( old Chinese adage )
The Indian diaspora living in U.S.A. and other countries outside India are often keen to know what is going on in India. So let me tell them.
The next 15-20 years or so in India are going to be very turbulent and chaotic, a very painful and agonizing period in our history. A storm is approaching India which will sweep away the filth of centuries of feudal, backward and barbaric features, customs, practices and ways of thinking in Indian society and glaring injustices and deprivations, and result in creation of a country whose citizens enjoy decent lives and a high standard of living, but in the process result in massive and terrible destruction, for there is no construction without destruction.
Why do I say this ?
I say this because India is passing through a transitional period in its history, transition from feudal agricultural society to modern industrial society. At present we are neither totally backward and feudal, nor totally modern, but stuck somewhere in between.
A transition is a very painful and prolonged period in history. If we study the history of Europe from the 16th to the 19th centuries when Europe was passing through its transition from feudal to modern society, we find that this period was full of turmoil, turbulence, wars, revolutions, chaos, social churning, intellectual ferment ( ideas of Voltaire, Rousseau, the Encyclopedists, Hobbes, Locke, Thomas Paine, etc ).
It was only after going through this fire that modern society emerged in Europe.
India is presently going through this fire. We are going through a very painful period in our history, which may last another 15-20 years or even more from today.
For what is a historical transition ? It is a period when the old feudal society is being totally uprooted and torn apart, when old values are crumbling, but new, modern values are yet to be firmly put in place. Can this be done very quickly and smoothly ? It cannot. It requires not only physical changes ( that is relatively easy ) but changes in the mindset of our 1250 million people, the vast majority of whom are presently still steeped in casteism, communalism and superstitions, and substituting their backward feudal ideas with modern, scientific ones. That is a very difficult and painful process. People are usually conservative in their thinking, and do not like to change their views and prejudices.
For instance, most non dalit Indians still regard dalits as inferior, and would never willingly give their daughter in marriage to a dalit ( in fact in some parts of India if a non dalit girl wants to marry a dalit boy both are killed, as an ' honour ' killing ).
95% or more Indians believe in astrology, which is pure superstition and humbug. India is still a 'baba bound' society ( there is even a rockstar baba and a 'computer baba' ).
Women are still discriminated against, and in fact in some parts of India killed even before they are born ( female foeticide ).
Half of Indian children are malnourished ) ( see my article ' Malnourishment in India ' on my blog justicekatju.blogspot.in, ) and perhaps 75% of Indian women are anaemic.
Unemployment is massive. About one crore ( ten million ) youth enter into the job market every year, but the number of jobs created in the organized sector of the Indian economy is only about 5 lacs ( half a million ). Where do the remaining 95 lac end up ? As hawkers, street vendors, stringers, bouncers, criminals, beggars, prostitutes, or suicides. ( see my article ' Unemployment in India ' on my blog )
Farmers suicides are going on at an alarming rate in Vidarbha, etc and even in the Prime Minister's own state of Gujarat, because farming has become uneconomical, and farmers cannot repay the loans they have taken.
Healthcare is almost non existent for the poor people ( see my article ' Healthcare in India ' on my blog )..
Prices of even essentials like food have skyrocketed in recent times.
The political leaders of India who should be solving these problems are mostly a bunch of rogues, rascals, scoundrels, gangsters and looters who have no genuine love for our country but only a pretence. They are like the French Bourbons who saw nothing, remembered nothing and forgot nothing ( see my article ' Wake up Bourbons ' on my blog )
Is this not an explosive mixture ? Is this not like the situation prevailing in France in the years just before 1789 ?.
The society, no doubt, is undergoing a tectonic shift in terms of fading values, supremacy of monetary success and incoherent belief systems. Ends have become supreme and there is very little care about the means. In this scenario, genuine leadership is what we starve for. We may not be facing a situation like the days before French Revolution where at least people gathered strength to come out openly against the suppression. Situation of today's India has bigger woes. Moral bankruptcy of computer age appears to have not left in public enough courage to face the situation. The situation is more pathetic in not finding a foothold to anchor upon and gather wisdom and courage to face the challenge. This is perhaps more like a storm passing through India and there is no choice but to go down with it for sharks in the form of opportunist countries ready to gallop us.
ReplyDeleteLet we all Indians take support from our human values and be determined to set an example in genuine patriotism to take on the storm.