61 years back our nation was born (rather reborn). The freedom fighters who had toiled so hard for that day had so many dreams for our beloved nation. They knew they won’t be there 50 years later to see how much has India progressed, but they had faith in the coming generations. This feeling is aptly visible in these beautiful lines of poet Pradeep – ‘Hum layen hain tufan se kashti nikal ke, Is desh ko rakhna mere bachho sambhal ke.’
Alas! How wrong were they? Very few of their dreams have been fulfilled and rest have been shattered, few beyond recognition. Just pick up the news paper of yesterday and today. The headlines consist of the following pieces of news:
1. Violence in J & k, few dead and curfew imposed.
2. High alerts in capital along with other metros and big cities following terrorist threats
3. Inflation soars to 12.44%
4. Another disappointing day for India at the Olympics.
What an irony that most of these news pieces don’t surprise or bring a feeling of unrest in us. In other words, we’ve become habitual to these things. In this post I’m discussing about some menaces that have been giving pains to us for so long and slowly are becoming bigger threats for us. I’m not doing a lengthy discussion on these menaces but sharing with you my thoughts – what these 5 words meant to me a decade back or so and what do they mean now? I’m not talking only about myself only but reflecting thoughts of my few peers and friends too. I surely hope many of the readers would find an echo of my thoughts in theirs.
TERRORISM
Like many others of my age, prime source of entertainment for me in my school days were comics and cartoons. My favorite comic characters ranged from Indian superheroes like Nagraj, Dhruva to foreign superheroes including Phantom and Mandrake. These superheroes fascinated me a lot and often I would dream myself becoming one. Though I would do nothing other than teaching a lesson to school bullies or catch the thieves. Terrorism was an alien word for me.
As I matured a bit and began to get acquainted with this menace, my thoughts began to spread. My blood would boil over upon reading about the killings of the innocent people in Kashmir valley. But again my mind would make superficial plans about inventing new weapons (along with costumes la superheroes) and go and eliminate the terrorism from Kashmir.
Cut to 2008. The complete reality has dawned upon me. Post Jaipur blasts a sense of insecurity has crept in. Where are we safe now? As per my job profile, I’ll be in big cities for a long time, can’t say for how long. Now there is no urge to gather weapons and go to Kashmir to fight. Militants are not confined to J & K alone. They can be anywhere. A bomb can be as near as 50 m to me but I wouldn’t know. The times have changed and so has my dreams. Superheroes don’t make a visit anymore to my dreams, motivating me to fight. I guess post 9/11 they have become as vulnerable as rest of us normal humans.
RESERVATIONS
10-12 years back I had a very little idea about reservations. There was no need to know at that time. I was studying in a private school and so reservation word didn’t have any impact there. I had a fair idea about the reservations by the time I had passed my 10th and opted science- maths as my subjects for senior secondary. Even then I didn’t have any idea how much is it going to affect me.
6 years on, now that I have finished my engineering, I know how much this menace can affect me or thousand more and how it has been devouring country for the past many years. Whether I’m going for a govt. job exam or for PG whether MBA or M.Tech, what I do first of all is the permutations and the combinations of the total no. of seats and the number of seats in my category. Many might argue that nothing is impossible if you work hard and you will surely be selected even if seats are few. I don’t deny that but what I’m talking about is the psychological thing that comes in your mind when you know that another person by putting in lesser efforts will achieve the same thing that you may or mayn’t achieve with much harder work.
After my 12th, Ihad just one shot at IITs and then went for a private Engineering college. One of my friend eventually got into IITs after 2 attempts. I could see the happiness on his face when he broke that news to me. 2 years on he is little bit sad. It’s not about his career but he’s worried about the future of his alma mater. When he had joined his IIT, it ranked in the top 10 technical institutes of the world. “I ear will it be even among 50 four years later.” He said pointing to the cut offs being reduced to as low as 104 inthe SC/ST category and the new rubbish of faculty seats too being reseved.
A guy, who has been studying in a Hindi govt. school at the village, whether he belongs to general category or SC/ST, will be lagging behind an English medium student of the city. The need is to strengthen the primary education system and equal opportunities should be given at the higher stages. Political parties have made reservations their tool and that means reservations will be existing even then when our country will turn 100. I had read about braindrain but never witnessed one. I fear that day might not be too far.
INFLATION/INCREASE IN PRICES
This word was introduced to me in class 10th. It didn’t actually mean anything to me (rather all of my classmates) then. We crammed its definition like many economical terms. This word made a comeback in my academic life almost 8 years later, in my final semester of engineering. Suddenly the meaning of this word has become very important for us. Rising prices was something we knew but didn’t concern much. As far as most of the guys are concerned they would only know how much the price of petrol and diesel has increased in last 4 years. They would draw blank if you ask about any other domestic thing.
