"When Abhinav Bindra won India's 1st gold medal and the National Anthem was played did you get goose bums?" was the question someone asked me in the train yesterday (I was travelling home from A'bad yesterday). I could not answer the question honestly, primarily because I did not witness the event, but I am sure I would have felt the same. But that made me wonder, why is the older generation hell bent on pointing its fingers at the younger generation? Why do we always get to hear "Your generation....", I am sure you agree with me when I say its outright annoying. Goaded past endurance, I write this post on our 61st Independence Day.
61 years ago when the nation was born, bleeding with partition, and Nehru said "When the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom", ironically forgetting that at that hour, India was sleeping while the world was awake. Never mind the glitch. Now, I wonder how those million homeless from Punjab, Sindh and Bengal must have felt when they heard the lines of the national anthem for the first time.... "Punjab, Sindh, Gujarat, Maratha......... "? Homeless? Helpless? Never mind the helplessness. Nehru, in his long rule still perfected Democracy. He and his generation created India - the dams, the railways, the cities etc. At the same time, both he and his daughter perfected a corrupt system of bureaucracy, in the name of the poor - and we are still fighting its evils.
61 years of Independence and yet, we find ourselves incapable of fighting the evils of society. 61 years of Independence, 61 years of poverty, 61 years of caste system in an independent India, 44 years of economic fetters, 10 years of Blasts and we are still counting. Though, infant mortality has reduced, health and education (through the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan) facilities have reached the interiors, the Mid-Day Meal Program (India's largest food distribution program for school children) has reached the interior villages, we have nurtured democracy and encouraged a plural society. This is an achievement in itself. Yet, India stands among the few countries in the world with highest maternal mortality (after Sub-Saharan Africa), we stand among the low ranking nations with respect to the Human Development Index only reiterated by the urban rural divide, we are still fighting terror in Kashmir, a large chunk of our child population is engaged in labour - on streets, in industries, in mills, in small scale factories. True famines are now a history and yet we find a large chunk of our population below poverty line (they earn less than a dollar a day) and do not get two square meals to eat. We are still a 1% economy. Alas...
We have no paeans to sing, only a tortuous roads to trudge. And while we carry on along the sinuous path, wondering whether the nuclear deal will pass, wondering whether there will be another dawn, like that of 1991, and whether success will finally dawn upon the ancient capital of Prithviraj. 'Our generation', for 'their' kind information is struggling, much more than them. We are often mired in between globalization, that urges us to take big strides, and a pathetically so-called socialist population policy that nips us often before we even get an opportunity. We are struggling between equity and equality - most politicians would mix up the two.
To those who say 'Your generation....', with effrontery I remind them that a lot of everything I just wrote is inherited from them itself, like palimpsest, layers and layers of deposits one generation after another. Every generation trying to correct the mistakes of the previous. Sure, it is a difficult task. And although I am not a great fan of Nehru, I'd end with what Nehru said 61 years ago -
"The future is not one of ease or resting but of incessant striving, so that one day we may fulfil the pledges we have so often taken..."
Happy Independence Day!
Jai Hind!
