22-05-20
I remember a TIME magazine
cover in 1989 wherein INS Vikrant is looming large with print proclaiming
India’s arrival as a military power. Well, here we are 30 years later still
having same TIME magazine (It more defunct then anything else anyone knows) proclaiming
problems in India. Well, they are American and will do what they have to do,
what’s wrong with us? Thirty years and we are still fixated on being a world
power and letting external validation take over our narration.
In these 30 odd years,
India has become a sort of amalgamation of human endeavour that we should take
have taken pride in but would not. Let me list out what they are according to me
1. In the entire human
history has it ever happened that 1.3 billion folks live in a democracy (Yes,
an imperfect one)? OK has even half of this number lived in any sort of
democracy?
2. Indian have excelled in
things related to individualized mass orientation (confusing I know). For
example, Indian written code powers most of the world’s banks, telecom and
other important industries. Indian textiles and apparel cloth a large part of
humanity and thus provide the colour & dignity in the daily lives of the
people across the globe. Remember Most of the software code will never retire
and will keep working to further the society/enterprise where they were put to
use. So, Indians have achieved immortality even in the physical world.
3. India, unlike other
great civilizations in Asia, is cognizant of its historical failures and has
set out to solve them using its institutions & constitution. Maybe Article
15 is a movie for folks who woke up recently, for most of us, it is engraved in
our constitution as something we the people felt should be central to our
endeavour.
We can go on adding our
achievements and at the same time also list our failures, what I am unable to
reconcile is how distorting this and aligning to distortion will help? I have
tried debating this with people and found the answers like 1) compete with
China 2) Be strong as world respect strength 3) Without being a superpower, we
will become slaves to others. None of these sounds coherent to me, yes, they do
have marginal merit which may be dealt with as minority opinion and given due
respect before moving on; how come this has become central to our imagination
and thus distort reality.
Popular folklore says that
Steve Jobs of Apple stayed at Kaichi Dham in Uttarakhand for some time. Maybe
he learnt and practice reality distortion at this place. Maybe I should insist
that he did learn it here, as this makes my enquiry simple. The world’s best
distorter also learnt it in India. But before we celebrate this, we need to
understand the distortion as practised by Steve Jobs ( as a side joke I have
met tons of Indian tech Czars who believe they are better than Steve and only
fate has taken away the credit from them, well let’s say they are also players
in it and leave it) was born out of inside out vision for his company and its product.
Compared to this, our mass practised distortion is induced from outside in, anyone can write a good/bad word about us or maybe
not even write at all, but we start owning or creating it. Let’s examine the
recent media reports about Japanese Government allocating USD 2 Billion for
their corporates wanting to move out of China, next thing we see is Indian
commenters picking it up and repeat ad nauseum with one addition that this
money will help factories to move to India. How and when is not usually
answered in our debates, so I am waiting to corner one of these fellows in post
lockdown (YES folks Mumbai continues in it). Thus, the chattering classes of
India reading between the lines, have deduced that Japanese have allocated 2
billion for relocating Japanese factories to India. Get it? My humble request
to all concerned is to inform the Japanese about their money being allocated
for India.
So how do we end up doing
it? Delusion de grandeur? Or something more?
Maybe answer lies in the
way our political discourse (sorry propaganda) has moved on from the 1970s,
unable to meet the aspirations of people the politicians have fed a deadly
concoction of half-truths and myth about our nonexistent qualities (we are
pacifist, we are assimilators of world, Russia & now the US are our
friends, and Pakistan is a mistake to be corrected, China sees us as
competition and lots more)
Another thing is that
Escapism has been the fare of our lives, using a rich imagination (most of it
inherited) we have perfected what we want to see and feel as compared to what
exists and needs attention. One could live his entire life in a cocoon of
his/her creation and be happy. Here it is important to emphasize that “No one killed Jessica and No one
drove the car on the pavement in Bandra”.
Another possible reason is
the corporatization of media and the advent of TV news. These entities to
recoup the money invested, have shown shiny stories and let go of unattractive
parts where the nuance and result require a longer viewing time, more in-depth
analysis & coverage. So, we have attractive breaking stories (I believe
India has a world record in terms of using the words breaking news on an annual
basis). These media outlets are now getting discredited and being replaced
(hopefully by better version) by smaller media outfits on the Internet.
Reality is stark and
visible for us; we have done a few good things but manage to bungle lots by not
paying any attention to it. For starters, our health care system is in
shambles, and so is our schooling & college system. Eight crore (80
million) migratory workers are a reality, requiring quick solutions now. We
need to pay attention to these instead of dreaming of fighting wars and winning
them.
Am I the only one, no the
establishment also realizes the direction we have taken and cost that has been
borne by us as a consequence? Recently the Chief of defense staff of India
General Bipin Rawat read out the reality in an interview. Addressing the threat
perception and preparations done till now he said that we need a change in our
perception and align to reality. And we need to align what we need to fight
with. This is a welcome change, and my fervent wish would be to see the General
succeed. All we have achieved by distortion is to become 2nd largest arms
importer in the world. While we may differ with details of our PM’s vision
about being Atamnirbhar but the primary tenant is again to align to
reality (Yes currently propaganda is doing complete injustice to the thought)
and execute what we need instead of what we are made to believe.
We need to execute to our
reality and not basis what Our supposed friends (selling Arms, goods and
services) expect us to do.
Some interesting links for the blog topic today
https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/3aktkh/tiny_spoiler_loved_the_little_nod_to_steve_in/
https://indianpunchline.com/now-general-bipin-rawat-speaks-up/
Reality is an individual person, organization or sector is doing great but bureaucracy and resistance to change brings us down although government is trying hard to fight reality and improve country's overall score..
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