Thought Of The Day

It's been long since I have written on Indian polity, not because of there being any dearth of issues but because I believe that in the current set up the more things change the more they remain the same. What we are seeing today is a circus, a self serving act, self-deluding mockery that is being played with the tax payers money and common citizen's life. And I include opposition (of all shades and hues) in this charade. The problem are fundamental and yet fixable, yet no one is willing to fix them and it's not that they require some gigantic effort or big fiscal spend, they just require some imaginative thinking and resolve. But then creative imagination is not our strong point. Is it? I won't talk on it today, maybe some other day. Maybe not even on the other day.

Below the big headlines on any newspaper or news portal filled with some supposedly earth shattering news or gossip, below there lies a slow and steady stream of ruthless banality, of some miserable small death somewhere in the expanse of this big country. Accidents, suicide, human exploitation, mysterious diseases and criminal acts like murder/rape ect. These little read snippets of some gruesome incident often not stressed over in its singularity, yet when you look at how they are numbing the society, how they are killing people (and especially young people) you just shudder. 3000 people die on Mumbai trains yearly, a rape every 22 minutes. Over 150K killed mostly young people in road accidents in an year. Similar numbers for suicide. Every year the same story repeats for dengue, encephalitis ect. There are countless cruel stats like these. I can go on for ever. Yet, whats the point. Such miserable urban planning, no social nets for people who are clutching on to practically no hope. No rule of law to deter crime. No justice for the wronged. No adequate physical and social infrastructure. No proper health care for many who just give up. And on the top of it as if this was not enough, we ourselves do not seem to have commonsense to make the correct decision.

I think it is too much to ask. We are hoping for too much. For people of my age, (early thirties) who have seen both the old Bharat and the new India, we have already lived half of our lives where materially things may have gone comfortable (for some) yet the overall social indicators are still depressing. And I don't think things are going to get much better soon. We are or soon will be entering a demographic bulge where a whole generation will move from teens to employable age group and consumers The country and its infrastructure (both social and physical) is hopelessly short to handle this. Be it roads, be it housing, be it health care, be it courts or police. These mindless and numbing stats will just grow bigger and be still lost somewhere in this media circus or some chest-thumping rhetoric. They just didn't deserve that much respect, either living or either dying.

I just hope our children see a much better country. Something to think about!