I just finished reading a book called ‘Great Indian Middle Class’. The book was written by Pavan Varma a bureaucrat. The idea behind the book was to explore the lifestyle, priorities, attitudes, behavior and the political and social involvement and outlook of the Middle class in India . The book was structured very well listing out the events and popular response to those events starting from the days of Independence struggle till the beginning of 21st century.
I kept asking me several questions, what is a common man’s dream? What do parents dream about them? To me it was a good education, then a decent job that pays me well, a house and a car maybe, marriage and peaceful retirement. From the many million forwards I have received talks all about how to stay happy, what to keep me motivated etc etc. As it now occurs the society that we live in has become irrelevant to our daily life. In earlier days there used to be some strings attached to the society, not in terms of any feeling towards the well being but rather on mattes like marriage, status etc which is of common interest and subjects of dispute. But now laws are more lenient, people have started to take more freedom in choosing marriage, education etc. Particularly in secluded places like cities. This has made us grow more and more immune to the social changes, or social needs. As the book says, India ’s independence struggle never realized to empower people. Even after the country achieved the independence, most of the classes in India remained under the same bondage they already had. These were the tumulus periods of Indian development.
Getting back, it questions the responsibility we have shrugged off from our shoulders to maintain a totally independent society/country. This behavior leads to many questions like why after all we struggled for independence. Was it just for getting rid of a set of rulers whose ethnicity didn’t happen to match with ours? Was it to really get a chance to rule the country as the British have? Was it to give every people in this country a freedom which many couldn’t even dare to dream? What finally happened after the Independence ? Gandhiji got shot, rivers of blood flowed in the name of religion, zamindari systems prevailed, caste based discrimination transformed into class based isolation, educated elites managed to get employment, and the downtrodden remained forgotten. A constant sense of a feeling that we cannot reach the status of rich and elite never got away and even after being filthy rich the crave for more money, investment, savings were the only things that made us worry more.
We learnt on techniques of self upliftment, we learnt that education is the path to achieve all the self-interests, but we didn’t bother to look back and see whether the facility to give this service is available for all the people, we learnt about new health care techniques and their benefits but we failed to see that majority of the people in the country were excluded from these benefits because they come with a price tag, we learnt about all the techniques available to save tax, we learnt that competition is the ultimate word for development, we learnt how to close eyes on many things that contradicted the idea of meritocracy that we claimed is deteriorating the development. We saw educational institutions turn from beacons of the society to the brokers for corporate. We see corruption and learnt to accept it as part of the society, while at the same time accusing the government for corruption. We learnt that voting is a way to show their consciousness towards the nation’ well being and at the same time wash our hands from any responsibility accusing the government for their inaction. We have learnt that share market is a place where you can make money with just putting in some money and without putting any of your effort and literally do legal gambling. We have learnt to love the propaganda news like ‘Indian wins Nobel prize’ while closing the eyes on news like ‘ India ’s literacy rate is low’, we have learnt to jump and merry at the news like ‘Share market jumps 100 pts’ while ignoring the ‘2 lakh farmers suicide since 2008’. We have learnt to justify our insensitiveness to social well being as the generations go on. Though physically one, this country is getting split heavily into classes, with a society of self-interested individuals quoting all the historical facts and fantastic theories to justify the social paradigm as something that is good.
If we fail to act to al the crimes and inequalities happening around (due to legal or illegal reasons) and decide to layback on our velvet couches blaming the government then this society will one day rot out and at that stage there wont be government, lawlessness and disorder would be the rulers and our insensitiveness would get its final blow.
No comments:
Post a Comment