(Note: this is something I wrote almost two years ago. I think it still speaks for today. I’ll let you decide.)
As a kid I got to know these atrocious but quite imaginative, and at times funny full forms for country names and places. Most of them are too dirty to bear mentioning but even as a kid I couldn’t help but notice that India had a pretty bad full form. It stood for It Does Not Develop In Anything! Now I do not know who came up with this but I think it is a pretty accurate summation of our beloved country.
Nowadays there is so much noise being made about the progress India has made and how it is finally taking its rightful place in the comity of nations. What absolute horse shit! Nothing is further from the truth. For the past few days I’ve been trying to list out the things that make me proud to be an Indian. Things that Indians designed, invented, discovered, won or wrote about that changed the world. As many of you might have already expected I could not come up with a single thing. As one columnist on Rediff.com sometime back pointed out, (in a series of badly written but thought-provoking articles), most of the inventions and discoveries that really changed our lives have been made by people mostly from the West. No Indian has come up with anything that has made a fundamental difference to the world in modern times.
No wonder then that the West looks down on India with contempt and polite condescension. And I do not blame them for it because honestly I could not come up with anything worthwhile to dispel the image they carry of India as a poor country with cows on the road. You might be surprised but I’ve been asked these questions so many times that it is no longer funny. The majority in the Western world still thinks that we are just good at increasing our population, spirituality, some music and nothing else.
Ok let me objectively ask you something. What should I be proud of as an Indian? Should I be proud of the fact that a nation of greater than one billion people makes so much fuss about winning a single medal, when one of our neighbors is giving established sporting powerhouses a run for their money? Should I be proud of the fact that as a so-called IT superpower all we do is the back-office drudge work of the MNCs? Should I be proud of the fact that the caste system still decides what you are as a person and who you can marry or not? Should I be proud of the fact that taking dowry is considered so normal that when you do not take dowry people think that something is wrong with you? In the same context should I be proud of the fact that women are still being burnt for dowry? Should I be proud of the fact that we routinely figure in the list of the most corrupt nations in the world? Should I be proud of the fact that inspite of having the third largest pool of scientists in the world only one ‘Indian citizen’ has won a Nobel Prize in the sciences, be it Physics, Chemistry or Biology and that too before independence?
Let us go through each of the above questions in some detail. First sports. India and sports do not go with each other at all. At every Olympics, World Championships it is the same story. Someone manages to just win a single medal and we elevate him/her to the status of a world champion. The concerned politicians make all the appropriate noise about how we should train our sportspeople more and how we will do better at the next Olympics. But after a couple of weeks everything is forgotten and the sad story is repeated again and yet again. Why does this happen with such unerring regularity? It is because India is the only major country that I know that asks its sportspeople to win over the rest of the world without even providing halfway decent facilities and training. Other countries provide everything and then ask their athletes to come up with results but we do exactly the opposite. Smaller and even poorer countries than us do so much better at the Olympics. No wonder we always remain outside the medals tally or at best mange to just sneak in at the end.
IT superpower? Let me put it like this what IT superpower? Honestly, what is it that we do? Our great IT companies just do the mindless, repetitive back office drudge work of the big businesses in the corporate world. And why do these big companies even outsource this work? Not because the Indian software companies are world class and good. Not because they love the Indian software industry. The primary reason is because they do it so cheaply. That’s it. It is just a case of cheap labor. So much fuss is being made of the Indian IT industry that it makes me want to laugh. Name one major and popular product or software that an Indian IT company has come up with in all these years (Flexcube by iFlex might be an example but it is too specialized to be considered popular)? Every single piece of software we use on our computers has been made by a company from the West. Acrobat, Netscape, Windows, Photoshop, and the list is endless. None of these products has been made by an Indian IT company. Yes, there are and were Indian software programmers involved in these products. But that’s it, a few people who are/were working for that company. As far as I know no Indian company has ever come up with a software product that makes a difference to our computing lives. And I don’t think this situation is going to change for sometime. No wonder then that the IT industry is famous not for innovation but for conformity.
The caste system is a bigger tragedy. It was started as a simple means for easy division of labor. But now it has got so entrenched in the Indian psyche that I despair of it ever being rid from the society. Apparently, caste system is a thing of the past in modern India. To a certain extent, I agree, that is true. But if one looks closely the picture is not so rosy. Even now there is hardly any movement between the castes. It is still very difficult to marry outside your caste. You are shunned and ostracized by society if you commit that ‘sin’. Prejudices about some castes run deep with some of the caste names used as derogatory epithets in parts of India. How can one be proud of such a divisive culture? No wonder then that the politicians exploit us along these very caste lines.
Dowry-this is another source of evil in most of our country. It has become so common that now if you do not take dowry people think that something is wrong with you physically or mentally. And this evil is not limited to the illiterate masses. What is so shocking is that the so-called cream of Indian society, the doctors, engineers, civil servants and other such highly educated people engages in this nefarious business, bullying the girl’s family for more money and material goods. I’d like to know one thing-how can a man feel ok about putting himself up for sale, attaching a price tag to himself, like a consumer good that can bought in the market? How can a woman respect such a man who has sold himself so blatantly? And why search elsewhere, I’ve seen this happen in the marriages of my relatives, with the question of dowry being discussed as a matter of pride, so nonchalantly. “My son has got xxx lakhs�?. “The girl’s family has so much gold�?. But is the boy’s family satisfied with what they get at the time of marriage? Unfortunately, in many cases the answer is no. Most women are still abused, tortured, beaten up, and subjected to verbal abuse to get more money year in and out. No wonder then that the girl child is considered a bane in the Indian society and aborted as a fetus.
