SHOUT OUT LOUD!
DISCLAIMER: This article goes all over the place. That is because all our problems are all over the place.
''When the whole world sleeps, India shall awaken…'' said our first Prime Minister, 61 years ago on a day when everything in the future seemed bright as the morning star. Today, we are waiting for the world to sleep so that we can then awaken and fulfill the prophecy. Going by the situation in the country, and not just of the terror attacks, this is how it at the least, seems.
A careless child will hurt itself at home and outside. What hurts the child is not its environment, but it’s attitude of not being careful with the environment. Terrorists have existed in all the history of humanity. There have always been those with an unhealthy ambition of power who have even relished the thought of sitting on a throne made of corpses. So decrying the terrorists who attacked us as unhuman is a very certain denial of our understanding of human nature. It was our unpreparedness and hence carelessness, that led to the carnage we experienced. There are dogs that bite. Simply carrying a stick in hand serves to keep the dogs from doing it.
What kept us from having a stick in hand? It is not as if we were totally caught by surprise. We had had the 1993 bomb blasts. Leave that, we had the most recent train blast in the city. Why were we not patrolling our seas and why wasn’t the policing in the city effective enough to catch these mischief-makers before they really got a chance to do their act?
The answers for these questions are less retail in nature than we might think. It has more to do with our attitudes and our upbringing than what we actually did or did not do. Let us start with our upbringing. In a society where taking risks is tantamount to blasphemy, who is going to think out of the box for anything? This attitude is highly strengthened in school where you are rewarded for being a sheep and not yourself. It does not matter whether you know what is going on in the current political, economic or social scenario in school. What matters is whether you know the seven states in the country where bauxite is found in plenty. Try asking the teacher what bauxite is used for. She will spank you on your butt for asking stupid questions and wasting precious time in which she has to finish her syllabus. Of course, all teachers are not like this, but the majority is.
In such a way, we in India waste 15 years of our lives acquiring stupid, flaccid and impotent information. Then suddenly, we are asked about what we want to do in life. Going by the conditioning of school where you were rewarded for marks, we try and find an equivalent of it in adult society. And we find money. Where in school people patted your back if you got good marks, here we are patted on our backs if we earn good money. Why do we need marks or money? That is not a question to ask, please. It is hardly surprising then that we have not only wide spread corruption, but also ‘educated’ people indulging in things like bombings as was evident in the train blasts that took place where an IT professional masterminded the whole thing.
This is the major problem of India. There might be a lot of youth in the country, but the country has wasted crucial years of their life giving information for which school is not required. Schools should be for creating good citizens, not giving information.
Such a beginning to our lives creates highly monotonous individuals who have no ambition in terms of their karma. All their ambition is about the phal. Work well done scarcely is motivation then. All that matters is the paycheck at the end of the day, without thinking of long-term consequences. Because we have never been talked to in terms of long-term consequences. Why would then anybody, think beyond the bottomline, whether they be politicians, bureaucrats, or even ‘professionals’ as we like to call ourselves. No wonder we got the economic recession on ourselves. The long term effects were never thought of. Or were thought of and then consciously ignored. No wonder then that we are facing famines and floods because of global warming. The entire picture is not being thought of. Why? Because in schools we are not trained to think about anything but our marks. Hence, we grow up to ignore anything but what will get us pats on our backs., whether it be money or political or religious power.
This attitude reflects in the intentions of the terrorists too when they think of the many comforts and luxuries they will receive in heaven because of what they did for the religion. This attitude also reflects in the other types of terrorists like the ‘rebels’ of African countries. I want what I want. To hell with whatever happens because of it.
Just look around yourself and you will notice that so much work needs to be done. The environment is simply dying. Any hope for it is unrealistic optimism. The infrastructure of our country is pathetic. In Mumbai, the local trains are not being paid attention to because the car and petrol lobbies do not see it as profitable for themselves. The roads are what the British made. We are still using them. The stations have not been upgraded from since then. Water and electricity is in a mess. Slums are rampant. There is no even a pretense of security. ‘Development’ is so haphazard, it better not happen. Leave Shanghai, make Mumbai Bombay and that would be a big achievement. The British built the city of Bombay. We just renamed it to Mumbai without contributing an iota.
With so many problems, asking for suggestions just for security and to tackle terror are like giving a painkiller to a man trapped under a fallen building. GET THE MAN OUT OF THE RUBBLE FOR HEAVEN”S SAKE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
No comments:
Post a Comment