Prof Javed Mughal
Every Year India reverberates with new year celebrations: the joy and happiness of all tome dick and harry knows no bounds and the poor prays to become; the ailing wishes to recuperate; the unemployed yearns to be self-reliant, so much so that we want everything to turn the corner in our life as if the New Year were some specially deputed magician to set the affairs of our de-tracked system in proper order just with the gentle touch of his magic stick. But we forget the radical veracity that the solutions and the remedies of the diurnal issues faced by us in our life are not hidden in the New Year celebrations or the paper-bound resolutions but consist primarily in the healthy system which unfortunately we don’t have. All resolutions and wishes, hopes and aspirations are no more than ‘the fertile hallucinations of the futile mind’ unless we contribute to the amelioration of the system we live in either by fighting the corruption and revising the political mechanism. To the best of my poor understanding, a country like India, where more than one third of the ruling politicians stand booked as criminals; where there is no limit to the corruption in civil administration; where more than 25 crores people sleep with empty stomach every day; where more than 9.8 million educated youths are unemployed; where 371 people commit suicide in one day; where a rape incident happens every 22 minutes; where more than 85 thousands rape cases are still sub-judice in Indian Courts and where more than 7.5 million youths are drug addict, don’t have any right to spend millions of rupees at the cost of poor people’s survival to celebrate the New Year. The celebrations and the merry making pomp and shows suit those who are in a position to survive with dignity. Go and ask a slum dweller as to how does he take this New Year. Have we ever enquired of an educated young man dying for two times meal as to what this New Year means to him? Go and talk to a common man, fighting with ever burgeoning inflation, about his reaction to this celebration. Meanwhile, looking at the macro picture, poverty keeps on increasing, just as the rich keep on getting richer. Add to this the fact that the economic czars of the country have long been working in a frenzy to paper over the cracks, rather than tackle the malaise, and you have a picture that is getting murkier and murkier with every passing day. Fuel, electricity and gas are in short supply. The water crises – alternating between scarcity and surfeit – take a heavy toll. The cost of living is skyrocketing, just as the purchasing power of the common man remains precariously close to rock bottom. The youth is engulfed with the fear of facing a bleak future despite having attained sky-meddling education. The parents are all time worried since their children are denied a dignified survival in the society. Corruption is touching the heights of sky more than ever in the past with little ray of hope. Every year the common man is lured and ensnared by our glib-tongued netas in the cob-web of silver promises to bring an ivory future to him but at the end of the year this ill fated common man finds him at the point of no betterment at all. The same oft-repeated questions and the same hackneyed answers still resound everywhere. The Aam Admi is again found at the altar of the years old issues of basic comforts i.e. two times meals, shelter and clothing. If one looks at the hospitals sans proper medical facilities and required services to the patients; the frequent power cuts; the unbearable scarcity of water supply; poor educational facilities in Govt. school and Colleges and intolerably acute-rated education in Private Educational Sale centers; (no less than an impractical dream for more than forty percent Indians); money Exchanging hands from first to the last rung of the administrative ladder; growing red-tapism; poor work culture; non-accountability to the law and the conscience, one will get wonder-struck to think that this is the same India we are the part of and point much more to be worried is how this country is stepping a head. The abject predicament of this country from all sides is enough to bring any nation to devastation. We have failed at all fronts to revive amicable relations with our neighbor who swallow more than thirty percent of our economy. This country is unfortunate enough to have ever been run with miscalculations and suicidal as well as counter-productive initiatives. In the face of all these crippling circumstances, we are too brazen-faced not to release crackers in the airs on the New Year. This is the height of shamelessness and recklessness. We are all what we have been brought up to be. One can hardly expect a fish to survive without water.
The problem is that we have to deal with self-created or politically contrived environmental conditions. When a segment of the people is brought up in bubbles, so to speak, where the very atmosphere is conveniently controlled to the optimum degree, subjective rather than objective considerations take hold. Our planners and economists must shun the obnoxious habit of discussing the macro-level economics; they need not place the bills and proposals on the assembly and the parliamentary floors; brag about funds and all that, they must, Instead, start contemplating on how the share has to be reached to the common street. We must not forget that eighty percent of India lives among common people and in villages. I still remember Dr. Farooq’s statement when was lost power-chair “today I have realized the power of a common man. It is the common, nay, the small taxi and cab driver in the locality who has thrown me out of power.” I am neither an economist nor a planner but even then I know and believe that no people can either survive or prosper on a diet of statistics alone. Mere percentages, thrust down the throats of common folk, just will not do. When targeting the man-in-the-street, let our advisers and planners eschew the habit of talking of macro or micro-economic indicators or of strewing statistics in his path. What interests the common man is the trickled-down effect of the economic policies; the fair and square implementation of all developmental policies; the transparency even in little affairs of the system; the check on corruption and proper administration of justice to all rank and file equally. Unfortunately nothing of the sort happens in this country. What we, having thrown all scruples in the air, give to our broken hearted masses is not a respectable survival but a Happy New Year wish.
This is nothing but a futile package of romantic none-sense. Better is to revise our shallow based habits and take a pledge not celebrate New Year or even the Republic and Independence Days until entire India sleeps comfortably with no care and worry for its future. Need of the hour is not to pretend that we are all happy but to fulfill the basic requirement of a common man in the country. The future of India does not consist in releasing crackers in the air and enjoying musical concerts on New Years and other festivals but make to this nation full self-dependant.
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