‘The world respects India’ writes Mr. Chidambaram, the honorable Home Minister of India, in his book ‘A View from the Outside’. Oh! The whole creamy layer of this country tries to convey the message to the rest of India ‘the world respects India’. You might have noticed, right from the Government to Corporate organizations like FICCI, CII, and Big Corporate leaders to Economists and corporate backed media often making statements like ‘India will emerge as an important financial center in the world’, ‘India has the potential to become a developed nation one day’, ‘India will emerge as a super power’ ‘we are one of the fastest growing economies in the world’ and so on.
Well, of course, this is the dream of every Indian, one day he wants to see his country as a developed one. If not all, at least those who have some concern for this nation. It is good to be positive about India’s growth. There is nothing wrong in aspiring to become a super power. Every country in the world has the right to have such a dream.
India is experiencing growth in all the spheres and sectors, but this is an uneven growth which only benefits a few sections, though we believe that some day the benefits would flow to the bottom of the pyramid too. Thus, we aspire to become a super power, but the question is, are we prepared enough to become a super power? Even if the economic wealth increases in the future and say our GDP rate surges, imagine one day India scores well in all growth parameters. Will the world accept us as a super power? Why do I raise such a question? The problem is, we, majority of the Indians do not have the basic or fundamental qualities that many people (not all) have in the developed nations. Sounds harsh? It’s always better to accept the mistakes and rectify than being stubborn and not accepting them. Look! No body is perfect, I’m not questioning our status quo, I just say, we can change. Still confused, what I am going to discuss about?
Well, here are the basic qualities that we lack.
The first and foremost thing we need to focus is to clean our country, because cleanliness is a very good sign of a country’s development. We have to learn to keep our surroundings, streets and roads clean. Our successive governments till now after 64 years of Independence never had run a massive campaign for a cleanliness drive. we could have done this long back but civic bodies are the most corrupt, which hardly care about their assigned areas, even when some civic bodies miraculously do something to clean up areas, we the people, most of us don’t have the civic sense to keep our surroundings clean, we take pride in dumping garbage in our neighbor hood areas, throwing wastes anywhere and everywhere on roads.
It’s not a one-day affair, it is a long process, If we decide today, it will take a few months, may be a few years to create a clean, hygienic environment. Government being the top authority should initiate the campaign for a clean India. Let the message be passed on to people through various channels, by brand ambassadors. It’s important to create awareness among people about cleanliness. It’s a process involving the government to run a massive campaign and the civic bodies which should be monitored and regulated so that they come alive and start the real work of cleaning up their respective areas (again governments have the great role to play here). We need fixed dustbins every few hundred meters installed at least at metro cities first, gradually to small cities and towns and to villages and most importantly, we the people should realize and understand our responsibility to be good citizens. We care too much about the cleanliness of our home but what about the country? Is it our selfish attitude that is behind the problem? Don’t we have a concern for the country? If we do then we would not even think about throwing garbage or wastes on the roads.
The second thing that would irritate any good citizen is the habit of spitting. Many spit on roads, public places, on monuments and anywhere they feel like. There are uneducated people who do not actually know, they just think it’s quite natural to spit, mainly villagers. We should actually educate them, create awareness about cleanliness, about hygiene, they will definitely understand. But how can we forgive those irresponsible educated citizens who spit as they like without any shame?
The third basic thing we need to learn is to form lines and queues and to maintain them till the purpose of forming queues is solved. Have you ever watched how we form queues? We hardly form queues in public places, right from places like temples, railway stations, bus stands, schools, colleges or any public places. Even when we form queues, when the time comes to maintain them we fail to do so. When something is distributed anything like forms, tickets, Prasad, tokens or anything else, we rush and push each other and run as if we were in concentration camps for days without food and now that the food is being distributed we need to grab something to eat. Either you take it seriously or in a humorous way, this is a fact evident from many incidences. In the past so many incidences of stampedes and deaths have happened due the lack of this basic quality to form queues and maintain them.
Let me give you another example. We have a sophisticated Metro service at New Delhi; Metro has changed the lives of Delhites in a great way. The people at these metro stations form queues before the train would come, the person who would watch from a distance might think that, okay, people have formed queues, once the train comes these people would first let the people to de board the train and then these people would slowly move in, but what happens is just the opposite, once the train arrives, the people would push and pull each other, and rush inside like hell, while the passengers who would de board have to flex their muscles to really get out of the crowd. These people are not villagers, but we the people who live in the capital city of this country.
The fourth basic thing we need to learn is ‘the way to protest/strike’. We are in a democratic country we have all the rights to express our opinion or we have the rights to protest in a peaceful way or go for strike if law permits in a disciplined way. But for some anti-social elements strike/protest means damaging public properties (which are common man’s assets, it’s my money and your money), torching buses and engaging in all unlawful activities.
The fifth basic quality we should cultivate is to follow traffic rules. I read a comment made by a foreigner in a newspaper about our traffic system, he said “I couldn’t understand the traffic system in India” but, I don’t agree with him, we have a clearly defined and excellent traffic system in place, but the fact is that most of us (not all) hardly bother to ensure the smooth functioning of the system. Even if we follow rules we do out of compulsion when police men are seen around and in the absence of policemen a few who don’t see any point in following traffic rules would jump red lights and such people do all unacceptable things like over taking vehicles, over speeding, changing lanes etc.
The sixth basic thing is to avoid urinating at public places, here it’s not only the fault of few irresponsible citizens, it’s also problem with our local governments and civic bodies who should provide lavatory facilities at least at some important public places initially and later in other places. There have been a few initiatives taken in this regard, but the lavatories which are already in place are badly maintained by civic bodies and not fit to use, still a few responsible citizens use those lavatories instead of urinating at public places with their nose covered. In metro cities government has given the project to private hands who at least maintain some level of cleanliness in the lavatories
The seventh and basic quality we need to have is to respect each other. This is very much possible when we have the feeling that we are all Indians and we are all one. We might not express our concern and love for each other, even the people in most developed countries don’t do that and they don’t have time, but we can definitely maintain some discipline and have some manners while speaking with other people at public places. Often I have seen people unnecessarily quarrelling at traffic Jams, buses, counters and at various public places and start abusing each other like anything using words which we would never use at homes but at public places such people behave like uncivilized and act like goons remembering each others ‘mothers’ and ‘sisters’ during arguments. Just an example, a person driving to office quarrels at the red light signal for 30 minutes just because another motorist unintentionally caused a slight scratch to his car. What happens is a policeman intervenes after 30 minutes quarrel and once the traffic jams, takes both the parties to a side and take bribe from both of them and let them off and this guy reaches office 1 hour late. Does this make any sense? This is a very important thing of concern; we need to mutually respect each other.
These are some of the basic things/ qualities that we need to learn/ have, as we our country develops, as infrastructural developments take place, as industrial growth surges and as we aspire to become a super power we need to first get our basics right and become fit enough to become the citizens of a developed country.
From the heart of an Indian …………..
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