MyViews

Ten things that India needs to do

2009-06-29T11:47:00.001-07:00

I thought about the ten things which we must do to improve our chances to be a developed country.

1. Increase Tolerance towards religion

I respect the fact that India is secular and that we don’t support any particular religion and that all religions have equal rights in the society. Every religion’s sentiment is respected and every community has a right to appeal if their sentiments are hurt. But secularism instead of becoming strength to our country is becoming the biggest weakness and hurdle in the progress of India. Government can’t make practical decisions because it is scared that it would hurt some religious community. We need to eradicate extremist from every religious community and increase religious tolerance among the people. Every person has to rationally think about his religion and give more importance to the country as a whole rather then being so picky about mundane and intricate details of their religion. These religions were written in a different era when people just lived among their own community. Today is the time for living in a global environment, and I am sure every religion must have predicted the future and would have had more practical interpretations to it. For India to progress, we will have to stop fighting on the name of religion and influence our decisions based on religions. For this to happen, I feel someone from each religion in India have to stand up and take responsibility to teach their people the truth and the right interpretation of their respective religion and make them realize the importance to be more tolerant and contribute to the progress of the country.

2. Improve governance.

This is one of the serious areas that needs immediate attention and requires massive changes as it overarches all the other problems. It is only with better governance, delivery systems and effective implementation that India will be able to educate its citizens, build infrastructure, increase agricultural productivity and distribute fruits of economic growth.

There has to be a system of accountability of politicians to the voters worked out. In mid June, one of the news items that raised hopes of something like this happening is when voters recalled three of their representatives in a city corporation in Madhya Pradesh, as they were unsatisfied with their performance. Only then will politicians know that their future is dependent on the promises they deliver. Citizens must organize to demand better services and not let political posts be used to access jobs or contracts. Politics is not seen as a means to improve services but to cater to caste and communal needs

Presently, the role of the state is blurred as a regulator and a service provider. It is like the umpire who is also the player and so delivery gets affected. Reform is the answer and it could come in the shape of Public-private partnerships. Allowing the private sector in areas such as health, primary education, infrastructure, water supply and transport would solve several problems. Decentralizing public services empowering citizens could be a way out with the government as regulator.

Some observers feel that India’s governance problems have their root in democracy, but it is actually only a well-functioning democracy that would give their citizens more voice in evaluating the quality of services they receive, make governments and service providers accountable and citizens to pay directly for services rendered. Economic growth in fact increased expectations of better health care, education and better governance

3) Increase the literacy level

According to a statistics half the 200 million primary school age children are unable to read or write. Eleven out of 100 children don’t enter school, another 35 drop out before completing 4-5 years of schooling, and another 30 drop out before reaching class eight. Less than half of those remaining finish their senior school. We need to improve this dramatically. Many schools have only one teacher and one classroom and too many children. Female children are few and literacy rates are as low as 61 per cent

We can never achieve the status of a developed country if one third of the population will remain uneducated. I feel illiteracy is the root cause for the ignorance among major chunk of Indian population. It is this ignorance which is leading to a population explosion, exploitation by the politicians which further leads to the wrong person being elected, and lastly the increasing intolerance towards religion, caste and other parameters which is dividing this county into tiny pieces.

As I have assumed that this government is not going to do anything for the next five years at least, I feel the only way of improving the literacy rate is if large industrialist are encouraged to open schools in villages. How can we do that? Well I feel if government makes a law that any company or an individual who has a net turnover of more than 100 million needs to adopt a village and take responsibility for opening schools and educating the children. The company will get Tax Exemption for whatever it invests for this and also free land to open schools. In addition to this we would need many NGO’s and volunteers to take responsibility in providing basic education to the children.

4) Eradicating Caste or community based reservations in Jobs and Education.

The major reason why we are lagging behind in the quality of education and quality of work productivity is because of the fact that 50% of the people who are studying in premium universities or working in government offices are ones who don’t deserve or qualify to be there. The reason why we are losing so much good talent to other countries like America and UK is because the deserving students have lack of opportunities and are frustrated with reservation policies in India. He doesn’t want to compete for 50% seats while rest 50% seats are given in charity to undeserving students just because they are so called underprivileged or under deprived students. I can narrate you my personal experience, I had got 98.6 percentile in XAT, one of the premium MBA entrance examinations and one of my colleague who was a SC/ST had got 92 percentile and was as well to do as me. But he got a call and eventually admission in the MBA institute. How fair is the above scenario? Millions of deserving students face this frustration and fierce competition because of lack of seats in the colleges. And in addition to caste based reservations, there is state and community based reservations too. Like there are quotas for gujju’s, Sindhi’s and in south there is around 70% reservation for localities.

