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Opinion
Dreams on Independence Day
by Ramesh Menon
 August
15, 2006. There is a lilt of freedom in the air. But freedom means
different things to different people. Fifty-nine years is a very long
time. Long enough for the people of a nation to have the courage to
dream. But, how many of us can?
After 59 years of freedom, we are still dreaming of clean drinking
water, uninterrupted power supply and justice from the courts. We keep
looking for leadership from our elected representatives, good governance
and probity in public life.
We keep dreaming of a good life, which need not be wrapped in luxury,
but one where one gets reasonably priced vegetables, pulses and others
things that would go into a simple square meal.
We dream of living in peace. We still dream of gender equality and feel
jolted that in the last two weeks dozens of female fetuses have been
discovered in numerous wells in Punjab, one of India’s most prosperous
states.
So many parliament and assembly elections have passed us by and we still
are looking for clean politicians who want to take the country forward.
That elected representatives even take money to ask questions in
parliament leaves very little to be said. And we think we are a booming
democracy.
But how can democracy succeed when half of India is illiterate and
cannot figure out that it is not caste in an election that is most
important but governance.
We try to romanticize everything to escape the hurt and the reality. We
talk of how we are a great culture and how we are so diverse and still
together. We search for a sense of self-esteem. That is why we are so
obsessed with cricket. When we do well, we feel that we have beaten the
world. That is why we are so obsessed with joy seeing all the BPO’s
mushrooming in every city and tell ourselves that we are the fulcrum
around which world business revolves.
We wonder when there would be a sense of pride in every soul in India
about India and themselves. Self-esteem does not come easy.
Why do most of us not feel free in independent India?
Many of us have simple dreams. So simple, that it seems so achievable.
Like seeing a policeman fine someone who has jumped a traffic light.
Being punished for stealing power. Being taken to task for evading
taxes. Like not being cheated by the shopkeeper as he is afraid of the
law. You want to see happy faces outside courts and not such huge crowds
as cases linger on for decades. Justice delayed is justice denied. You
do not want under trials to languish in jail for years waiting for their
case to be heard. They also have human rights.
Why should we pay a bribe for a passport or for getting your house
registered? Why were workers caned when they asked for a rise in salary
when legislators were changing laws to get huge perks?
Freedom should have given us a sense of pride and belonging. And
security. It could have got India’s huge upper class and middle class to
help out with taxes to help the country touch the stars and bring in
excellence in every field. But being given to those who offered to pay
back a hefty bribe frittered billions of rupees allotted to members of
parliament to invest in the development of their constituencies away.
The media is going to town everyday on how the sensex is skyrocketing,
of how India is the country for the world to watch. But are we missing
the wood for the trees? We are boasting of how Information Technology
has made the world sit up and take notice of India, but why are we not
bothered about half the country being illiterate? Poverty is so stark
that parents in states like Andhra Pradesh and Orissa sell their
children. Thousands of farmers have committed suicide as their debts are
piling. Youngsters sell their kidneys in Tamilnadu and highly educated
graduates who are unemployed commit suicide in Kerala.
Do not miss the huge advertisements by state governments on how they are
pro poor. But look at the cars they buy for their ministers. And the
expenditure on renovating their bungalows.
The population is exploding, but no political leader from any party is
seeing it as a problem. There is so much of myopia around that blindness
does not seem like a disease. Political parties do not even come
together on a serious issue like this.
There are schools without benches or roofs. Our MP’s now are given
laptops, but many do not know how to log on and have never used it.
There are schools where teachers come in only on the first of the month
to collect their salary.
There are hospitals without life saving medicines and even bare medical
personnel. But our leaders are talking of how building a temple in
Ayodhya is the most important thing to do. We thought that schools were
the modern temples. But we were wrong. We do not even get upset when we
see that so many years after Babri Masjid was felled, political leaders
still are milking the incident to gain political mileage. But they could
have also got political mileage by building schools and hospitals.
Maybe, their dreams are different.
Why are our politicians who are supposed to be path bearers not talking
in dismay about the skewed sex ratio? A film that deals with this does
not get a tax exemption, but a film that deals with cheap tricks on how
to cheat gets one!
