Of a general strike and breath of fresh air

22nd January, 2009: Another bandh,another disruption to normal life and yet again, another docile acceptance of unreasonable whims and retardant thinking of a person/group who refuses to accept another person's right to peaceful and dignified life.

Sometime back, there seemed to be some sort of frustration at regular strikes and a perceptible opposition to it. With time, however, it seems that people have given up. To feel good, we can say that there are a lot of people who make it a point to oppose bandhs and come to work. Delve slightly beneath the surface and it is not difficult to fathom the reason. Either compensate on weekend or take a leave. Throw in the option of working on a strike without compensating or pay-cut and a different picture will emerge altogether.

However, I was in for a welcome change of thought on my way to office today. The bandh had been called to protest the conversion of polluting 2-stroke autos to environment-friendly 4-stoke variants. The road was pretty empty; countable pedestrians and vehicles. Instead of frustration of frequent strikes, I felt nice. Surprised? So was I. I was wondering what was the cause of it when a gush of cool air cleared all the mystery.

There was a refreshing freshness in the air. It was light, fresh and cool; a spectacular contrast to the heavy, dusty and smoky metropolis air that I am used to. I wanted to breathe rather than cover my nose with a handkerchief. There was a bright sunlight which felt warm rather than hurting. I felt that I was in a different city all together.

I was happy, felt positive and there was an immediate desire to walk rather than to take an auto. Down the way, a person was watering the roadside plants and in a little puddle of water that has formed, a sparrow enjoyed its morning bath. The water drops flying around sparkled brightly like pearls. Sounds poetic I know but it was a sight that one would yearn for.

When I returned from office in the evening, the watered leaves had not grayed out with pollution soot and the reddish-orange sunset had filled the sky above.

A smile broke on my lips. Silently, I prayed for another strike.

India - An aspiring superpower?

Every now and then you can hear someone say that India is going to be the next superpower; the 21st century will mark the rise of a new confident India that will be ready to take the world by storm. Hope is in the air and over a billion people are looking forward to the D-day, except a few, including me.

Call me a pessimist if you like but ignoring obvious facts is not optimism either; its suicidal at best.

A nation that wants to direct the actors on a world stage should be able to get its own house under order first. A nation that wants to become a superpower cannot be a beggar. It has to be confident of itself. And yet, these ideas seem to be so remote to India today.

India's heart was bled with impunity and yet all that India's politicians (Does India have leaders?) can do is to beg the world to put pressure on another nation to stop its aid to the extremists. What has it done on its own? Well, its keeping all options open. What are these options? Your guess is as good as mine.

When we have fever, we take medicines to recover and prevent further infection. Then, to get over weakness, vitamins are taken and daily exercise is suggested to make the body resistant to further attacks. We don't write petitions to bacterias or viruses. Is not the situation similar? How can our politicians be so ignorant of such simple facts? You can't leave your house open and then beg the world to ask burglars not to break in. Heights of stupidity, dude!!!!!

Since the advent of extremism, India has done painfully little to stop its growth apart from incoherent knee-jerk reactions. There is no concerted effort to fence our borders, strengthen our intelligence systems or use our economic clout to reign in those who work against us. We have not been able even to stop our home-grown extremism. All we have done is to find excuses and over a period of time, this has morphed one common excuse so that the politicians are sparred the effort to invent a better one.

"This is the work of foreign agencies. Our condolences are with the bereaved family in this difficult hour. We will bring the guilty to law and will not allow this incident to be repeated again. The government has announced a compensation of 5 lakhs to the next kin of dead.” Sounds cliche? Don't be surprised if the government puts the blame on ISI for the next earthquake or flood.

And we expect such a nation to be a superpower. Nice joke. We can't even decide the future of our own people let alone the world. Wake up to the truth and stop living in dream. A bunch of visionless, incompetent and selfish politicians can never make India a superpower; neither today nor tomorrow.

Superpower; that reminds me of the tag 'Developed countries'. It will be safe to assume that the basic criterion for a country to be called a superpower is that it should be developed. Well, are we not a group of people where every group fights for a backward caste status?

Let's be honest and ask ourselves. Do we even want to be a superpower?