The Great Indian Dream

I just went online today after a really really long time and happened to read one of the blog entries that one of my friends had written apart from just take care of certain official mails. The topic revolved around what he thought was wrong about India, and why we with such a huge population were not able to develop despite having the best of brains. He questioned as to why no one won the coveted noble prize, or even win competitions in games all around the world despite the fact that 2 in ten people in the world are Indians. I thought deeply about the arguments he put forth, the ideas, the practicality of them and how the comments were to his article and what could actually be done. One thing I couldn’t but happen to notice is most of whom, had commented or rather all so far, were people who thought all this themselves but are now presently abroad, pursuing their higher studies abroad, so that they may earn more, live better and enjoy better infrastructure. And there lie the irony and what they fail to realize that they were themselves contributing reason to why the whole article was written. One claimed that the attitude needed to be changed, the author himself claimed that it would never change even if 500 years happen.

Hmmm herewith lies my line of thought on this topic...

India is a rich nation, we are culturally rich, emotionally rich and intellectually rich. When the rest of the world wore leaves, we were busy inventing steel. When the rest of the world had not awakened to the light of learning, we had universities and studied Medicine and Mathematics. A rich nation that has remained poor… This is from a book I recently read, I don’t know how many people have read or won’t read it for bias against the author but it dealt with economics through and through and interested me much. “The Great Indian Dream” by Malay and Arindham Chaudary of IIPM Fame.

Personally I have great respect for those two people for the mere fact that they didn’t just write what they felt, they did it too… That they dared to challenge the likes of IIMs and open up a Management Institute that is Non-Governmental in nature yet striving to maintain standards of those levels shows how much of a commitment into their idea, plus how much of service they provide to the villages with their rural program shows the drive into executing what they believe is right. It is these kind of people that are in dearth in today’s society. As much as we may boast of a huge population, we fail to realize that close to 60% or more of that population, still happens to live in villages with the least of facilities, while the planning commission of our country still makes a revised pay commission to increase the pay of governmental employees rather than spend a part of that money into providing irrigation and electricity facilities to the millions in the village.

To bring about a change of this magnitude, of overhauling a system that has gone unchecked in most of it’s activities for sixty years since it’s freedom, that is filled with a legal system that has a highly skewed supply to demand ratio needs the dedication and workforce of atleast an entire generation of literate and educated population of India to think that their primary duty is that to the nation rather than themselves. People who see that India has such a huge population should also notice it has a population of almost 40% who are under the poverty line (which considering it is approx 1850 rupees a month per month for a family of five is ghastly low by itself), of medical facilities of the ratio of just 1 Indian Doctor for 2400 Indians in the rural side compared to the “I don’t know how many” doctors per sq.m in the city side, having rare and inbetween educational facilities that do not boast of a system encouraging the student to study anywhere considering he can’t make the IITs owing to the fact that his city peers have much more exposure and specialized training for the same and can’t make it into so called other private colleges either thanks to the huge fees that comes with them. And a fraction of those middle class people that constitutes the government technical universities, the money allocated per student is significant for whom the Indian government and so is the amount paid by private institutes but the skill level of the industry is still considered poor and not upto the mark. There is just exploitation of the financial resources on all fronts possible.

So why don’t the youth take to politics inspired by the “Yuva” or “Ayutha Ezhuthu”?? Why is the media that shows day long about all the negative things that happen not happen to popularize the political party developed by IITians? Why haven’t they been able to succeed despite having a brilliant tag named IIT associated with them? These are the true questions to be pondered.

All these points I am sure are very well discussed by many illustrious people but I feel the economics of this issue needs to be seen through different glasses. I want anyone reading this blog to tell me of one renowned Indian brand that has been created only in the last twenty years and managed to survive without being kicked out of the market by so called globalization (per se without having an extraordinary background). Most may argue at this point that these companies have improved the standard of living by means of generation of plentiful jobs, providing international standard and so on… But what we fail to realize is that these very developed countries of today in their developing stages when we were being of robbed of every possible richness in the name of colonization practiced “Protectionism” for more than 2 centuries to get where they are now, but the Indian Market is unduly expected to rise to those standards without much input in terms of technology or finance to deliver such an expectation. From the simple toothpaste we use to the tiles we purchase almost everything is foreign in nature. We boast of extremely talented artisans in the most of the culturally oriented fields that have developed in the rural areas but they are highly devalued! I dunno if my friends have noticed but a lemon juice in our college “juicy” costed us 5 rs. Whereas when we have the same thing in a Hotel in Chennai it costs us atleast 25 to 30 or even more depending on the costs of the region hotel is located, price of the human labour available locally. So you can imagine the discrepancy in pay for an average Indian qualified with the same way to that in any of the developed country in the same company for the same job merely because it is located there probably the most prime reason for most people to go to the US since most jobs are available here now. Even the MNCs have realized what a potential the intellectual market in India is, so much so many have started developing their R&Ds here in India paying much less than their foreign counterparts yet a comfortable enough life as the cost of living is relatively very cheap here.

The question of why India hasn’t developed in Sports and why is Hockey the national game when it isn’t even popular is a very clichéd argument and one has to look at how many schools even in the forever developing metropolitan cities, how much of importance is given to the Indian Art Forms and Styles, how many schools encourage children to take up sports as important as their academics. Yes, it is in fact true that most parents choose for their child rather than let them choose but neither does the school equip the child take a decision. First and foremost, you live your life for yourself and you should not keep parents as an excuse to lead life the way you do, secondly most people who’re now in the sports field are the people who have only sports as their main vein and have it for their living. The sports quota in several colleges and government organizations ensures that such people are encouraged by providing a means of living but it is not the primary choice of parents solely because of the sheer competition owing to extreme population or if not, the amount needed to sustain the sports interests. Sports as a career needs a lot of financial support, extremely good infrastructure. I don’t know if there exists one dedicated Sports School that provides an opportunity for athletes to seriously pursue their career in that lane. To top it, the initiative to set up schools like Harvard and MIT brings us to the question if they will maintain their American Standards in their Indian versions or are they just measures to “tap” the educational market in India which seems to be sure sell out for the generations to come.

India in it’s present state does not need a dictator but a educated and young, leader like Mahatma Gandhi who was able to reach to the masses, bring together all the strata of society to a united cause of developing India. Inspire an entire generation( and by generation I mean all those alive in that period of time) to work selflessly towards that goal. Most people are caught in their own lives to think about the bigger picture, I think my comp sci friends know it better as the “Greedy Algorithm” and know the result of such an algorithm as well. But it is not so simple either, for this person needs to be flanked by the appropriate people, and the goal isn’t as precise and simple as it was earlier. In short a revolution of a magnitude that reaches every person in the country and that is no mean task. Difficult but not impossible.