5. Our unhealthy obsession with old people.
Some people may find inclusion of this point strange but bear with me. Why does Arvind Kejriwal need Anna Hazare? I mean Kejriwal has the necessary credibility. He is an IITian and was an IRS officer. He could be enjoying a cushy job right now going to the malls on weekends and taking his family to Paris or Switzerland for summer vacations if he took advantage of the "perks" that his job offered. He is articulate, intelligent and media savvy and unlike Ms. Bedi, who could sometimes get carried away by her passion, he answers questions calmly and thoughtfully when he talks to the media. Granted that Anna Hazare has earned his reputation by decades of work he has done regionally in the villages (and may be Kejriwal should also have started regionally with small regional problems and built up his reputation overtime before attacking big national problems) but why should that matter in Delhi? Why is it that Anna appears to attract huge crowds and AK only relatively small.* Why is it that AK needs Anna to make his movement a big success. While there are many reasons my hunch is that in India we all love a lovable dadaji (granddad). AK's relatively young age is a disadvantage to him. And it's not just him there are many many brilliant young politicians in India who are wasting their talent cooling their heels as junior minister in some pointless ministry while some old lovable dadaji is our minister in key positions bumbling and fumbling and making fool of himself (case in point S.M. Krishna). What is worse is that the said junior minister has to be a sycophant and an avid risk-avoider all his life, who has tried to avoid offending anybody (from his own party or others) to the point of not saying anything at all to get a chance in his old age for some meaningful post, by which time he is way past his prime. Recently there was an article in The Economist that showed that India has the highest gap in the world between the average age of population and the average age of politicians. The difference between the two is shockingly large. As Dhurandhar Bhatwadekar says "Is desh ko buzurgo ki nahi nauwjawano ki jarurat hai. Tabhi ye desh dod payega."
4. Our lack of empathy.
It took a foreigner to tell us that poor in Kolkota were treated worse than animals while intellectuals in Kolkota sat in their coffee house discussing Lenin and Marx. While it is convenient to say that because we have been seeing poverty all around us for all our life we have been desensitized to it and we don't notice it anymore, the fact is that there are many things that we see in our daily life (especially in our metros) that should leave deep impression on us and move and shock us. The big scams that we see now daily where politicians and bureaucrats don't think twice in amassing billions that were meant for the poor while people die all around them shows the mental make up of us all. Injustice and crime against weaker sections of society happen almost daily but nothing is done about it. While this is not unique to India the degree of it is surely shocking. Whatever the reason, whether it be our caste system or just habit of centuries, something has to change.
3. Our lack of aggression.
Our majority Hindu religion has taught us to be happy and content with life, whatever we have. It has taught us to not be overambitious. And while it is good to have happy and content populous (be it poor), -- we have enjoyed many benefits of this, mainly relative lack of crime (till now) despite widespread poverty and social inequality, -- but our lack of aggression meant we were never a whole nation under one king (except for brief periods) but just a collection of small states ruled by different kings and because of that we were able to be ruled by English for more than 200 years and we missed the whole industrialization period and set our economy back for centuries. And by aggression I don't mean just military aggression, which is no longer needed, but our lack of aggression in all spheres of life. For instance our lack of aggression in economic decision making is hurting us now with constant leftist and timid economic policy. We have a socialist leftist instinct that we keep going back to at the first sight of any trouble. We would rather use redistribution to spread our misery than do the hard work of building our economy.
2. Our overly patriarchal society.
We have all seen Satymave Jayate. Almost half the episode of it were related to the issues facing women. Aamir himself said that during his research this issue came up again and again and that this is the central issue facing India today. If half of your population is not able to live up to their full potential then how can you progress as a nation. Also there are millions of unhappy families for things like domestic violence, dowry related abuse, pressure to bear male child, etc etc. It can't be good for the children too to grow up in such unhappy families. So this hurts us at the most important point that is social unit called family. Unhappy family results in unhappy kids who grow up to be abusive husbands, fathers, mothers with issues and the cycle repeats itself.
1. Our otherness that divides us.
This is a no-brainer really. Very few of our states decide their chief ministers based on purely performance (states like Gujarat and Bihar now and few others) and even in these states other factors like caste and religion play some part in decision making. However, there are some major states where development is not even a big issue of the election. Caste arithmetic and freebies at taxpayers expense rule the roost in most of the states. If the caste is not the issue then the issue is secular (read pro-Muslim in Indian context) or communal (pro-hindu). Heck we have a state that rotates between two parties based on "Dravid pride" against aggression of the northern 'Aryan' parties. So in TN they keep rotating between DMK and AIDMK even though both of them are corrupt but people won't chose between two national parties as they are north Indian "Aryan" parties. How ridiculous that we have been clinging on a 2000 y.o. (5000?) divide. Sad part is in some states it doesn't even look like we will leave caste-based politics behind soon. This means development is not a core issue and parties can get away with rampant corruption and misrule.
So these are the five worst things about us according to me. Do you agree or do you have other points in mind? Do write in the comments below.
*This blog was written before recent Vadra episode.
*This blog was written before recent Vadra episode.