We call ourselves a free country and we have created so many “STOP” signs in front of each step we take for progress. I feel ashamed at the current education system and can only expect the worst in future for the students considering congress party’s hunger for caste based votes.

According to me all the reservations based on caste and community should be declared illegal. But I do recommend having 20% reservations for economically backward students along with subsidized fees for them. A poor deserves some special rights irrespective of whether he is SC/ST or Upper caste. Also reservations for defense quota makes sense as people protecting our country needs to get special privileges.

This will remove frustration among students and will give every student a fair chance to compete and also will improve the quality of students in the colleges. Also during admission, any institute should not be legally allowed to ask any students their caste or gender. It’s high time that “Equal Opportunity “is promoted in this country.

5. Improve quality of education.

There is an immediate need to upgrade quality of education both in school and colleges. The content in the syllabus is very old fashioned and needs a complete review by the scholars of education system rather than the illiterate politicians. We should try to minimize the vast differences in the syllabus of different state boards and central boards. I feel the current crises in Maharashtra which as arisen due to conflicting examinations patterns and syllabus between the state board and CBSE/ICICI board has led to severe repercussions for children. In the end it’s the students who always suffer, and adding 90% reservations is no solution to the problem. We should try to centralize the education system as much as possible and every state can add their local language as an optional subject till the 9^th grade but should not be used for evaluation in the 10^th grade. This will allow every student to compete with each other across the country and would make the admission system for further education much simpler and fairer.

A lot many premium institutes for Higher education especially at the master level should be opened in India. We need to create world class education institutes which are ranked in top 50 in the world. We produce such intelligent cream of students, but they have to go abroad to get their education. And very few of them return back to India to give back to the society. If we have to preserve the best for our country, we have to provide them the same platform in India itself.

6. Improve Infrastructure

India has a long journey to make in this direction. Clogged airports, poor roads, power cuts, delays in construction of ports and other infrastructure, clearing exports through customs are all problem areas. Indian companies, the report points out, lose 30 days in obtaining an electricity connection, 15 days in clearing exports through customs and lose seven per cent of the value of their sales due to power outages. India’s growth will demand energy, transport, logistics and communication.

The Planning Commission estimates that India needs almost to double its ports, roads, power, airports and telecom in the next five years to sustain growth and that will require an additional

$500 billion over the next five years. The report said that private investment was hesitant to enter the infrastructure area as there are frequent changes in regulatory policy in areas like telecom, roads and power which breeds uncertainty.

According to a statistics, India in the last few years has built more than 3,600 miles of highways for the Golden Quadrilateral Highway project, whereas in the previous 50 years it had built only 300 miles. Another example was the Delhi Metro was completed earlier than envisaged. Then, there was the privatization of the telecom sector and its rapid growth and penetration that was enough to demonstrate that India could build infrastructure. We have what we need to build a world class infrastructure but if government controls the bulk of the responsibility, we are looking at another 50 years before we can make any progress towards this milestone. Privatization of infrastructure projects is very essential for India to build the infrastructure to support its growth

7. Strict Law and order

A complete rebuild of law and order is the need of the hour. People destroying public property should be heavily penalized, there should be permits to contest protests on roads, any person encouraging public anger or creating situations of riots should be dealt severely. Terrorist should be subjected to capital punishment and should have a fast trials. The list can go on for ever but what we need is a law which can combat the current problems in our society with more severity and with more honesty

8. Combat terrorism:

There could be a lot talked on this topic but I would just keep it precise. I feel the first step we need to take to fight terrorism is identifying the terror camps within India and catch hold of anti elements within our country. All those communities or set of people who are supporting or encouraging any kind of terror activities should be severely penalized. I strongly feel we need to create fear among the people by giving strict punishments to such inhumane creatures.

9. Control Population: I think I would just keep it that way.

10. Live with peace and harmony and remove the feeling of inter caste and inter-state hostility among fellow Indians. Encourage inter caste marriages; create an open society where people don’t have to think twice before falling in love with each other. If we truly believed in the pledge we used to take every day in school, then we ought to pay respect to it and live with each other without having any differences and prejudices. To me this will play a key role in bolstering the growth of India and would immensely accelerate the process.

India has an arduous way before it can establish itself as a developed country. We have in us what it takes to be the super power, but we need to address the above issues. To begin with, Indian political parties will have to put India first before their narrow personal and political interests if any of the ten areas have to be restructured to face tomorrow. Anyone in India knows that this is a tall order. India needs a new political order if it has to take the country to new heights that can climb in the world.

