Kahan Gaye Woh Log?
Do you remember that serial? It was about freedom fighters and great leaders of India.
Today, after reading about the n-th attack on India and then reading about the statements I remembered that song.
If you saw Shivraj Patil reading his statement, you can find out what is wrong with the Indian government. It lacked anger and felt like he was trying to read just another statement. Are we so used to this violence that we have stopped caring? Can you imagine PM Manmohan Singh taking a tough stand against terrorists? We can forward his resume and his high school grades as much as we want, that is not going to change any policy. Where is POTA? Where is toughness? Will we just let people come into the country, plant explosives and leave by Samjhouta express? Is there any promising leader on the horizon who really cares about the state of the country? Or are our Lalloos and Jayalalithas going to sell the country for few extra pairs of sandals?
It is 12:15 am and I do not even feel like sleeping. I don't think I have been so frustrated ever about the state of affairs. How much can you tolerate? How long can you be patient?
Today, after reading about the n-th attack on India and then reading about the statements I remembered that song.
If you saw Shivraj Patil reading his statement, you can find out what is wrong with the Indian government. It lacked anger and felt like he was trying to read just another statement. Are we so used to this violence that we have stopped caring? Can you imagine PM Manmohan Singh taking a tough stand against terrorists? We can forward his resume and his high school grades as much as we want, that is not going to change any policy. Where is POTA? Where is toughness? Will we just let people come into the country, plant explosives and leave by Samjhouta express? Is there any promising leader on the horizon who really cares about the state of the country? Or are our Lalloos and Jayalalithas going to sell the country for few extra pairs of sandals?
It is 12:15 am and I do not even feel like sleeping. I don't think I have been so frustrated ever about the state of affairs. How much can you tolerate? How long can you be patient?
posted by Nikhil at 12:11 AM
7 Comments:
Seriously the reaction of the govt has been very pathetic..I was really disappointed with Manmohan Singh..what the hell does he mean by saying "India will not kneel. We will win he war on terror". We haven't won anything. Just beause the resilience of the people have brought Bombay back to normalcy after such a horrific tragedy doesn't neccesarily mean we have won. We have lost..tons of lives have been lost. and this is not the first time that such an event has occurred in bombay and were left as helpless as before. We have allowed terrorists to plan and plot and kill innocent people and go scot-free. Where is the progress ?? What a load of crap.
This is kalyug, man!
I think it is very easy to say "Ghor kalyug" and all like my parents and do nothing about it. It is also very easy for people like Nikhil and me (don't know abt Kaveri and Anonymous) sitting nicely in their homes/offices getting angry about it and doing absolutely nothing.
We need to think harder why these incients happen in India? I think this has a lot to do with how government works here. I think there are three main obstacles in stopping such incidents: large-scale poverty, corruption and apathy.
1. There are far too many people who are poor...they become a very easy tool for terrorists to exploit. If I were a poor person who is promised a few thousand rupees (which would go a loooong way for me), then I might not think twice about what will result if I help that terrorist. And I believe a signficant fraction of the poor population will fall in this category.
2. Corrupt government employees (ranging from politicians to cops) don't help the cause in any way. Most of them are interested in making maximum use of their current term for their personal cause.
3. People are generally apathetic. There is hardly any reaction to these incidents. Maybe you can't blame them when such incidents are becoming commonplace. But it is still disturbing when people call up their friends and family to check if they are safe, and then heave a sigh of relief and completely forget about it. Btw, I am also prone to doing this...so I don't put myself out of blame here. However, this "chalta hai" attitude, which is so prevalent, doesn't help at all.
So what is the solution here? I think the first thing we need to do is get our basics right. Education and transparency in government are an absolute must. I am pretty sure that the number of female infanticides/ is far more than the number of people who die due to terrorist attacks...does that have anything to do with literacy...I am not sure. Additionally, there should be an more restrictions on who can become an MP, MLA, etc. These guys need to have some basic qualifications, and all the government work they do must be completely transparent.
Slightly OT: I think the Indian population is largely affected by what I call "greedy local optimization". Most people don't think of how things are globally affected by what they do. This can be seen in corruption and in the way people drive, store owners talk to (potential customers), etc.