Corruption-I think after the rising population issue this is the single biggest problem facing India. Like the caste system it has entered our collective consciousness as something which is bad but has to be silently condoned. We just go along with the flow. Not daring to point out the wrong being done, the money being looted, and the damage being done. To take a particular example, till date the Indian government must have spent literally thousands of crores to alleviate poverty. But it is an open question as to how much of that money actually reached the needy. This brings to mind a quote (by Rajiv Gandhi I think) that in India out of every rupee spent by the govt. approx. 60 paise is eaten up by the people down the chain of bureaucracy and officialdom. I, myself, have been party to paying some money to speed up some things, like my school certificates and driving license (although in this case as a third party through a driving school). I’m not proud of this and hopefully I’ll not do it again. But it illustrates the magnitude of the problem. No wonder that even after roughly 60 years of independence approximately 30% of the population is below the poverty line, without proper housing, access to clean drinking water or decent healthcare.
Science-a field which personally concerns me. It is an (almost) unwritten rule that Indians are highly intelligent and have got the best brains in the world. But again if you turn the pages of modern scientific history one cannot find one single life-changing discovery made by an Indian be it in Physics, Chemistry and Biology. If Nobel Prizes can be taken as a benchmark for a country’s scientific excellence then we must surely rank among the lowest of the low. One Nobel Prize by an Indian citizen (Sir C.V. Raman) to date and that too before independence (here I’m not considering Chandrashekaran and Khorana as they were American citizens when they won the Prize). Indian science, at least of what I’ve seen first hand is caught in a tangle of utter conformism, stupid caste politics, lack of funding, and narrow minded approach to research. How is one supposed to work and push the boundaries in the cutting edge areas of science when the professors control their students with the iron grip of blind obedience and forced conformism? When every aspect of your life, be it social or mental is subject to narrow minded restrictions how can anyone be motivated to think out of the box and come up with novel ideas? Except for some labs in premier research institutes like CCMB, NCBS, TIFR and to a certain extent IISc Indian scientific research is pedestrian at best and not even worth mentioning at worst. No wonder then that we still depend on the West for majority of our technological and scientific needs.
Why are we like this then? Why do we always seem to be fourth best in everything? Is it because we lack the killer instinct to win or affect changes and transform our society? I feel that a partial answer to the problem is a unique flaw that most Indians have. An Indian does not like it when he sees that the person next to him is going to be successful in life. He/she does everything to pull that person down. As one professor in my last university used to say, “In India there are 10 people ready to pull your legs down if you go higher than them�?. I’ve seen this for myself, especially in the area of science. I’ve even experienced it myself to a certain extent. Talent is just not recognized in India. We wait until the rest of the world recognizes one of us before we recognize him/her. Until then we do everything we can to suppress him/her, throw every possible hurdle in that person’s path until he/she gives up the hard fight. The knife of conformism is so sharp in our society that creativity and ideas of change are cut off at the very instant of their birth. No wonder then that our scientists languish in pedestrian research. No wonder then that some of the best brains want to leave India as soon as possible for further education or career enhancement.
It is not my intention to simplify or limit to a few the vast number of problems we face. We are still poor and lack the money (to name a few things) to properly train our sportspeople, do cutting edge research or protect monuments of historical importance. But let us not be blind to the fact that vast sums that are being spent for such things are being siphoned off by rampant corruption existing in every facet of Indian society.
It is also not my intention to praise the Western way of life. Except for money, technology, respect for innovation and modern comforts there is nothing good about the West. It is a way of life without a conscience, morally bankrupt, utterly hypocritical, self-centered, self-serving, cruel, materialistic and lacking warmth. But one should not be blind to the fact that we can learn so much from the West. We are in a unique position to take what is good from the West and not repeat the mistakes they made on the road to progress, be it socially, politically or environmentally. Let us not follow them blindly as we seem to be doing, especially the urban youth.
And it is also not my intention to put down India and its culture or over-simplify the vast problems we face. I’m still proud to be an Indian and do not want to be any other. I’m proud of my land; its varied beauty, its vibrant diversity, its ingrained tolerance, its wise heritage, its different cultures, its magnificent music, and its amazing arts. There is no other country like India in the world. Only China can come close in terms of historical and cultural continuity to the Indian civilization. Ancient India (although not recognized properly) has given so much to the world in every field of human endeavor. After all our distant ancestors were building huge public swimming pools, broad streets and multi-storied buildings roughly 3500 years ago (Indus Valley civilization) when the ancestors of the present day Europeans were crawling through ice half-naked and America was not even a distant echo in the valleys of antiquity.
But it is the state of present day India that concerns and saddens me. It is my dream that before I die I will see India as a developed and self-sufficient nation, which has conquered most of its problems and has achieved development with the least possible damage to its people, land and environment, when every Indian can hold his head high and stand shoulder to shoulder with the rest of the world as a real world citizen. Utopia is it? It is my heartfelt hope that it will be anything but that.
(If you have made it this far I further recommend PM Manmohan Singh’s I-Day Speech here. He is not as frank or harsh as me but he talks about some similar stuff. The last part of the speech is particularly inspiring.)
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