REALITY CHECK

India is in a state of frenzy. Fumbling to respond to the global meltdown (not knowing fully how much the country is affected by it), India is gearing up for yet another phase of chaos called General Elections. The policy measures are culled from the economic textbooks and thrust upon the bemused public. As the anxious policy makers wait for the results to seep down the various segments of life, problems continue to spring up from various directions and plague the Asian 'superpower'. In the last few years, we had got used to calling ourselves a superpower. The only cues available were a near double digit economic growth and the youthful and brash IT sector which had started putting India on the global map. Acquisitions of foreign firms by Indian corporates only added to make our pride swell. A confident and resurgent India, with its army of savvy and English speaking techies, waited in the wings to dislodge the incumbent superpowers and transform the strategic equations across the continents.


Though the high flying India which ruled the world for the first eight years of this decade was not a flash in the pan, the so called success story had been stretched too far by the cheerleaders. The story fled the realm of reality. It crocked and floundered only to seek refuge in the dazzling and magical world of fiction. Who would not remember the days when the financial papers would headline, in mega bold fonts, the rise and rise of the fabled Sensex? As if there is no life beyond Sensex. And a five figure Sensex meant India's nirvana, a panacea of the all the problems the Indians faced. We were living in a world of inflated expectations and oversimplified postulates. We had started judging ourselves by the yardstick of the salaries IIMA or B graduates would be offered in campus placements. By the unprecedented revenue figures our finance ministers projected in every Budget. By the ultra mega projects the Cabinets or the 'empowered groups' of our arthritis-ridden, hypertensive or diabetic ministers would clear with an unfailing regularity and unflagging pomp. But, for a man on the street, has India really changed? Are we really not a Third World country any more?

Here is the reality check!

1) Governance (Satyam): The fraud revealed once again the gap between 'prescription' and 'description' which is one of main defining characteristics of a developing society. A maze of laws and regulations overseen by an equally complex maze of 'ministries/departments' and 'regulators' is no deterrent at all. One can coolly bypass them and make the agencies look like buffoons.

2) Quality of Life: Just hit a road every evening in a city like Mumbai. There are highways, expressways, sea links and flyovers in the city but streets in a suburb leading to or fanning out of a station make mockery of our tall claims about improvement in infrastructure. You will be enveloped by clouds of smoke and the noise of lound restless honks of the vehicles trapped in traffic hold ups. It's a mayhem one comes across as one steps out of his or her home or office. People are seen standing crammed in crowded buses (which appear not be advancing even an inch) and sitting huddled in rickety auto-rickshaws, groping for a semblance of life which their political leaders promise them every election year. They have a capsulated existence which starts everyday with newspapers and end with saas-bahu serials with a few songs on FM radio or MP3, a couple of hurried meals, a few hours of half baked discussions on cricket, stock market and politics and a few tiffs with bosses and colleagues and neighbours and fellow commuters stuffed in between.
Life on streets is a potentially carcinogenic, high decibel chaos.

3) India is still known for corruption and bureaucratic red tape. The bright and incorruptible social activists manage to influence policies (UPA deserves some credit for this) but we are yet to see them taking the helm at our ministries. The sane, sensible and liberal voice still remains at the margins.

4) Farmers commit suicides in this country. Skilled workers of diamond industry are slogging under the scorching sun on road construction sites. We do not have a policy and action plan in place to address the social security issues of the informal and unorganized sectors of our economy. We are more concerned about pink slips that dread our BPO and IT workers who throng swanky office buildings in Pune, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Gurgaon or Noida everyday.

5) Internal Security: There isn't any area which has been more mismanaged than this since our independence. There is no federal level, pan India strategy or will to combat this menace. The debate still remains lost in 'State List' and 'Union List' inspite of 26/11. A homeland is a homeland. Chandigarh is no different from Chhatisgarh when it comes to dealing with national security.

Can we still say we have left our THIRD WORLD status far behind? There is a long way to go. Is it not?