For India to Prosper

Lalit A Patel

In the first and earlier millennia, India was in enviable positions as a great empire. But there is no point in chewing the past. In the second millennium, India has more-or-less remained in a miserable position. Now in the third millennium, India needs to look ahead and make a concerted effort, to come out of this mess.

The major causes of problems faced by India are: Individualcentric Systems, Engineering Cornering, Judicial Delays, Population Explosion, Cultural Diversity, External Threats, Versatile Corruption, Networking Constraints. Let us try to understand the meaning and/or remedy of these causes.

Individualcentric Systems

Most of the problems being faced by India are not unique to India. Almost all the countries have been facing such problems. However, unlike other better-off countries, India has been taking these problems for granted with its classic "Chalta Hai (Works Fine)" attitude. This attitude prevents India from containing these problems within their bearable limits. India must come out of this attitude and try its best to solve and reduce these problems.

Indians are generally heroes in individual works but zeroes in team works. Indians are just superb in individual-based BharathNatyams or SitarVadans. But Indians have almost lost the art of team-based RasGarbas and have never paid attention to team-based Orchestra. Something at the grass-root level must be done to imbibe team work habits in Indians.

Engineering Cornering

India has been blessed with superb landscapes and nice weathers, and has excellent civil engineers (like Vishveshraia) good at great structures (like Bhakara-Nangal). Today however most of "reliable" Indian civil engineers are pre-occupied with building buildings or hopping for glamorous non-civil-engineering projects or in executing government projects in the months of March (when bills can be passed without inspection). The Indian government and the wealthiests need to tap the talents of these "reliable" civil engineers. They all need to urbanize deserts and valleys. They all need to construct nice roads and bridges to take care of the increasing traffic in India.

Judicial Delays

India had rulers like Bharat and Jehangir who developed systems for proper and timely justice. India had barristers like Gokhale and Gandhi who applied their barristry wisdom to win freedom for India. Unfortunately, Bharat was "killed" by Dhrutrashtra, Jehangir by Aurangjheb, and Gokhale and Gandhi by opportunist politicians. It is very often as if barristers are acting from behind bars.

Justice delayed is justice denied. Bhinderwales are created not by a community but by an ineffective or inefficient system of justice. It takes ages to settle a case in the court. Lingering on cases in courts is like constipation in body; it is the root cause of many cancerous evils. This problem needs to be wisely resolved before the cancer spreads all over. Fortunately, it is not so difficult to solve this problem. India may follow USA’s (unpatented) system of basing judgements on opinions from the jury-duty people. India may take the help of modern tools like internet to disseminate the data imprisoned in rusty dusty archival books.

Population Explosion

Population can not and should not be reduced by allowing more accidents on roads. It is good that India is trying its best to contain the population explosion by proper education and medical tools. This should be kept up and at all levels. Spreading the population over less-populated areas will greatly help.

Cultural Diversity

Long back, native Indians gradually migrated southwards into many islands in the Indian ocean, while people from Europe and West Asia aggressively migrated into India. Such anthropological migrations have been all around the world, and have caused wars and cultural diffusions. The cultural diversity in India needs to be viewed with this perspective in mind.

India has been a battle field for so many different cultures. It is nothing new for India. What is so peculiar today is blaming others rather than solving the problem. Hindus blame Muslims for problems of India, and Muslims blame India for problems of Muslims. Hindus should remember that Akbar’s wife was a Rajput. Hindus should apply the wisdom with which the Rishis had united so many different cultures settled in India. Muslims should remember that Moghal Muslim invaders had fought against Ghulam Muslim rulers in India. Muslims should apply the wisdom with which the Sufis had tried to win the confidence of the Hindus.

Versatile Corruption

The works department, through a contractor, repairs a road which has been bad for last several years. The telecom department digs up the road the very next day for cabling. This is a systematic case of corruption involving three corrupted parties. One political wing takes some bribe. Another political wing bewares the public of this bribe and wins the election. This is a hysteric case of corruption involving two corrupted parties and third foolish party.

India has been once-a-while trying to take steps against such cases of corruption. Main problem is that there is no pragmatic and systematic approach to fight this evil. There is no need to spend two billion rupees of the public to investigate a bribe of one million rupees of someone, using an inefficient and ineffective corruption fighting system. It might be better to spend one billion of public rupees to make the corruption fighting system efficient and effective and then spend another one billion of public rupees to fight against one thousand cases of bribes of one trillion rupees.

A private-sector business unit in India typically allocates less than ten percent of the total cost, for the cost of human resources. The private-sector business unit wastes all its stamina on limiting the cost of human resources, but rarely worries about limiting other costs. A public-sector business or non-business unit in India goes by socialistic or "salute" considerations on delimiting the cost of human resources. This multi-tier cost structuring for human resources has been playing a significant role in enhancing the corruption in India. It needs to be tackled wisely and pragmatically.

Networking Constraints

Some Indians settled and enlightened in USA have tried to enlighten India with telecommunication and networking systems. This has been a major revolution (at par with the steel revolution by Jamshedji Tata). India needs to exploit such technological revolutions.

Within only two minutes, on some day a few years back, all Ganapati idols in India started being showered with milk. It was a manifestation of the potential of networking. India now needs to use this potential to network the people for their education and well-being. Networking might work as a key to get other keys.