The
Future is not so much hindsight as foresight: Uncertainties still Cloud Us
Rugged
roads need all-weather four-wheel driven vehicles and not the luxury Sedans. We
are in uncertain times still. End of the year has not been that good although
economy-wise, India is far better than many developed countries. We have to
re-discover India as it is the second largest nation in the world next to
China, in terms of population. We have 17% of world’s population and 4% of
world’s water resources. We see more out-migration than in-migration. Loyalty
to the nation and even to the village one is borne, is suspect. This article
explores the future not like a soothsayer but like a typical economist and
philosopher.
we
see more habitable villages than at the time of independence. We see less land
producing more grain – distancing absolute poverty and hunger. The nimble hands
of women farmers, in particular, were responsible to fight the pandemic with
confidence. There were very few starvation deaths even in the midst of our
intense fight with the pandemic. The nation proved that when a crisis arises,
the nation would rise to the occasion and would not allow it to devour us.
Thanks to the social development schemes of some of the states like Telangana,
Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Jammu & Kashmir, Assam, and Nagaland, we also witness
higher literacy and health levels during the last decade. Numbers are available
in any news daily that I would not like to strain the reader with.
We
have built good roads, good communication systems, and on the threshold of
reaching the status of a developed nation. In the comity of nations, last eight
years have won us a seat in the UN Security Council, chair of G-20 and a
respect that history of India should be proud of. We see less land producing
more grain – distancing absolute poverty and hunger.
A
time has come when we should rethink and re-envision the freedom as we see not
just economic and financial risks but risks to the very existence of humanity. We
have laws on Rights – child rights to the right to information and right to
education. Yet, digital education distanced the teacher from the taught and so
is the respect for the teacher. It is ghastly to see the atrocities of teachers
on their wards whom they should love as their children. Not many movies on
celluloid or the small screen can be watched with the entire family. They are
full of violence and sex and all passed by the Censors.
There
is no state, nay a district, that does
not report one type of crime or other. There are areas where people are living
in perpetual fear. Billions of rupees are wiped out with a wink of an eye. Cybercrime is at its
heights. A citizen has to fight for enforcing his rights. We see the
strengthening of the vigilance arms: Enforcement Directorate, Central Bureau of
Investigation, Intelligence agencies etc.
For
75 years, we still think of good governance and good institutional framework
devoid of corruption. We are a witness to collapse of some of the newly built
bridges killing lives. On the other side, we see that villages became more
habitable. We see less land producing more grain – distancing absolute poverty
and hunger.
I
pleasantly recall that during my young days, we had in the school syllabus,
civics, history, and geography as subjects under the broad heading of social
sciences. We had at least two sessions for drawing, craft and play in the
ground a game of our choice – not just cricket. The National Education Policy
claiming a progressive higher education intervention that ensures opportunities
for those who have the economic muscle to pursue – a four year degree course, a
double degree simultaneously, has not rebuilt the foundation for a student to
blossom under ethics, respect to colleagues, and respect to elders and an
awareness that the student has an ocean to swim the tides of learning.
Therefore,
next twenty five years of this growing nation are really challenging. The
challenge lies in building a generation that loves peace, that embraces ethics
in living, that sees security in building a good society, that witnesses any
young women walking in midnight without fear of assault and in absolute
comfort, that every young lady would like to be a good mother and a good wife
nurturing a good family even within small means. Cooperative federalism should
see the end of riparian water disputes so that we have universal safe drinking
water and not sanitary paper. This should be the new year 2023 pledge for all
of us.
Future
is going to be more uncertain than the present. There may not be pestilence but
there could be wars over weapons and women. India, known for cohesive families,
should not be a victim of cultural incursions from the west. It cannot afford
to blame the present for what their fathers and forefathers had done to them
and their families.
It
is a great recall from Pundit Nehru’s Discovery of India (p.61), where he
described the Culture of the Masses. “ ..I saw the moving drama of the Indian
people in the present and could often
trace the threads which bound their lives to the past, even while their eyes
were turned towards the future. Everywhere I found a cultural background which
had exerted a powerful influence on their lives. ..The old epics of India, Mahabharat,
Ramayana, and other books, in popular translations and paraphrases, were
widely known among the masses, and every incident and story and moral in them
was engraved on the popular mind and gave richness and content to it.” There is
need for great resurgence in this direction. ‘Let not thy winged days be spent
in vain, where gone, no gold can try them back again.’
*The
views are personal.