“Has Secularism helped India evolve as a stronger country or has it made it hollow and highly vulnerable from inside?”

2009-02-27T12:45:00.000-08:00

India is the largest democratic country in the world and is one of the most liberal countries in the sense it bestows its people with a lot of freedom to express itself in all forms of communication. India is a land which espouses seven major religions namely Hinduism, Islamic, Sikhism, Buddhism, Jainism, Zoroastianism and Christianity. While Hinduism is exemplified as a religion which enjoys majority, other religions claim to be a minority who needs special privileges and rights in order to co-exist peacefully in a secular country.

This personifies the irony of secularism. Firstly we call our self secular which primarily means all religions are of equal status and must enjoy equal rights and authority on the country’s resources, on the other hand these same people require special civil liberties on the basis that they are neglected and unnoticed in this country. And in the due process every religious entity in this country needs their own space, own ideology, own ways of education, their share of religious sentiments in very constitutional decision and so and so forth. In spite of our constitution paying due regards to everyone’s needs and aspirations and providing them with as much as possible, these people live with an attitude of grievances and dissatisfaction as if they are tortured in this country and they are deprived of many rights and privileges.

Now the question which comes in my mind is “Is Hinduism the religion of India?” If the answer is no then why is there such differentiation of majority and minority? Let us compare a similar situation in another country which also claims to be secular, which is ‘USA’. What is the religion of USA? Some people say it’s Christianity but if USA claims to be secular as well then they don’t have a specific religion either. I know people will argue it is not a good idea to compare India with USA in terms of secularism because we are miles above USA and the WEST, as far as SECULARISM is concerned. But I just want to highlight a few basic differences as to how secularism is interpreted in both countries .USA lets every citizen practice any religion freely, raise to any level in corporation, own any amount of wealth etc. irrespective of religion, the laws will protect one irrespective of religion. They don’t group people based on religion as majority or minority instead they have characterized people based on citizens and immigrants. People from different religious background don’t barge on road and destroy public properties or engage in communal riots just because they are not heard or their religious sentiments are hurt with some government decisions. USA’s government doesn’t pay heed to such gibberish perspectives and make decisions which benefits majority of its citizens.

Now let’s switch back to India. What is that we do wrong? Why is secularism a weakness instead of strength in our country? We all know our country could have progressed at a much higher rate had people of this country had set aside their religious and personal sentiments and would have stood together for the progress of this country. Why are the same people who object to every small thing which hurts their religion in India, after going to USA accept everything without a word and co-exist peacefully irrespective of what the rule is? Why is there so much hypocrisy? Do we have too much freedom given to everyone or rather is the freedom of expression exploited to serve individuals rather the country?

After 9/11 attack in USA, FBI and other investigating agencies randomly suspected and tortured Muslims and made their life impossible to stay in the country. They went on a war with Afghanistan and killed so many innocent people in the hunt of OSAMA BIN LADEN. We have suffered millions of attacks till now, millions of innocent people have died in our country but we are still rational and respect the fact that the entire community of a religion cannot take the burden of the acts of few people. And everyone still live with pride and civil rights in our country. We didn’t even go on a war or bombard their terror camps yet. But still we are criticized in the world and we still have people within our country who don’t respect this gesture and engage in more and more communal and aggressive reactions.

We have become a fragile and an intolerant country that gets so offended by small incidents or dialogues in a fictional bollywood movie. How can we move together and progress like this? And this religious dispute has entered the country like a parasite and is leading to another major threat called regionalism. People of a specific regions or caste or languages are becoming intolerant to others. People are having internal conflicts in every single matter. No one wants to live in a community which is enriched with people of various cultures, religions or language. So we all should ask this simple question “What is INDIA and who are the people who make INDIA? Do we want to be called as Indians or as Hindu’s, Muslims, Delhiites, Maharashtrians and so forth? If we prefer the latter then we should split today and divide the country into various pieces; maybe individually we will progress much faster. But if we prefer the former then we should stop serving and fighting for our individual benefits and hating each other on the name of religion. Religion was formed not to divide people but to create uniformity among different set of people so that they get the message of love and peace in their own way. No religion is different or special from others. Let us comply with the definition of secularism which is: every individual citizen of the country has its first loyalty towards his country rather than his religion, region or language. Let us remember a simple pledge which we used to take when we were in school i.e. “India is my country and all Indians are my brothers and sisters….” Our country is more powerful if we stick together and help it grow much stronger, tolerant and accepting.