Just Do it

Recently one of my friends has posted a piece on his blog which talks about, how well we are placed in terms of development and how we can compare ourselves with the developed nations of the world. I agree with him, I even commented on his post saying that I agree but those developed nation’s have made steady progress in recent times and we are only poised since long.
There is a dialogue in the movie named “Swades” it goes like this (I am translating in English) “Whenever we find ourselves inferior or bogged down by the supremacy of someone we always take support of our culture and Tradition, saying that we have a great culture and tradition which is missing in other countries” This statement is very true in today’s circumstances. I agree we have great tradition and culture which is thousands of years old, but we are still an underdeveloped country (some call us developing country , but I guess they have not been to the villages of India in interior of Chhattisgarh or West Bengal). Now, if I ask the reasons behind being an underdeveloped country ( Ok Developing, just to be politically correct) I am sure people will come up with hundreds of them, corruption, population, politician, Pakistan ( Yeah, coz we blame them for everything which is wrong here), and the list will keep on growing like the Jack’s beanstalk. Today morning while watching morning news I realize that instead of making such a long list we should just put one word which will answer the question and that is inaction.
In 1947, Pakistan attacked India for the first time, we fought them bravely and pushed them back, but not before losing significant footing in Kashmir, since then we have fought them 4 times in full fledged wars and fighting them daily in virtual war. They came to Mumbai, we were able to catch one of them, who in front of whole world accepted that he is a Pakistani helped by Pakistan and sent by Pakistan. He names his trainers and supporters in Pak, and what we get. The trial continues, Pakistan says they don’t have enough evidence, they can’t arrest the terrorists named, and what we do, well we release a joint statement reaffirming our belief in peace and also owning up the responsibility of some attacks in Pak, unknowingly or rather foolishly. We tell Pak, we have had enough and will not tolerate any attack on our soil, the hundredth time (and I think this is our 50th Last warning to them) and what we do well you guess it right…nothing. Last week our defence minister presented some figures in the parliament claiming that at least 650 soldiers have lost their life at LoC and 6 times Pakistan have broken the cease fire agreement…good analysis Mr. Minister, but what we did about it? Lodged a strong protest with the Pak government, coz that’s what we had done since 1947.
Ok, lets forget Pakistan for a while and look at all other problems we have, I know many will say that every country has their share of problems, what’s new in that. Well, new is that they tackle those problems and come up with solutions rather than just discussing them, and I am not talking about politicians here, I am talking about a common Indian. Most of the times we just blame everyone but ourselves for all our problems, we never want to take up the responsibility, own up a problem and try to find a solution. My friend mentions that US & UK are two countries who either got independence 300 years ago or were never ruled by foreigners and we should not compare ourselves with them, well a good point but it has been 60 years of our independence and still our agriculture depends on monsoon, which make sure that one part of our country is flooded every year whereas the other part suffers from drought, what has been done to tackle this, well..we made a plan, called river linking project and that’s it.
I am not denying the fact that we are plagued with lots of problems and we need to work together to find solutions for them, but look instead of doing that what we are doing, we are busy debating whether to ban a particular show aired at night showing some people telling the hard kept secrets of their lives in public. We are busy debating the kind of programs or movies or books Indians are suppose to see or read. One thing to notice here is that we are not at all inactive when it comes to banning or stopping these so called immoral acts, we take out our khaki shorts and swords, and take on the streets damaging public property worth lakhs of rupees because some NRI director has shown two women kissing in a movie, because after all its our thousand year old tradition and culture which we have to save.