India Shining????

Shocked to see this title being penned by me??????

Well, go on reading, you'll realize.

21st century will see India as the real superpower.

It's Indian brainpower that's running global IT industry.

Delhi and Mumbai will soon be on a par with the likes of London and New York.

Sound familiar???

Well, above mentioned are the statements that are always used as curtains to reality.

Golden curtains. Showing you big dreams.

Someone has rightly (though sarcastically) said, "If you keep dreaming, when will you pursue it?"

Few days back, I was surfing internet to see where India stands. Before I go on analyzing, you may like to bookmark  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_countries

When I saw global rankings in terms of nominal GDP, India seems to have fared well, at least respectable, something you may expect out of a 1 billion populated, 60 odd years old country. It stands in top 15.

Exports are also good, foreign debt is also not unmanageable, much less than many developed countries including USA, UK and many other hotshots.

This gives me a kind of picture that India is shining.

A self made country....... with hostile neighbors............ you can't expect more.

But later I checked the lists of countries based on Human Development Index (HDI), percentage of people below poverty line, percentage of people malnourished etc etc.

I was gloomed to see India shining in the list of countries with highest no. of malnourished people.

It's true, even today many Indians don't have basic human amenities. No water, no electricity, no school, no hospital... that's the description of Indian village.

India's metros are getting richer and richer and crowded too. Most of great global MNCs are either present in India, or are eyeing to be in India. All the global brands are available in India, and that probably makes it a cynosure.

Wait, did anyone look at the villages?

It's height of ill governance that world's richest men/women belong to India (it's mEn/womEn, there are plenty other than Ambanis), and millions of Indians are still suffering every night from the uncertainty of earning the livelihood for the next day.

Decentralization of wealth is of utmost importance. There are many bottlenecks in the system, government just needs to take care of the bottlenecks, the wealth in the country is more than sufficient to feed every Indian.

ISRO is planning mission to moon, and we also have people who let their family members die, because they don't have money to take them to a better hospital in city, leave alone moon.

In terms of HDI (which, I feel is the most effective measure for a country's wealth), India is ranked 134 among 182 studied. This is dangerous, this is awful, I'd rather like it to be awakening.

Millioners are becoming billioners, and poor is getting poorer.

As once claimed by Rajiv Gandhi, not more than 10% of the total allotted aid reaches the real beneficiaries. It vanishes in the supply chain, to grease the joints of the chain - the so called Sarkari babus. Their pockets are getting heavier and the poor's stomach is getting lighter day by day.

If this devastation is not stopped, it will create an unbridgeable separation between the rich and the poor, resulting in social discrimination getting more severe, or in the worst case; civil war.

This can be prevented only by bringing all the Indians on the same platform, by providing equal opportunities to everyone, by realizing the effective implementation of all the government policies, and last but not the least, by curbing corruption.

Remember, if you pay a bribe of 100Rs to a traffic police constable, you are encouraging corruption, you are corroding the country, and digging the grave of national harmony.

This is not funny.

A country's action is nothing but the people's collective actions. What you do on a smaller scale does reflect on a bigger scale. If as an individual, you are not corrupt, you're a boon to the nation, and we need millions of such boons. When there's noone to offer bribe, who will there be to receive???

Give it a thought, and make your small but proud contribution by making a resolve of never to encourage corruption and to empower the nation.