[Assam] [WaterWatch] Re: After Tryst with destiny

Fri Sep 7 11:14:52 CDT 2007

If AssamNetters missed this well-written blog
mm

To: WaterWatch at yahoogroups.comFrom: pcsharma_bpl at bsnl.inDate: Fri, 7 Sep 2007 20:26:10 +0530Subject: Re: [WaterWatch] Re: After Tryst with destiny

I guess there is so much optimism and positive thinking in our ruling class that correct(fair) criticism is termed as pessimism and negative thinking. No denying that we have made a lot of progress in many areas yet we are unable to  equitably enjoy the fruits of this progress.
It is only our abiding faith in the existence of a higher power that provides us the patience to bear with all the ills in our society with fortitude.There is also no denying that other societies/ countries are also plagued with bigger ills but what is hurting us is that only manipulators and law breakers are having a ball here without the slightest fear of exposure and punishment. Let us hope 'wah subah kabhi to ayegi'.
Piyush C.Sharma

----- Original Message ----- 
From: rohit pathania 
To: WaterWatch at yahoogroups.com 
Sent: Thursday, September 06, 2007 7:07 PM
Subject: [WaterWatch] Re: After Tryst with destiny

It would be unfair to highlight what we have failed ourselves at over the last 60 years without looking at what we have managed to achieve. Optimism is the key to success, because only then would we be able to accomplish what we set out to do. Correct criticism, and not criticism for the sake of it, is what will help us stay on the right track. The fact that we all sit and write conflicting opinions without any personal animosity is one out of the long list of achievements despite all that we have faced from within and abroad. The biggest fight though is still corruption, illiteracy, poverty, pessimism and casteist and communalist tendencies, which intervenes at every level of our thought process, our personalities and our socieites, making them rot. Infringement of human rights is not helping us either, and so is not guraded and pseudo-secularist policies, if one could use the phrase. We should be free to express ourselves, without fearing 'hurting' anyone's sentiments. We need to push for democratic reforms, and find ways so that those who are popular come forward, and we should, at the very least, encourage young and enthusiastic people of all schools of thought and belief to come forward in every sphere of life so that they can together take the country forward. 
On 9/4/07, waterwatch at yahoo.com <waterwatch at yahoo.com> wrote: 

