India of my dreams.

India is the land where a Hindu Prime Minister offers her seat to a Sikh who in turn takes oath from a Muslim President to offer his services to a population consisting of Hindu, Muslim, Sikhs, Christians, Parsis and many other ethnic group. India is a nation where dozens of festivals and celebrations take place every year and where the universe looks up to learn its scriptures, traditions and culture. India is the nation where second largest population in the world uses largest number of cell phone and telecommunication services. A nation characterized with euphoric mall mania, where newspapers are published in all languages spoken, where the quality of living of people has undergone a major transition and where every person coming at the doorstep is respected. “Atithi Devo Bhava.” This is that side of India which is digging more into the prosperous opportunities and plunging ahead giving their foreign competitors a toss for money. It is that India which is getting recruited in MNC’s, successfully running KPO’s and BPO’s and leading India on path of success. This is the aggressive and opportunistic India.
But there is one more India. An India where only 65% of people of entire population are literate, where the health services are so poor that every 4 minutes a woman kicks the bucket due to lack of post-natal care, where farmers commit suicide due to failure of crop and where more than a majority of children below age of 5 are anemic and mal-nourished.
The side characterized by frequent community altercations and low male-female ratio. This is that face of India which is contradictory to the prosperous India and co-exists with it since decades.
Today, we talk of India as a fast growing economy with growth rate of 8% but we fail to talk about unequal distribution of income. India’s HDI is much below the expected level and the per capita income is flabbergasting. We talk of malls and hypercities changing the way people shop, in a nation, where majority live in darkness clad poverty not affording two square meals a day.
In all the adrenaline rush of fast moving service sectors, trillions of worth of FDI’s and FII’s, strengthening of rupee, profitable railways and more, we easily side-lined the most gravest problems of India. Lack of infrastructure, imbalance of population increase and job creation, health and hygiene conditions are the termite which are weakening the very foundation of the castle of high growth rate and opportunities. On the other hand, bureaucracy, red-tapeism, community oriented politics and the likes are the pinch of salt on the burning problems.
Gandhiji, Jawaharlal Nehru, Lal Bahadur Shashtri, definitely did not envision such an India plagued with internal inefficiencies and problems. As a citizen of India, I and many others dream of India to be a place where every child is literate, where every man stands against injustice and where every individual enjoys the fruits of growth rate.
India has been predominantly an agrarian economy. But comparing agricultures share in GDP (apprx 16%) and share in unemployment (apprx 55%) it dawns to us that we have failed to increase agricultural productivity. Our 5 year plans have failed to encourage agriculture. Our year by year growth in agriculture is as low as 2.3%. Millions of tones of food grains are wasted due to lack of proper storing and transportation facilities. I dream of an India where each individual gets two square meal a day and India becomes self sufficient in food grains.
The Indian government needs to invest heavily in education and infrastructure. A nation where population increases by 200000 every day, allocates merely 2% of budget to education. An increasing investment in infrastructure will also lead to more employment opportunities. I envision an India where every road and every city is astonishingly clean and where citizens are themselves conscious to use garbage bins. When the Indian economy will no longer be an opportunity only to the rich class, our dream will be fulfilled.
It is only we citizens who can bring a difference in the sad scenario of today. When one person will initiate an action, the whole India will follow. Every person initiating an action will lead to a shift from negative face of India to a positive face of India. Health and hygiene are such issues which cannot be improved upon until and unless every individual decides to fight it up passionately.
There will be many temptations to diverge but a strict adherence will bring a shift in even the most rigid of minds.
India will be the one of my dreams “when the entire literate and healthy population can afford eco-friendly technology of every form and eat hygienic food offered at a reasonable rate and fight against all injustice meted out to them.” Dreams are merely a pre-vision of a future plan. But to make this dream a reality, every Indian will have to join hands to move towards it. As Rabindranath Tagore puts it:
“Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high,
Where knowledge is free;
Where world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls;
Where words come out from depth of truth;
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, Let MY COUNTRY AWAKE”