What comes
to our mind immediately when someone(fellow Indian/Foreign National)
shoots forward this question: “What do you think of India as a country?”
The first thought which inevitably comes to the mind is that we are
still (moreso financially) a poor nation. But then the mind comes to the
centrestage and scolds the conscience for making such “outrageous”
presumptions about your own country. The conscience fights back saying
that it’s not a good thing to ignore the truth and live in a fairytale
world and so the argument goes on.
Let us take the assistance of statistics, a tool which economists and mathematicians are ever so fond of. After 65 years of Independence, we are an ever-growing uncontrolled mass of people (standing “tall” at 1.25 billion right now) which is seriously making claims to dethrone China in this respect. Is that a thing to be proud of? I don’t know for others, but i guess it is the source of evergrowing (and never-ending) problems plaguing the Indian Democracy. Experts argue that the large population can be utilised as a better workforce which can be more beneficial to the country’s economy and prosperity. I am no expert but how can a strong workspace be created when there is a serious lack of availability of basic resources?
Now, after liberalisation and globalisation (and to some extent, capitalisation) struggled their way into India in the ’90s, quite a few areas did improve like education, services,FDI, growth and increased participation of private sector in different fields; and more prominently the media(especially electronic) grew by leaps and bounds during the last two decades. A boom resulted in a wider range of commodities and products and companies got spawned more frequently and competition became more fierce. Marketing and glamour became as crucial as the product itself. Indians always have had the reputation of having one of the brightest minds on earth. Quite a few Indians were already members of the world’s best institutions and organizations, but now the encouraging thing was that Indian companies started becoming MNCs and at the same time,thronging foreign shores. The world started viewing India as a potential power (not ‘super’) finally and also as a brand; this we came to know through the media. A thing to be proud of, I could say now? We started having more and more multimillionaires and bilionare CEOs from the country. Indian IT companies went offshore and foreign firms landed up in India looking to recruit “fresh and bright talents”. Jobs in the private sector blossomed.
Today, in the second decade of this millenium, we are supposedly an “Investment-friendly Nation” (though land acquisition is again a serious and a persistent issue plaguing companies; and for Governments, politically). We have booming movie and television industries with larger-than-life movie stars and a cash-rich Cricket board which regularly flexes its financial muscles to dominate the game financially. We have always been “star-struck” but media exaggeration and fanaticism have defined newer parameters for this behaviour.
Cities are growing, more “world-class” malls are springing up everyday. Leaders tell us that the cities would resemble a London very soon. We become optimistic and happy on hearing this. After all, who wouldn’t ? But then the reality dawns;as far as cities are concerned, slums are increasing everyday as more and more people are coming to the urban areas in search of work. Lack of proper infrastructure is an omnipresent issue and is becoming even more serious a challenge with increasing population and rising unemploment rates. More and more people have to slog it out for a very few opportunities that come our way. Corruption is rampant in almost every sphere. The number of poor people is still very high in the country. Crimes are not a rare phenomena even now.
We constitute a secular state but regularly indulge in bloodshed over religion and petty politics. We get influenced easily by what the leaders of a multiparty political system tell us. Elections come and go, promises and declarations get repeated with jibes directed at the rival political party(ies) a regular feature. The news bulletines and headlines are, in general, filled up with news about poverty, corruption, crimes, etc.
We seem to have got accustomed to the daily phenomena and see nothing new in it. But when a Danny Boyle makes a movie centered around one of the largest slums in India and the movie goes on to win the most prestigious awards, a lot of eyebrows are raised for projecting India in such a poor light (mine too got raised). Why only portray the darkest side of our cities to the world, we would argue vehemently, for cinema is undoubtedly a powerful medium and has had on many a previous occasion made powerful impressions on people’s mindset about a few things shown in the movies. So, India was projected as a third world country, a few of us cried.
So what can we do? We can’t stop other people to document and project our poverty and the negative sides. So, what can be ensured is that we provide others fewer chances to highlight our shortcomings and for this, we all shall have to make amends and take steps to change ourselves and our society for the better.
This is what could be done, meaning all hypothetical. The reality is a bit grim though. The glaring paradox can be spotted very easily as just beside a world-class speciality(like a mall), you will come across beggars; you could even come across slums besides a world-class airport; or a more prominent example is coexistence of old and newer parts of the same city. While the new city will boast of having state-of-art amenities, the old city would still be suffering from the usual infrastructure problems like power and water shortage, traffic congestion, drainage problems, etc.