After 'Tryst with destiny'Unending wait for new dawnNEHRU'S "tryst with destiny" suggested that India would wake up to anew dawn. The country has made substantial material progress sincethat fateful and historic day 60 years ago. But the freedom struggle had other goals as well. Countless people "sacrificed their today fora better tomorrow for us". Have we achieved that better today? Wasthere not a different vision than the one we have worked for? Doubts arise not only because mass poverty persists, illiteracy is rampant and insanitary conditions and ill health continue to take aheavy toll but because we hardly have a vision left except to followthe West and in the process we have perhaps got the worst of both worlds. In material terms, a few, numbering less than 3 per cent of thepopulation, have done well while the rest are trapped in a low-levelequilibrium. We boast of more billionaires than Japan while in termsof per capita income we are in the bottom 20 out of 177 nations. The former then is a reflection of terrible inequity and nothing to gloatabout. The largest number of people below the poverty line, farmerssuicides, huge urban slums, fields in and around cities functioning asvast toilets, the inability of the so-called literates to understandmodern technology, etc, suggest that the nation as a whole has yet towake up to a new morning. In a 1958 movie, "Phir Subaha Hogi," Mukesh singing with pathos, "Woh subaha kabhi to ayegi" (That morning will come some time), epitomisedthe dream of the common Indian of the fifties and the sixties. Many ofus as children internalised the idea that we will build a betterfuture for all our countrymen and, perhaps, we would build a new civilization that would surpass the West. Sixty years afterIndependence the shreds of this dream are not even left in thedustbins of those in power and supposedly guiding the destiny of thisnation. That dream has been blown away in the hurricane of achieving 9 per cent growth. The song is not just about eliminating poverty, hunger, ill health andilliteracy but about a dream of building a different society �" apeaceful one where everyone (specially the marginalised) would live with dignity, Gandhi's "Last Person First". The song defines thathappy morning as "Jab ambar jhum ke nachega, Jab dharti naghme gayegi"(when the sky would dance with joy and the earth would sing songs). Today, at our low per capita consumption, the air, water and land are terribly polluted and weeping rather than singing and dancing. Themost revered Ganga or the Godavari are heavily polluted, their bedscontaminated with huge amounts of toxic material that would affect thefuture generations. Even the sacred is no more sacred. So, what is sacrosanct? The song goes, "Jab dukh ke badal pighlenge" (when the clouds ofsorrow will melt). "Insano ki izzat jab jhoote sikkon me na tolijayegi" (when people's dignity would not be measured by false money). "Mana ki abhi tere-mere armano ki qeemat kuch bhi nahin" (agreed thattoday our dreams have no value). But their was belief, one day thiswould change. For the vast numbers of the marginalised sections,sorrow is a daily and endless fare that is not melting away. Dozens of their children can disappear in Nithari and little is done. The only escape is what Bollywood dishes out �" sex and violence. Thegovernment provides little relief since it fails to deliver. Faith inpoliticians is a casualty. The dignity of the poor is even more firmly mortgaged to money when unemployment is so high and the youth have totake to crime to fulfil their expectations. The dreams of the deprived have no value to the rulers who in theirself-centredness can only see in them the means to fulfil their own narrow dreams of great riches, like, in the misallocation of landmeant for the poor displaced slum-dwellers. Today labour is devalued while speculation and greed have been raisedto a new high pedestal. A mere 1 per cent of the population linked to the corporate sector earns more than what 60 per cent, dependent onagriculture do. Disparities have risen more sharply in the last sixyears than in the earlier 54 years. The young are encouraged to sellsoap but not to contribute to nation-building through teaching and research. Sacrifice appears to be stupidity, undermining the entireeffort of the freedom fighters. Those of them who still surviveruefully ask: is this what they fought for? The 3 per cent, the ruling elite of the nation, aspire to join the international elite, sending their children to study in collegeabroad, going there for vacations or to hospitals for health problems.It is voting with its feet. A school in Chappra or a dispensary inGhungrawali has little value to it, but Delhi must have 24 hours water and electricity. That is progress. The emotional attachment to thenation is gone. Corruption is rampant both in the public and private sectors.Institutions, like the legislature, the judiciary and the bureaucracy, are breaking down. The elite is lawless, breaking every single law �"from traffic laws to building bylaws to industrial and environmentallaws. Many of the rich have earned more through illegal means thanlegal ones. Political leaders hardly represent the people �" leading a life ofluxury. Democracy is a great institution, but in India it has beenturned into a fine art for self-aggrandisement. The bankruptcy of our leadership led to our jettisoning the ideas of independent developmentin the eighties and of the "last person first" in the nineties. The land of Gandhi has turned into the land of the Bania (not that hewas not a Bania). The credit for this goes to the very party which Gandhi built. Clever ones would shamelessly argue, even Gandhi wouldhave done the same in the present context. Would they consider that aman given to simplicity, sacrifice and truth and not show, half truthsand consumerism would have blanched at this suggestion? From the notion that the ills of our society have a social cause tothe idea that the individual is to blame for its predicament, it is along journey. Everyone has now to go to the market to get what he or she needs, the government is no more responsible for the eliminationof poverty, etc. The devil may take the hindmost. Nations are built on dreams, but we have narrowed it to money-making.So, how do we build a great nation as Nehru's "tryst" suggested or to which Mukesh referred to in the song, "Jis subaha ki khatir yug yug seham sab mar mar ke jite aiyen hain" (That morning for whose sake fromeons we all have been living by dying a thousand deaths). Gandhi had a dream for the nation that the party he helped build has shattered. He perhaps saw what was coming, so he wanted the party to dissolveitself so that this farce would not have occurred. He wantedRashtrapati Bhavan to be converted into a hospital not because that would have been functional but because that would have given birth tomany more dreams rather than converting the freedom fighters intorulers in the imperial mould. So, sixty years down the road, we are still waiting for that new dawn in the midst of 9 per cent growth. Mukesh would have to sing, "Wohsubaha abhi to nahin ayegi". by Arun KumarThe Tribune, August 29, 2007arunkumar1000 at hotmail.com.

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