Super Power or Super Hype

While our cities are broken and untidy we can see some glimmer of development on a couple of well done streets, up market localities and swanky malls. These pockets of relative excellence make believe the city dwellers that one day we will be a developed country. At least a façade we create in our mind and this is what our politicians keep telling us, India will be the next super power, investors around the world are going gag about our growth story and all is good with our politics and economic policies. India is definitely shining for our politicians; we can have a look at their asset declarations with the election commission. Their assets are growing.

All the India shining story becomes desperation once we move out of the cities into the rural settings, this is where 70% of the country lives. It is India shaming in these unattended parts of the country. I keep going back to my village often and return as quickly discouraged.

Most of our villages are stuck in a time capsule. They cannot progress since they are invisible to the government. Dilapidated school buildings, dis-interested and de-motivated populace looking for government succor for existence and nothing called Infrastructure in these villages. Most elections are about how our politicians will bring panchayat raj, gram swaraj etc to villages and create a utopian land where our farmers will be producing lots of food with lots of cattle and making lot of money. This is one more façade they create in our minds. There is abject poverty in our villages and it is far from utopian images we have in our minds. Only film makers and politicians manage to create an image otherwise.

We should ask our bureaucrats and ministers to spend time in our villages; they will suffer from malaria, diarrhea and exhaustion due to lack of clean drinking water, electricity and flies.

So when our TV anchors and media talk about stock market high and dips, FDI and other fancy stuff let us give a thought to our fellow citizens in villages nothing of this is going to impact them or at least has till now. They need basics roads, electricity and their children should go to school. There is no plan on how we will get kids from villages to cities and industries to make them productive. A lot of youth and middle age men and women are wasting their productive years in our villages, desperate and disappointed.

Let us stop the hype about being a super power and get our basics right, create a civilised existence for ourselves.