Then suddenly inflation began to soar with each passing week and most of us began to pay attention to the literal meaning of this word and its eventual impact. That was natural as we were about to leave the sweet, almost carefree college world behind and enter into a nasty real one. Offer letters by the company were began to be scrutinized properly, items other than petrol were being observed properly, guys going into MBA colleges too were giving a substantial amount of, if not equal, thought to the college being decided. Suddenly the package of 2.7 and 3 p.a. began to appear so inadequate. Things have been going out of control for a while and let’s see what new heights do this word scale before it is brought down.
UNEMPLOYBILITY AND EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM
Just a couple of day’s back one of my classmates visited me who had gone for job hunt in two different cities after our exams had ended. The first words that came out of his mouth were “Did I make a mistake by becoming an engineer?”
When I was a kid relatives and friends of my parents would often ask me, as elders always do, about what I aspire to become? Like most of the kids I would say Engineer or Doctor or an IAS and everyone would become happy. The boy has big dreams and aspirations, they would say. Entering into the world of these professionals was indeed a dream then and who would understand better than me in whose family only a handful of people went for science subject and none could make it to any of these fields I mentioned above. They worked hard, in fact harder than me, but didn’t have that much of opportunities or the resources.
Today IAS remains the only special and privileged field. The policies of govt. have made it easier to have one engineer or doctor in every home. Soon we’ll become the largest no. of engineer churning country in the world. It sounds good, but then comes a question. How many of them would be actually employable?
I could understand the feeling of my classmate when he said those words. Even after passing out of an engineering college, we lack the basic skills that an engineer requires. No thought is given to it when we enter into engineering, nor when we choose our branch neither during our college. The dilemma of my friend is that he belongs to Electronics and communication engineering but he’s not able to get the job because he doesn’t have those basic skills required. In other words, he’s not industry-ready. To obtain these skills he needs to go through different training institutes (often very expensive) who give special courses making you industry oriented. Software jobs are there but he can’t apply even though he has knowledge of two languages because most of these companies prefer students from computer science or IT engineering whom they don’t have to give that much of training. I can understand my friend’s plight. There is a lot of difference between an unemployed graduate and unemployed engineer
Let’s talk about other graduates other than engineering. My maternal grandfather, who is a retired English teacher, once told me an interesting anecdote. He used to take classes for bank P.O. preparation, with the students mostly from commerce background and few from the arts. My grandfather had asked the students to buy a book consisting of unsolved objective type questions. He was surprised next day when he saw that many of the arts students had ticked the correct answers. He asked them the reason and their answer was nothing but a sheer irony of Indian educational system. They had marked those answers so that they could cram the question for the exam rather than solving them
It was not their fault. They had been doing these things for so long. Unlike their science and commerce counterparts, they had never appeared for any competition exam and just didn’t have any idea how to prepare for it? The study for most of them begins 2 months prior to the exams and ends with the last day of the exams. They hardly have any approach towards the preparation of different high level competitive exams. It’s not surprising that they miss out completely when they face the exams with their science and commerce counterparts. Sometimes back I had read in a survey that more than 80% seats of the top 10 colleges of management in India are captured by the students from the science back ground, majority of them being engineers. This fact tells the story in itself.
DEMOCRACY
Many of you must be surprised that I have included this word in my list of menaces, but your surprise will be subsided when you will read the lines given below.
4-5 years back I was watching ‘Janadesh’, a live program giving the poll results of the assembly elections in Andhra Pradesh. Telugudesham had lost to congress and experts were discussing what led to Naidu’s defeat though under his govt. Hyderabad had become one of the top cities of India. Then one of the congress leaders (I think Digvijay Singh), who had lost elections in the MP just a few months back, quipped “ In India we have so much disparities in terms of religion, culture, region that though we might say that we have unity in integrity, but when it comes to elections, things changes. A poor farmer in a distant village wouldn’t pay any heed to how much has the state has developed technologically. He would think about his daughter’s marriage, about the road he takes to sell his vegetables, about his land. If he’s not satisfied with it, he will vote against you without caring about the other achievements of the govt.
That is where our democratic system fails. Most of the successful democracies in the world function on the basis of the clear mandates. It is contrasting in India where often now a days mandate is broken, driven by the factors like caste, region, religion, local issues, language etc. For the past one decade we are being governed by a coalition govt. We all know how the parties in the coalition have been making the govt. dance like a puppet on their own tunes for one issue or the another. Many of these parties are local ones who have base in certain parts only, but are able to show their clout because the mandate given by us had been broken. What these parties do is nothing short then a blackmail and we have provided them with the weapon, and what an irony, we are the eventual and the only victims.
