If you develop yourself, your country will develop automatically.
Every Indian wants to do something for India. It's a common saying now a days, "Your
country has given you nothing, you say, but what have you given to your
country?". And indeed, it makes me quite thoughtful at times, while I
continue to ponder on how to make India a place more livable and
lovable, a better place overall.
Since 1947, we have indeed covered quite a journey together. Sometimes
there were dire times, such as the year of 1962, when the Chinese army
was savaging the borderlands of our nation, and at other times the
victorious flag of India decorated the skyline in all directions, as in
1971. Since 1991, situations have improved even more, with India
finally opening
its doors to welcome foreign direct investment and liberalizing trade
by minimizing tax barriers. And today, like Edward Luce writes in his
book 'In spite of the Gods: the rise of modern India', we can see more
and more prosperity across the cities and towns, and even in the
remotest of villages. Problems continue as usual, such as corruption and
honour
killings, rape and robbery, lack of healthcare and family-planning
mechanisms, but that doesn't mean we have acquired nothing. The fact
that such problems are now coming into our view now is itself an
indicator that we've civilized our nation to a great extent, and the
chance of developing and civilizing it even more lies ahead.
What is India? A change of viewpoint
Bankim Chandra Chatterjee, one of the greatest authors India has ever
known, was among the first to denote India as 'Mother India, the mother
of Indian race'. He dreamt of a united race, united under the banner of
one land stretching from the frozen vastness of the Himalayas to the
serene shores of southernmost Tamil lands. In his immaculate novel
'Anandamath', Bankim described his feelings for the united India,
starting with Bengal as a reference point and the rest of India
circling it.
Before, India was only a landmass, but Bankim's bold words 'Vande
Maataram' turned India into something godly and divine. He identified
religion with devotion to the motherland, and he was very right to do so
at that point of time. Over the years, 'Vande Maataram' has been
transformed into a chant that echoes all over India even today, though
not uttered by the voices we expect to utter them. Thousands of honest
men and women are working very hard without verbally chanting 'Vande
Maataram' so very often (like some political parties prefer doing), but
their work itself is the silent echo of 'Vande Maataram'.
But the thing to be pointed out here is that, even though Bankim was
very right in stirring emotion among thousands and millions by calling
India 'Mother', we must look at India logically, and not only
emotionally. Logically speaking, the nation of India is more than just a
landmass. Yes, the landmass is an important component of India, but it
doesn't constitute India as a whole. 'India' is a giant system, made up
of thousands and millions,
crores
and billions of individuals like you and me. India is an immensely
complex hotchpotch of complexities, and no one person can claim to have
'seen' or experienced or known it all. Thus vast is India, our nation.
Now, let us apply the principle of Reductionism to India as a whole.
Don't worry, I'm not talking about seeing India as a set of different
smaller entities or advocating further partition in any way. Basically,
we should see India as a set of uncountably many different sub-systems,
groups of people and even individual people at the lowest level. And
like it is said, 'revolution begins from the bottom'. For any change,
positive or negative, to affect India as a whole, it should start right
from the lowest level, the individual level.
What? Me? How can I develop India? I'm alone!
Yes, we all are 'alone' at certain points of our lives, and yet we live
on. Like in the case of the superposition principle in physics, we can
see that the electrostatic interaction between any two point charges is
not affected by the presence of other charges, and at any arbitrary
point, the total electrostatic potential is the sum of individual
electrostatic potentials contributed at that point by each charge
independently. Similarly, if you work for the development of India,
never mind who else does. When you're contributing to the cause of
India's development, YOU ARE making a difference, no matter how small
the difference is. And one man can begin a revolution, whereas I believe
we have thousands of volunteers.
No matter what you do, no matter wherever you are, no matter what your
qualifications are, if you wish, you can contribute to the growth of our
nation. And by working for the development of India, we are indeed
working for ourselves. Because when we make ourselves better men, India
becomes a better country. And when we make India a better country, the
logical, economical and mass-psychological conditions become right for
the evolution of better men.
How can I develop India?
Like I said, for any one of us alone, developing India as a whole is
impossible. India is so big, and there are so many people who think,
speak and act differently. But no matter, when you're working for
something good, you're making a difference. And then, impressed and
inspired by your example, others might join the cause in their own ways,
and ultimately these 'small differences' caused by each of the
participants get stacked up or integrated to form one large
'difference', which can happen to make a change.
We must think of ourselves as cells constituting a body, and this body
is India. So, let us take a look at some ways which are easy to perform
and maintain, and yet they can benefit India:
1. Maintaining good habits and practices, developing ourselves
Being a good individual overall is quite an achievement nowadays, with
so many evils alluring us in every direction, from alcohol to smoking,
from illicit sexual relations to drug addiction. But we should all try
to make ourselves better, in our own eyes. That automatically
contributes to India's growth. When we refrain from cheating others,
from taking advantage of a disadvantaged person, we're acting nobly. And
thus, we are making the wheel of India move forward. We're gradually
making our country a better place.
Why exactly do we need to do, to make ourselves better? If I'm a student, I can study more and learn my concepts better,
more regularly.
If I am a policeman, I can at least try to stay unaffected by bribes,
and do my duty as nicely as I can. If I am a teacher, I should try to
teach my students as much as possible, and help them not only in their
fields of study, but in solving social problems and quarrels as well.
Gandhiji had said it rightly "
If you want a change, be that change". By living as nobly as we can, we can become
shinning
examples for others to follow. Another thing to remember is that, if
you stand for nothing, you can fall for anything. Thus, we should take
moral pride in being noble, in being hard-working Indians.
