who work for MNCs are work worn, yet they commit to work willingly, and their drive to achieve is prideful along with company esteem. One can never see that in the public sector. The difference starts there and their contained approach toward work, which has no zeal, without personal gain.
Have we ensured so much job security in public sector that the checks and balances have tiled out of equilibrium, that most of it has proved to be an unworthy investment or dysfunctional? We need more than words and political broom postulations. We need sincere political will to change every aspect of the Indian scenario. Across Europe by rail… you are enwrapped by the sheer beauty of structures and clean pastures… suddenly in a flash other sights jolt you out of reverie; the comparison begins, the sight of un-tarred roads in an Indian village, raged people riding their family on a bicycle. Another sight that haunts me is the dirty corridors of a government hospital; the patient and the caregiver squatted on the floor, uncomprehending their predicament. More fleeting memories; young girls bearing the brunt of an alcoholic husband, sad faces of children bent by syllabi, faces of distraught elders who don’t have supportive children, lack of social security, youth afraid of losing jobs. And as fast as Eurorail, more memories flood me; the grime and dust of our cities, the stench of garbage, the dirty hotels, the plight of hostels, stray dogs, bellowing cows on city roads, prostitutes by the street lamp, the fatted politician... these and more imageries we need to wipe clean!