Anyway, proposing problems and pointing out faults with our current approach is a fine thing. But can you come up with a good solution for our current issues? It is incredibly hard to do so...there is no simple solution. I am sure that the approach that we have taken with Pakistan is not simply because our PM is very kind-hearted and generous...
It is also very easy for people like Nikhil and me (don't know abt Kaveri and Anonymous) sitting nicely in their homes/offices getting angry about it and doing absolutely nothing.
I was expecting this cliche from someone. How do you know that everyone who is sitting in nice offices is doing nothing? The system is like a protocol stack and I am sure my layer (at least me) is doing a good amount of our part. Not everybody can do everything. We have every right to complain about the workings of other layer.
I am sick and tired of this "You are doing nothing and sitting in comfort" lines. Everybody is doing something. We ARE helping charities that support Indians. We in fact supported education of students in Africa for a year also. We are continously working outside India to improve India's image(never underestimate this) and make people more aware about what is going on in that part of the world. We are helping to increase the dollar reserves of India. I think we are doing something about the #1 already.
So next time don't say that we are doing nothing everytime someone vents their exasperation at the govt.
It is a democracy. Even if you write and propagate your thoughts, maybe it will have a snowballing effect, slowly but surely.
Your #3 says that people are generally apathetic. We are still discussing it and are still angry. Hardly apathetic! I read as many eye witness accounts and saw as many gory pictures i could just to carve this deeper into my memory.
#2 will have to take care of itself when #1 succeeds. Also it is a question of mentality and being able to be happy in what you have. This ofcourse comes later when you have the resources to take care of your basic needs.
So next time you write about it, leave out that "sitting nicely in their homes/offices" part. It hurts and makes me even more angry. Just another Indian attitude to do so I guess. I might have done it in the past too, I never do it now. At the most, I will say that maybe I am not doing enough.
Okay, maybe I am wrong. But I still don't think you/we are doing enough or doing anything significant. Maybe I went a little overboard at first, but I am tired/frustrated/annoyed with almost every other person complaining about stuff as if it somebody else's job and just talking about it.
I think what I am doing to help charities, talking about issues, etc, is almost negligible compared to what *can* be done. Charities are a very good thing, but the effect is too little as of today for it to make any significant inroads. And I am not sure about the snowballing effect that you talk about. The snowballing effect will only come if a larger percentage of the population starts taking notice of all this. The percentage of population that reads online stuff is miniscule (even considering urban India, forget about rural India)...most of the info is via television. Besides you or me, there have been several people who have been writing such stuff for a long long time. Snowballing has yet to happen.
Regarding India's image, I don't know what image of India you are trying to portray, but if it is only about urban India, then that is not the true image. And I am not sure how much you know about rural India. Further, what the media and books portray about cities here is also drastically different. For instance, I don't know what you have heard of Bangalore from the media. If I were to compare it with a city in the US, I would say it is in a really pathetic state (not just comparing infrastructure here). But compare it to many other Indian cities/towns, and you realize that you are probably a lot better off.
As for just complaining about other layers of the stack...well, is complaining enough? That's the easy part, and almost everybody does it. Can you try to think of a solution? (Maybe we can't do more than what we are doing, but it doesn't hurt to be constructive and try to come up with an approach to handle these issues.)
I think Terrorism and "doing nothing" are two different things.I have personally felt the anguish and the pain as someone close to me has been affected by the act.
To fight terrorism ,you need special kind of effort.It needs the intelligent force of India,the defence of India,the great leaders of India to come together think,plan,execute and kill terrosism.
Me or you cannot simply fight terrorism without any sound foundation .It is not enough to have courage.
Me as a citizen am doing my bit by contributing to the society. (Economy wise or some other small means).
All I can do(probably more) is choose a good and able leader for my country so that they have the abilities to fight terrorism .They are intelligent enough to hire intelligent people to detect the henious acts before they are executed,to penetrate the minds of the terrorists and find out what they are against.
We need to vote,voice our opinions when we are not happy with the govt performance.This blog is one way to do it.There are other ways too.
-Gayatri
Talking about Laloo Prasad Yadav, it was probably the first time that I ever heard any positives about this man. He has apparently played a constructive role in turning the Indian Railways around and his good work is being applauded in business circles.
Reference:
http://in.rediff.com/money/2006/aug/30iim1.htm
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