Elections are due next year. Again a game would be played with the people’s emotions and most of us will give in. Again votes will be given on the basis of local issues and the final result would be same, few worthless people becoming kingmaker and we will do nothing other than rue.
Why won’t then someone think of democracy as one of the menaces, especially when its roots lie within us, unlike other menaces.
I don't like things being ended on a pessimistic note. As i was writing this post, these dialogues from the movie 'The Dark Knight' were continuously circlying my mind - "The night is darkest just before the dawn." I dearly hope that it is indeed the darkest hour for us and the dawn is approaching.
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4 comments:
problems problems every where , not a corner to be spared. isn't it ?
The problems encountered by india are very complex in nature and some are made complex for political reasons.
First problems and the biggest problem is the kashmir problem.
Do you believe that the problem is of terrorism? well what i believe that in the root of every terrorism there is a reason which has given a wrong path.
The problem of Kashmir is so complex that neither army , nor politicians could solve it , the only persons who can solve it are the people.
How many of us know actually what is the problem of kashmir. i mean the exact political background. there are very few who know the exact situation and what we react to are the news which we see on the newspaper which is only the effect not cause. and well do you think that the newspapers are democratic , what i believe is that the indian media is highly biased and are forced to produce the rosy image. How often do you come to know whats happenning in the northeast, how often do you read about the happening in kashmir or even naxalitis, its very rare, and when we do its always the same cooked up .
And one more thing ,The speratist tendincies that have been growing in certain regions of our country like northeast, naxalites etc. But do you realise what we have been doing to them , how often do you read the biharis being beaten ruthlessly in maharashtra, The largest ethenic group which faces sexual abuse in delhi is the north easten girls.
What I belive india has become is, it is not broken into two political views , one the communal, the one led by BJP, shiv sena , sangh and VHP which think that it is the land of only hindu's which i believe is not true. They rule by creating a air of fear in the minorities and it is true , how much you deny it , or you try to hide it, muslims in india have been made to suffer a lot . Do you know women;s were raped by using trishuls with chants of jai shree ram . they ar beginning to do the same in terms of states now.
The other groups are the so called secularist which try to get the sympathy of these groups and try to rule but in essence are the same . and try to do unjustice to the hindu's .
I am sorry if the above comments hurt anybody's sentiments. the above thoughts are totally personal and have nothing to do with the blogger
dawn does not come by itself we need to bring it.nice article .
When we talk about the problems, its not jst these menaces that are bothering US-INDIANS, d list is on and on, actually not only Indians, bt everywhere in the world, some or all problems are similar, people are illiterate even after havin bulk of degrees with d best scores on them. But rather than talking about the world its about INDIA, and we cannot forget n we should not. i recently met a group of people who have nothing much in common except that they belong to same state, and got to know their mindset, and i ws stunned to see that they HATE North Indians just because they speak Hindi, and these people dont want Hindi as a National Language, i mean why and wat is d reason behind it, does it make any difference????And these people are highly qualified and well placed. Is this a problem, yes it is, I mean when people can make themselves divided just on the base of language can they stand together for one cause -NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT, UNITY, EDUCATION, TECHNOLOGY POWER, AND MANY MORE. but wat matters at the end of the day is ARE we aware wat we want, wat belongs to us and TO WHAT WE BELONG. And that will be wat we will give to our children!!!!
Yes i totally agree with Nisha, the problem with us is our mindset , the pseudo- regionalism in us. We tend to form groups , like marwari's bihari's , northearterns etc, and then the interest of these groups grow bigger than the interest of the nation and then these interests collide with each other. we need to be more and more liberal in our outlook .
Like what difference does it makes to you if hindi is made the national language or even if it is not. Or what the heck the biharis are going to other states to get jobs, its their right to go and settle in any part of India.
Then the regional parties tend to utilize these feelings of hatred to their good. A few examples are RJD, shiv sena, JMM, etc . just take the example of jharkhand . that bloody shibu soren is openly selling himself.
One may say that education makes the outlook liberal but i am shocked to see that it doesn't . like some hate the reserved , not reservation . this leads to a sense of hatred in the general category people against the reserved class.Also what nisha has said. Then there is a everlasting problem of south and north . The south indians , i believe are more intelligent technically, but does it permits them to hate the north indians ,No. And in the retaliation they receive the same treatment from the north indians. Also the problem of northeast , i believe that there is some thing happening against the northeastern people from the army and this fact is Hid from us.
And this suffered people are used by the external forces against indians .
So lets pledge together that we will not let these feeling of hatred overpower us and we all will remain liberal in our outlook
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