2. Contributing bits to the welfare of our locality
I am a resident of Kolkata, and truly I haven't ever been to Mumbai or
Chennai yet. There are thousands like me in Mumbai and Chennai, for
example, who haven't been to Kolkata. So, although we should always
remember that we are one people, the part of India where we live in
should become our 'India'. If each Calcutta contributes to the
development of Kolkata, each Mumbaikar contributes to the growth of
Mumbai and so on, the overall result will be the development of India.
This should not however be confused with regional politics. I am an Indian first, and that's my identity. However, our localities are our 'fields of work', as I like to call them.
For
example, the unsung hero Tukaram Omble, who caught Ajmal Kasab bodily,
and died fighting the terrorists during the 2008 terror attack in
Mumbai, used to care a lot about Mumbai, his city. And he died for
India, as much as he died for Mumbai. The essence of my statement is
that, we should all try to do whatever we can do make our localities
better, and the combined result will be betterment of India as a whole.
It is rightly said "Take care of the small things, and the big ones will
fit in properly for you".
For example, if you find a busy road that's not maintained properly, we
should write a letter/e-mail to the respective authorities.
Additionally, we can post an article about it online. We should make use
of social networks such as Google+, Facebook etc.
to spread the word about it.
3. Not giving in to 'youth unrest'
Nowadays, every single rape incident is being followed by a series of
angry young men and women chanting slogans and shouting. And why?
No,
not because these 'protesters' care about the victims, it's simply a
sort of fashion, a sort of showing the world 'How cool I am!'. And
youth, young generation! I hate to be one of today's youth at times,
when I find the true self of most of these ignorant brats. It's true
that the elders are no better, a bunch of superstitious folks only
complaining about everything under the sun, but their failures won't
make the so-called 'youth' successful.
And unsurpsisingly, the media is paying too much attention to these
attention-mongers. For example, after the Delhi rape incident, thousands
of protesters clashed with the police, and even killed a valiant
officer, Subhash Chandra Tomar. Rapes happen, and the true way to
protest against them is to spread the word of caution, take active and
passive measures against it, not making a big issue out of everything.
4. Being a source, not a sink
We may contribute to the growth of our country, or else we may
contribute to its downfall, no matter how little our contribution
matters. And the proper way to do something for the country is to be
a responsible individual. We should all try to be polite and gentle,
because good
behaviour doesn't cost a buck. Likewise, encouraging others and not laughing at others' disadvantages or failures should be
practised by everyone.
In fact, the problem with today's Indians of almost all age groups is
that, most of them have little to nil self-respect. And people who don't
even respect themselves can't respect anything or anybody else. This is
to be avoided.
5. Combating superstition, social evils and wrong beliefs
We are men of letters, most of us who'd want to develop the country
anyway. And we should not give in to superstitions under any condition.
For
example, a lady from my neighborhood here has declared the cause of the
devastation in Uttarakhand to be 'punishment for the sins of Indians'.
Such baseless beliefs should be combated. It's true that we don't
always have the option to openly argue with such people, and most of the
time arguments are fruitless anyway, as they will continue to stick to
their beliefs, but that doesn't mean we can't protest otherwise. We
should not reply to such idiotic, unscientific sentences or beliefs in
any way, and use the Gandhian policy of peacefully protesting them by
boycotting them from intellectual discussions and arguments.
Likewise, many evil practices are still strong in our country. For
example, have you ever seen a Bengali marriage ceremony? So many idiotic
things are done that it's almost next to laughable. The same goes for
Bihari, Marathi and Punjabi ceremonies too, albeit in different forms.
We should at least abstain from taking part in these utterly ridiculous
activities.
6. Caring for the environment
We should not harm plants, animals or human beings for no apparent reason.
For example, plucking of flowers should be discouraged. Religion might
support it, but environmental science and its principle of sustainable
development does not. Likewise, watering a plant is much better an
action that visiting your local temple/mosque/church.
Minimizing the usage of electricity, using mass-transit systems as much as possible etc.
should also be
practised.
7. Being more responsible online
Especially for today's youth, social networking has become the trendiest
thing to do. These irresponsible folks don't even use correct spellings
online, typing ridiculous things such as '
gdnt frnzzzzz', '
gd mrn,
sme
2 u'. This isn't English, it's rather gibberish or Engrish, if you
prefer. We should try using more sophisticated and meaningful sentences.
The internet is a vast repository of information. And it is our
responsibility, as users of this miraculous gift of science, to use it
properly and responsibly. Trying to hack someone else's Gmail account or
cyber-bullying someone online, or fighting a verbal war against
ex-boyfriend doesn't make anyone cool. Rather, information regarding
pretty much everything meaningful can and should be shared online, to
spread free education online. One doesn't have to be an expert when it
comes to blogging or writing articles otherwise. If you don't have any
specific topic to write about, do consider writing about your
city/town/village, its tourist attractions and how to visit them, maybe a
recipe or two, etc.
The internet is crammed with information, that's true. But as for India,
the level of availability of information and data is very less. For
example, recently my cousin requested me to find a piece of information
for him online. The query was very simple, to find out the year the
first police station was established at Labhpur (a block in the district
of Birbhum, West Bengal). And I just couldn't find it anytime soon.
When I had given up all hope, I happened to come across a poorly
structured government-maintained site on Birbhum, and got the
information there.
As Indian users, we can always continue to post information bits of
information online, on various blogs and so on, which can help other
users and vice versa. Thus, instead of spending hours typing smilies on
Facebook, we should actually do some real work online.
Last words
If you develop yourself your country will develop automatically.
Shailendra Singh