So, after all these arguments and counterarguments, whenever the query is raised as to what I feel about India, I go for the same diplomatic reply: we are(still) a developing country and I am proud of it irrespective of all the cons.
Let us take the assistance of statistics, a tool which economists and mathematicians are ever so fond of. After 65 years of Independence, we are an ever-growing uncontrolled mass of people (standing “tall” at 1.25 billion right now) which is seriously making claims to dethrone China in this respect. Is that a thing to be proud of? I don’t know for others, but i guess it is the source of evergrowing (and never-ending) problems plaguing the Indian Democracy. Experts argue that the large population can be utilised as a better workforce which can be more beneficial to the country’s economy and prosperity. I am no expert but how can a strong workspace be created when there is a serious lack of availability of basic resources?
Now, after liberalisation and globalisation (and to some extent, capitalisation) struggled their way into India in the ’90s, quite a few areas did improve like education, services,FDI, growth and increased participation of private sector in different fields; and more prominently the media(especially electronic) grew by leaps and bounds during the last two decades. A boom resulted in a wider range of commodities and products and companies got spawned more frequently and competition became more fierce. Marketing and glamour became as crucial as the product itself. Indians always have had the reputation of having one of the brightest minds on earth. Quite a few Indians were already members of the world’s best institutions and organizations, but now the encouraging thing was that Indian companies started becoming MNCs and at the same time,thronging foreign shores. The world started viewing India as a potential power (not ‘super’) finally and also as a brand; this we came to know through the media. A thing to be proud of, I could say now? We started having more and more multimillionaires and bilionare CEOs from the country. Indian IT companies went offshore and foreign firms landed up in India looking to recruit “fresh and bright talents”. Jobs in the private sector blossomed.
Today, in the second decade of this millenium, we are supposedly an “Investment-friendly Nation” (though land acquisition is again a serious and a persistent issue plaguing companies; and for Governments, politically). We have booming movie and television industries with larger-than-life movie stars and a cash-rich Cricket board which regularly flexes its financial muscles to dominate the game financially. We have always been “star-struck” but media exaggeration and fanaticism have defined newer parameters for this behaviour.
Cities are growing, more “world-class” malls are springing up everyday. Leaders tell us that the cities would resemble a London very soon. We become optimistic and happy on hearing this. After all, who wouldn’t ? But then the reality dawns;as far as cities are concerned, slums are increasing everyday as more and more people are coming to the urban areas in search of work. Lack of proper infrastructure is an omnipresent issue and is becoming even more serious a challenge with increasing population and rising unemploment rates. More and more people have to slog it out for a very few opportunities that come our way. Corruption is rampant in almost every sphere. The number of poor people is still very high in the country. Crimes are not a rare phenomena even now.
We constitute a secular state but regularly indulge in bloodshed over religion and petty politics. We get influenced easily by what the leaders of a multiparty political system tell us. Elections come and go, promises and declarations get repeated with jibes directed at the rival political party(ies) a regular feature. The news bulletines and headlines are, in general, filled up with news about poverty, corruption, crimes, etc.
We seem to have got accustomed to the daily phenomena and see nothing new in it. But when a Danny Boyle makes a movie centered around one of the largest slums in India and the movie goes on to win the most prestigious awards, a lot of eyebrows are raised for projecting India in such a poor light (mine too got raised). Why only portray the darkest side of our cities to the world, we would argue vehemently, for cinema is undoubtedly a powerful medium and has had on many a previous occasion made powerful impressions on people’s mindset about a few things shown in the movies. So, India was projected as a third world country, a few of us cried.
So what can we do? We can’t stop other people to document and project our poverty and the negative sides. So, what can be ensured is that we provide others fewer chances to highlight our shortcomings and for this, we all shall have to make amends and take steps to change ourselves and our society for the better.
This is what could be done, meaning all hypothetical. The reality is a bit grim though. The glaring paradox can be spotted very easily as just beside a world-class speciality(like a mall), you will come across beggars; you could even come across slums besides a world-class airport; or a more prominent example is coexistence of old and newer parts of the same city. While the new city will boast of having state-of-art amenities, the old city would still be suffering from the usual infrastructure problems like power and water shortage, traffic congestion, drainage problems, etc.
So, after all these arguments and counterarguments, whenever the query is raised as to what I feel about India, I go for the same diplomatic reply: we are(still) a developing country and I am proud of it irrespective of all the cons.
