Whose country is it anyways??

I wrote this article way back in 2004. However I feel this article is still worth the debate. Here it goes...

India has always been a place of great Tamasha. Yes, I am talking about the Indian elections. It has been great fun watching the politicians burning midnight oil and try to please the Indian `Voter' to secure himself his vote. To what extent they would go is unimaginable. Recently, I received a SMS from a hardcore anti-congress follower showing great sympathy towards the No.2 and also further reminding me that One Billion Indians could not find an Indian to be the Prime Minister of the country (when congress initially announced Sonia Gandhi to be our next PM). I am no Congress supporter nor am I a BJP-man (as people would rather prefer being called). To tell the truth, being mostly surrounded by hardcore BJP enthusiasts, its always a great temptation to resist from opposing it. This is a temptation which I cannot simply resist. The simple idea is that if you agree or concur with a person's opinion, the argument is closed and the subject is dead and buried. But to prove your point, you always need to substantiate them with facts and figures. God!! this is really a very tough task. Now where do I go for facts and figures myself. Well, there is always this newschannel NDTV 24X7 and Mr.Rajdeep Sardesai for me. So, may be that would always help me. Talking about NDTV 24X7 vis-à-vis The Great Indian Tamasha, my mind always went about as to how much money would they have earned in this venture of election coverage. All that Opinion Polls and the Exit Polls which they projected fetched them good TRP ratings but the actual result was what which hit the nation. The numbers were terrifying. BJP+ got 188 (BJP alone got 138), Congress+ got 226 (Congress alone could manage only 145) and rest went to the Communists and other regional parties. It was really disturbing to know that to learn that the `so-called' National level parties could manage only 283 of the 546 seats in the Lok Sabha. Day in and day out political analysts have been lamenting over the importance of a stable government and further warned that a hung parliament could only worsen the situation and weaken India's position in the global scenario.

It is significant to notice that India has been projecting herself as a Super-power by the year 2020. But with the way things have been going ,2020 seems to be a very very long time ahead. Just imagine people like Laloo Prasad Yadav, now a railway minister and Sharad Pawar who broke away from the congress party stating Sonia's foreign origin as a issue lending support to congress to form the government at the centre only shows that people like these are there only to satisfy their personal needs rather than cater to the need of the people. All these people are certainly opportunists and certainly don't seem to be inclined to contribute towards stability. This is probably not for the first time one is hearing about the concept of regional interests hampering national interest. But with regional parties like DMK, PMK, MDMK, RJD etc. coming to the fore at a National level, it certainly isn't a good sign of development. India has always been considered as one of World's largest democracy and is also respected worldwide. India has one of the largest written constitution in the world and is also the second largest populous country in the entire globe. Over the past few years India has been considered as a hub for Information Technology Developments and a large number of such jobs are being outsourced from the US to India.

Also a significant number of Software Professionals employed in the US are Indians. What then is the problem? one may ask. Yes,the problem is when India has been so phenomenal at a micro-level, then why not in the Macro-level? If Indians can be so good then why not India? Why is India still considered as a developing nation. A few serious questions need to be asked. Why is India still not a destination for foreign students? Why is India still not able to come up with a corporation as big as Microsoft or a Exxon Mobil? Why are cars still a luxury in India? Why are Indian people still voting for a person whom they know is not performing? The basic objective of the whole argument is to bring out the problems along with the solution that is plaguing the Indian people. Everyone in India, interestingly, knows what the problem is and more interestingly what is the solution for it. Yet,no one is able to do anything about it. This is something political. Our rulers know that PSU's are loss making units and are proving to be white elephants on them and they know that the solution to it is to hand them over to private hands for better management and control. Yet they will not do that because by doing so, people would lose their jobs and the government doing so would lose their valuable votes. Our rulers know that building an economy is more important than building a temple. Yet they lament over the issue of building the temple because they have to play the religion card to secure votes for themselves. They strongly feel that the sentiments of the people is much more important than anything in the world. This strongly illustrates the concept of political willingness. It is said that it is easier to wake up a man who is sleeping rather than a man who is pretending to be asleep.

Thus to conclude I would like to say that let us realize that we have to make the best use of the available resources. We cannot change things overnight. We have to make India a strong democracy. To make a better India we have to have a better stronger government. A Government which should be able to make economic reforms without any fear and should be solely aiming at the growth of the nation rather than satisfying to the regional needs of the alliance partners. People should discourage regional parties at national level and must vote for a stable government at the centre.

After all whose country is it anyway??