India - A Pipe Dream

India thinks only regional, virtually never national. There is hardly ever any feeling of national pride among the multitude that make up the nation. The fissiparous tendencies within the country, makes one feel that it is an artificial entity banded together only for the sake of convenience, ready to splinter into a million pieces anytime. Religion has divided the country like nothing else in the recent past; then there are conflicting pulls like caste, language, region… The middle class dream of transforming India into a modern power can never be, if only because of the venality of its political classes.

Forget about terrorism, forget about China and even Pakistan, forget about corruption, forget about the caste and reservation issues. Some may say these are not easy to deal with – they are complex issues and need time, loads of it, to be addressed. Forget even about creating new infrastructure. What about existing roads that resemble the surface of the moon – roads on which millions are spent in repairing only to see them cracking and dissolving at the first signs of rain? A modern India that cannot even surface and engineer its roads properly to ensure a proper camber to allow rainwater to run to the sides into drains, that are unfortunately non-existent most of the time.

This country has not ever, in its 61 years of existence, been able to enforce even basic, simple, non-controversial traffic laws, which has resulted in the most anarchic traffic system mankind has had the misfortune to come across.

The country needs strong, honest, committed and visionary leadership; and that would be akin to asking for the moon, because it would never happen. The middle class, educated and with a sense of values (a substantial majority at least) would never dare to venture into politics (stray cases apart) - and it would have to be leadership from this alienated-from-politics class, that alone could bring about a major change in a democratic manner. The middle class is repulsed and frightened of politics because it has become the preserve of criminals.

India needs laws to change its political system, which encourages mushrooming of political parties, each with vested interests that are divorced from the national interest. India needs leadership that can do simple things efficiently like making the best possible use of existing resources. Unfortunately for India, this is a mere pipe dream.