Date: 29th Aug 2004.
“India Shining – A myth or reality”
All of us are aware of the psychological effect that is created when one repeats the same “mantra” in a crowd. More often than not, the mantra automatically becomes the crowd’s mantra. Perhaps that was the logic behind BJP government’s “India Shining” campaign before the recently concluded Lok Sabha election. They were under the illusion that the mantra of “India Shining” will automatically spread throughout the country and it will become a mantra for India. But, poor guys they were, that they assumed that the whole country would behave in a similar manner as a small crowd consisting of a few hundred people.
Now it’s a proven fact that “India shining” campaign has backfired the BJP itself thereby proving its fallacy to some extent. This was talking in terms of some result, which many people may not approve. But let us not discuss it in terms of BJP’s win or loss. Doing that would really make the issues less important.
The government may show some posters depicting good face of India, but that doesn’t make India shine? What about other millions of faces who sleep hungry every night? Still around 30% people live under the poverty line. Does this make India shine? What about those people who have lost their jobs because of the phenomena called privatization and globalization of Indian economy? You ask these people (more than 30%) the same question. Is India shining? And please take care of your self.
We talk in terms of shining IT and ITES sector, but what fraction of Indian mass has really benefited from this sector? Is it 1%? Oh god it’s even less than 1%. The real beneficiaries are those from the middle class backgrounds who had definite advantage in the knowledge based IT/ITES industry on account of their privilege in terms of getting good education. It is grossly assumed that the benefit of the global world would reach to the upper and middle class people first as they would be directly playing with the global economy, and subsequently over a period of time, the benefit would reach down to the poverty stricken mass also through a theory called “trickle down theory”. But how long it’s going to take? The statistical data would easily prove that even after 13 years since economic reforms started in 1991, this trickling is yet to happen on a large scale. Rather, for the time being, if we consider, this process has really widened the gap between the rich and the poor because of the rich benefiting the most and the poor the least. This ever widening gap has given birth to many social evils at the same time, which keep frightening even the tiny group of those people for whom India might be shining.
Agreed that in the last couple of years we have come a long way given the unusual performance of our knowledge based service industry but we have to still go a long long way before we feel like shining. Given the above facts, projecting India as “Shining” would be tantamount to ignoring all these deprived, poverty stricken, and hungry people in a democratic system. Happiness is infectious but does the happiness of a bunch of people make everyone happy and satisfied when they can hardly earn a decent meal for once a day? Can a democracy be called shining given all these ever increasing and ever-persisting problems? The answer is a firm “NO”.
“India Shining – A myth or reality”
All of us are aware of the psychological effect that is created when one repeats the same “mantra” in a crowd. More often than not, the mantra automatically becomes the crowd’s mantra. Perhaps that was the logic behind BJP government’s “India Shining” campaign before the recently concluded Lok Sabha election. They were under the illusion that the mantra of “India Shining” will automatically spread throughout the country and it will become a mantra for India. But, poor guys they were, that they assumed that the whole country would behave in a similar manner as a small crowd consisting of a few hundred people.
Now it’s a proven fact that “India shining” campaign has backfired the BJP itself thereby proving its fallacy to some extent. This was talking in terms of some result, which many people may not approve. But let us not discuss it in terms of BJP’s win or loss. Doing that would really make the issues less important.
The government may show some posters depicting good face of India, but that doesn’t make India shine? What about other millions of faces who sleep hungry every night? Still around 30% people live under the poverty line. Does this make India shine? What about those people who have lost their jobs because of the phenomena called privatization and globalization of Indian economy? You ask these people (more than 30%) the same question. Is India shining? And please take care of your self.
We talk in terms of shining IT and ITES sector, but what fraction of Indian mass has really benefited from this sector? Is it 1%? Oh god it’s even less than 1%. The real beneficiaries are those from the middle class backgrounds who had definite advantage in the knowledge based IT/ITES industry on account of their privilege in terms of getting good education. It is grossly assumed that the benefit of the global world would reach to the upper and middle class people first as they would be directly playing with the global economy, and subsequently over a period of time, the benefit would reach down to the poverty stricken mass also through a theory called “trickle down theory”. But how long it’s going to take? The statistical data would easily prove that even after 13 years since economic reforms started in 1991, this trickling is yet to happen on a large scale. Rather, for the time being, if we consider, this process has really widened the gap between the rich and the poor because of the rich benefiting the most and the poor the least. This ever widening gap has given birth to many social evils at the same time, which keep frightening even the tiny group of those people for whom India might be shining.
Agreed that in the last couple of years we have come a long way given the unusual performance of our knowledge based service industry but we have to still go a long long way before we feel like shining. Given the above facts, projecting India as “Shining” would be tantamount to ignoring all these deprived, poverty stricken, and hungry people in a democratic system. Happiness is infectious but does the happiness of a bunch of people make everyone happy and satisfied when they can hardly earn a decent meal for once a day? Can a democracy be called shining given all these ever increasing and ever-persisting problems? The answer is a firm “NO”.
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