India, o India, do I still love you?
Love is supposed to be unconditional, but can it really function that way? Whether between a husband and wife, or a mother and child, or among friends? Can love be unconditional between a patriot and the object of his fantasy, his country?
You don’t usually fall in love when you are seething with rage or feeling cheated around every corner. It is hard to fall in love when you are suffering from a fear psychosis in the face of a barrage of TV news or newspaper reports that kick-start every depressing day, followed by infrastructural deficiencies that make modern-day living taxing, if not appalling. Cursing abusing and threatening the world comes as naturally to us as crime follows politics.
So, when and how will I fall in love with my country when most of my waking hours are spent in the midst of tackling one “Made in India” problem or another. Am I over-reacting to daily scams, recurring, horrific and unpunished rape cases, dilapidated infrastructure and skyrocketing cost of living, to name just a few of the daily aggravations in India?
Does it all sound familiar? Or do we have different tales to tell, because we come from different states, different milieus, different castes, religions or socio-economic zones? As long as the nationality is Indian, the answer is probably, no.
I recently observed that the potholed Indian roads are egalitarian. Whether you are driving a Series 7 BMW or a second hand Maruti 800, both will be stuck in the same meaningless traffic jam, caused by one of the myriad inane only in India reasons – a politician’s cavalcade passing by, or the construction of a much delayed flyover project that someday your kids might just get to avail, or an ego tussle between two nameless nobodies smack in the middle of the road.
I guess some of you might not be feeling homesick anymore.
Am I falling out of love with mother India? Remember Oscar Wilde’s admonition, “We begin by loving our parents; when we grow older we judge them; sometimes we forgive them.”
Have I started judging my country, and if so, can I forgive her?
I want to fall in love with India again, but am running woefully out of reasons.
A friend suggested a way out of the predicaments before they graduate into dilemmas. One way out, he offered, is “comparisons.” Everything from the rose-tinted glasses of “comparison” will make you fall in love again. My instant reaction was twofold. One, was he advocating willful ignorance? Yes, he responded, because it leads to “bliss.” Second, wasn’t his comparison mixing up apples and oranges? He countered with a higher logic, as MBA armed professionals are wont to do: look at the P&L sheet. The “bottom line” was what mattered. Now I was seriously confused.
Should I, rather why should I not, look at Bangladesh, Pakistan and Nepal and feel better that none of them can conceive challenging China and its economy and even possibly beating it by 2080, as some lofty economists have proposed. Or compare us with dilapidated Iraq, isolated North Korea, or ultra-conservative Iran.
Our foreign policy has been far more prudent. My nation, unlike the world super-power USA, does not have alarming number of “depressed” patients, incidentally highest in the world, nor have we curbed the child limit per family to just one, which neighboring China has done, skewing the male-female ratio for generations to come.
Nor have we opened legal drug injection centers for the terminally ill, drug dependent citizens as Canada and Switzerland have done. With rare exceptions, we don’t see or hear of people dying of overdose. So why should I not fall in love with my country?
Haven’t our parliamentarians, irrespective of parties, risen above their petty differences and ensured that we have not fought a war on our soil since that cold 1999 Pakistani invasion. We are no global cops like USA and we certainly don’t believe in waging wars and creating widows and orphans. My country is peace-loving; non-violence is in our DNA. Now, why should I not love my country?
So, if all is swell, then why am I still getting this toxic feeling, especially when so many “phoreners” want to come to India – from Richard Gere to Paris Hilton to Maria Sharapova, or the lesser mortals from the former USSR who have made Goa their second residence, rather making it look like it’s their first and our second. For your information, it’s hard to find Goan sausages in the new “chicken stroganoff” land of Goa these days.
Normally, when goras endorse something, it becomes cool and we embrace it at lightening speed. Once Americans latched on to yoga, we started naming our kids Patanjali again and rushed to buy our yoga mats and memberships. We gave the world the likes of Swami Vivekanand, but only since Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and Deepak Chopra converted spirituality into hard currency in the USA has everyone, from the shy housewives of Bellapur to the business czars of Bombay, suddenly turned spiritual and vegetarian.
Why, now that the West has given its stamp of approval, am I still shying from my endorsement? Is it because I can see what they can’t – a functional anarchy? Recall an old joke about how India runs. During the days of the former USSR, where religion was banned, a visiting minister from Moscow was asked if he still believed that God did not exist. He replied he did not. He responded to his shocked listners, by explaining that despite flight delays, train delays, empty government offices, surely it wasn’t the people or its government who kept the country running. It had to be God – Ram-bharose, as we say.
Even after 66 years of independence we have only managed to graduate from an under-developed country to a developing one. We still proudly carry the tag of a third world country; a country with great potential, the next superpower, tomorrow’s economic giant. But when will this tomorrow materialize – one that can be witnessed by you and me.
