The preamble of the Indian constitution defines India in a number of ways. Today in spite of that, I can find no other and exact way to define the country of India other than that being the STATE OF DENIAL.
In the twenty years of my life I have learnt that the most important thing in life is to know our shortcomings. The Mahabharata goes on to say that the first step towards gaining power is acknowledging our weakness. But in India we pretend to close our eyes when a problem arrives in hope that since we cannot see the problem, the problem cannot see us. It is precisely this approach coupled with the ‘blame game’ that we are not even halfway on the path of achievement today where we should have been.
We deny our problems, if ever accepting them, blaming them on the government, opposition, bureaucracy, executive, stock market, foreign policy, neighbouring nations, religious extremists and finally on people (not strictly in that order).
In this state of denial, I would just like to point out some problems we ought to acknowledge, broadly:
Defense: We do not have a robust R&D for our armed forces and much of our arsenal is foreign imports. While in the recent times steps have been taken to improve this state, but in a country with such hostile neighbours one is forced to ask if it is enough.
Education: India ‘manufactures’ lacks of engineers and doctors every year. While this end of the picture is good, but the quality of education has been in a nose diving trajectory, with the government putting more stakes on the ‘brand’ of colleges than improving the quality of education. And the lack of quality research opportunities leads to brain drain.
Society: Indians have been known to come together, shedding all qualms of religion, language, caste etc whenever an alien force poses a threat. But against that we are as divided, disloyal and distrusting as we can be. We cannot forever wait for some apocalypse to unite us.
These are just some of the many problems Indians must acknowledge at fist and the work to improve them. The dreams that we see of being of a world power will only be possible if we work to overcome our entire shortcoming.
Denial is not the answer.
India is a state of Law: exhaustively written but randomly enforced.