Why are most of the rape cases never vocalized? And if they are, why is
the conviction rate so low? When can women feel free to walk down
anywhere without being attacked or teased? And we keep saying that we
have a great culture. A girl just has to travel in an overcrowded bus in
the capital to know how our culture rots.
Most of us have simple dreams. We do not want India to be one of the
most illiterate and most corrupt nations of the world. I do not want to
be told that I belong to a country where every minute someone dies of
tuberculosis. I want to have the confidence of holding my head high
while walking on the street. I want the law to work. I want women to be
respected. I want the educated Indian go and sparkle in our cities and
not stand in queues to get a visa to escape to the west.
Freedom has no meaning if it cannot improve our lives. It must add value
to our lives and not let us slip into a degenerative state.
Look at our power situation. Every city has a power cut. And, villages
go without power for most part of the day. We waste power everyday. Most
towns in India shamelessly have fixed hours where darkness descends
daily.
No one protests.
We are slowly becoming a nation of impotent people.
Why cannot I go and take a walk on the banks of the Ganga or Yamuna
without feeling suffocated? Why have erstwhile sparkling rivers like
these turned into gutters of poison? Why do rich industrialists have the
option of emptying their waste into rivers?
I dream of government offices that work. I dream of being punished for
simple things like wasting water or power. Soon, we will have none to
waste. I want to be punished for littering, polluting the atmosphere and
not paying taxes. I dream of a nation with a workforce that takes pride
in a healthy work culture and excellence in producing quality goods.
You need to be qualified to get a job. Our children are put through long
laborious interviews to qualify for admission into nursery school. But,
my ministers are never asked if they are qualified to run the
government. They can even have criminal records. They can even win
elections while they are behind bars.
I want my Defence Minister to know the value of a jawan. I want my
Education Minister to know the power of literacy. I do not want him to
change my son’s history books to suit his party’s line.
I want my Home Minister to be strong enough to allow the law to proceed
against a politician who has been found with millions of rupees stashed
away in his bedroom. I want a Law Minister who will not allow his judges
be trampled by political pressure.
We misinterpreted freedom. We thought it was okay when a politician
spent millions of rupees shopping for sarees, jewellery and slippers. We
voted politicians into power who have criminal cases against them. We
used our freedom to permit them to destroy our present and future.
We did not use freedom to improve our lives and to make India one of the
greatest countries of the world.
We think we are free. We gave our freedom away. But if we want, we can
still get it back.
August 15,
2006
Ramesh Menon is a senior New
Delhi based journalist and independent filmmaker.
Image under license with
Gettyimages.com
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Opinion
The Week of August 13, 2006
Can Corrupt Politicians Preserve Freedom? by
Rajinder Puri
Dreams on Independence Day by Ramesh Menon
India's Vision of Peace with Pakistan is a
Mirage by Dr. Subhash Kapila
Sri Lanka : Back to the Future by Col. Rahul
K. Bhonsle
India Divided by J. Ajithkumar
Political Promotion of Global Islamic Terrorism
by V. Sundaram
Friendship and Culture for World Unity by
TA Ramesh
Communicating with Kids by Garima Gupta
How Long does it take to Rebuild Trust? by
Gary Direnfeld
Geo Hazards: Are we Prepared? by VK Joshi
Lore of the Bean by Dr. V. Sankaran Nair
Cricket Crises by Dr. Prasenjit Maiti
My Multicultural Neighbors by Dhiraj Raniga
A Veritable Cornucopia by Pradip
Bhattacharya
The Story's the Thing by Pradip
Bhattacharya
Bheel Mahabharata: The Rape of Draupadi by
Satya Chaitanya
Oneness in Hinduism by Dr. Madan Lal Goel
What is an Avatar? by C.R. Gopalakrishna
Asomiya: Handpicked Fictions a
Review by Jennifer M. Bayer
India: The Narrow Minded by Kusum Choppra
The Real Bihar by Naghma Masroor
Cleopatra A Story by Dibyendu Ghosal
Introduction to HTTP Cookies by Ruchi Gupta
London: The Most Expensive City in Europe by
Rajesh Talwar
Freedom at Dawn by Prakash Pathre
Heritage Cuisine - Misal by Vikram Karve
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