The root cause of India’s problem is endemic corruption. An old joke comes to mind. The American president went to God and asked him when will corruption finally end in his country? God replied, another 50 years. The president wept, “Alas, I won’t be alive till then.” Next came the German chancellor and asked God the same question, to which he replied, another 65 years. She wept, “Alas, I won’t be alive till then.” Then came the Pakistani president with the same query and God replied, another 90 years. He also wept, “Alas, I wont be alive till then.” Finally Dr Manmohan Singh walked in and asked God, when will corruption finally end in our country? God wept!
From being an under-developed country to a highly developed corruption compliant economy, from billion dollar defense deals to a petty Rs 20 bribe for the traffic police, greasing palms has become a part of our DNA and our collective conscience, passing from one generation to the next.
The cancer has gnawed at every bit of our country, including sports. One look at the Commonwealth Games of 2010, in which the money for the games was plundered by corrupt officials will give you a sty. View any Olympics or Asian games opening ceremony, and the Indian contingent stands out like a sore thumb by the presence of more pot-bellied officials than sportsmen.
Consider the facts. During 112 years of participation in the Olympics, we have won just 26 medals, even though we are the second most populous country, behind only China, whose records the less discussed the better for our morale. In fact, we have only one individual gold medal winner for 1.2 billion people. Nor have we excelled in other sports. We still don’t have a single individual men’s or women’s grand slam winner in tennis. Countries far smaller than us – such as Switzerland, Serbia and Romania – have produced top ranked world players. And for the big daddy of them all, football, our highest ever ranking was 94, way back in 1996 and currently we are languishing at 146.
Barring the odd few heroes in Prakash Padukone, P. Gopichand and Saina Nehwal, the tricolour is yet to become a mainstay in international competitions. Our national failure in sports is a hard pill to swallow.
We don’t perform much better outside sports either. Our doctor:population ratio stands at 1:2000. The nation produces three times the combined number of engineers and MBAs than China and United States. But incredibly, India is still a developing country. We, the people, are seemingly condemned to excel only under foreign supervision, be it under the British Raj or at NASA. Brain drain? Why is it that the same set of Indians in India end up as ordinary citizens, but excel abroad?
After speaking to many friends and acquaintances working overseas, I have discovered that it takes two to tango! Great brains and great infrastructure make perfect bedfellows, yet even this seemingly simple bargain is a hard to find on Indian shores. Take Delhi, the national capital. Often one is without electricity. The commute to work is a nightmare of potholed and waterlogged streets, unruly traffic and frequent traffic jams. The Internet connection and many business services are often unreliable.
And the chaos repeats itself with monotonous regularity. A developing nation whose citizens are forever pressed for time, not because they consumed or squandered it, but because they lost it to a thief called Mr Petty. Little wonder we get used to and satisfied by mediocrity, because in this chaos, the first instinct is self-preservation.
I often find myself loving India for its richness, its culture, its heritage, its glorious past and its easygoing way of life, its humane side, its democratic polity, its secular character and above all its unity in diversity, and how we care for other human beings. Yet for a country with such vast human resources and an enviable number of billionaires and millionaires, what takes the juice away from the orange is that despite all these achievements nearly two-thirds of our citizens earn under Rs 100 ($2) a day. How then can I rejoice at the arrival of F1 in India or appreciate Mukesh Ambani’s most expensive residence in the world, Antilia, or feel good about Indians buying off foreign conglomerates and spreading the Indian success story in the global marketplace? How can I feast while others are fasting?
I am slowly feeling cornered, just as women in the country are cornered by the brashness of eve teasers, molesters and rapists, safeguarded by toothless Indian laws and the apathy of its keepers. Is this the country of Goddess Lakshmi and Maa Kali, where we are supposed to worship Mother India?
Despite all these shortcomings, the world is beating a pathway to India and many NRIs are looking at returning home. For some it’s the search for Nirvana, for others it’s the best budget travel they can get; others yet for value the novelty. Sometimes we discover ourselves only in the context of the other. Compared to the limited food choices in the United States, the edible map of India changes every 300 kms or so.
Recently I was bewitched by the grandiose pyrotechnics on U.S. Independence Day celebrations on CNN. It reminded me of Diwali. I am sure we are noisier, dirtier, more polluting and harmful to birds, animals and trees. But there is nothing plastic about the festival. Also, like an Indian wedding, which isn’t just the union of the man and the woman, but also of two families, our Diwali celebrations are not simply confined to burning crackers, but are a full-blown marathon spread over days, dipped in a festive mood, that only culminates on Diwali, unlike the July 4 celebrations that start and finish on the same day.
How long can you enjoy life under a made-to-order monochromatic sky?
To quote Osho Bhagwan Rajneesh: “I call India not a country, but an inner space. I call India not something that exists there in geography, on the maps. I call India that which exists hidden within you and that which you have not yet discovered. India is your innermost space. India is not a nation it is a state of mind.”