It’s been 63 years of our freedom; we as a nation only keep buying pride of the fact that we are the largest democracy in the world. However, we cannot run away from the fact that we have failed to develop the feeling of “Indianness”, amongst us. We still are inhabitants of particular vernacular based regions. We Indians are always successfully exploited either by politicians or industries in making them a base for their products. Take education as a yardstick, take health as a measure, and take the ability of the men to contribute towards nation building, failure on all counts. Can we believe this – a fair price shop, which provides for the survival of the poor, is required to be shut for a day in a week, while liquor dens are thriving day in and out, a national event is more known today as a dry day, than remembered for the cause of the day. The amount of intolerance even for our own countrymen is growing, thanks to the ideologies of all and sundry politicians who carve out a living for themselves from this situation. We should accept the fact that we are bad at managing affairs, putting aside all the external factors for debacle we are facing from our neighbours, we ourselves did not ever develop nor show any inclination of doing so in the future into being strong enough. The situation is definitely hapless, but we can only hope some sunshine dawns on our dear India, a sunshine that throws away all that is bad so that we can bounce back and grow to earn our rightful respect in this world.
Mohd Ziyaullah Khan
Nagpur, M’rashtra