Yes, we are now our own masters. India is the greatest democracy in the
world and is poised to be a superpower! We have exploded nuclear bombs and sent
rockets to the moon. We also have ICBMs and other warheads and won wars with
Pakistan. Leaders maintain we are militarily strong to face any threat. There
is a strong middle middles whose lives have improved. There is unity in diversity
and all religious and ethnic groups are more or less living in harmony. 
The average income in India was not much different from
South Korea in 1947; South Korea became a developed country by 2000s and India
remained one of the world’s poorest, least efficient, and most corrupt nation
in the world!
After independence, Nehru, the first PM, developed policies in
the fashion of USSR and it became suicidal for India and its people. He closed
our borders and made it isolated from the world like the iron curtain that
existed in USSR. He invested the
nation’s entire resources in the public sector industries most of which became
‘white elephants’ or total failures. He tried to prop them up with heavy
subsidies from the tax payer’s money. Private enterprise was dissuaded
nationally in the name of socialism. He took away the initiative and the
competitive nature of the great people. His state controls led to red tapism and bureaucracy. Up to 80
agencies had to be satisfied before a manufacturing firm could be granted a
license! The large bureaucracy ate away the GDP both at
the centre and in the states and they still do. They are corrupt to
the core and they swallow whatever little earmarked for the poverty alleviation
programs. Organized Unions disrupted work and production in every sector but
their pay and perks were increased without ensuring productivity (this is
continuing even now).
Narasimha Rao opened
up the Indian Economy to international trade and introduced Free Market Principles
which resulted in some progress. Again
the reins of power went to the Nehru family (money can do wonders in this poor
country) and the nation started retrograding with rampant corruption and
poverty. The leaders are fattening their purses so that they can control the
Indian elections at any point of time. But the downtrodden masses are becoming
the poorest in the world: 700 million poor people earn about or less than Rs20
(25cents) a day and half of all our children are malnourished, stunted and
wasted! India has 1/3 of the world’s extreme poor people. World Bank
estimates that more than 100 million Indian households are below the poverty line!
Presence of a massive parallel economy in the form of
black money stashed in overseas tax havens by the leaders is the main cause. The
wealth of this nation is plundered by the rulers! The cries of the poor under
pangs of hunger and pain go unnoticed. They are powerless; the only consolation
is that their death is not that far. The contours of inequality survive with
the fierceness of a dagger. There are 85 million (7%of the total population)
tribals living in regions where (due to extreme poverty) the naxalite
movement is becoming strong.
The middle class, watching the media controlled by the Congress,
think that the country is going to be a super power. But in reality there is widespread
and extreme poverty, illiteracy, backwardness of women, mal-nutrition, sickness
of children, high birth rate, population explosion, wrong priorities in the
allotment of central funds, subsidy culture and a huge budget deficit.
India buys more arms
and ammunitions than any nation in the world ( the interest could be kickbacks
from the multi- billion dollar purchases). And with such a huge defense budget,
India is nowhere near China in defense preparedness and our arms and ammunitions
are substandard (useless?). Half the Indian houses do not have a toilet and the
rulers buy substandard things and send rockets to the moon to know if water
exists there! The Billions when they sit in the open to defecate can hear the
roar of the rockets and the boom of the atomic devices and sub standard guns.
The whole system has been made corrupt and the masses are made
to be satisfied with political gimmicks, minority appeasement and solving religious
and local issues during an election.
They are made to believe (do they have an independent thinking?) that any
leader including Anna Hazare(an
anti-corruption crusader who owns only a bowl and sleeps on the floor) has to
be like the ruling Congress leaders. This is horrendous and nobody can find hope
in such a situation. The powerful ruling leaders and government employees will continue
sucking the wealth of this nation and fool the people as long as the latter don’t
become educated and develop an independent mind to assess what is going on.
The rich businessmen, political leaders, vested interests and
criminals seem to be the ones who give direction to the policies, laws, rules and
regulations of this land. The
whole government machinery has become totally rotten. Scam after scam surface in
which the politicians have amassed wealth through graft and other illegal ways. Is the government promoting and spreading
corruption? Look at the result! One out of
three people in India, a fabulously rich nation, today live below the poverty line (earning less than $1/2
a day) and almost half of all our children are malnourished, stunted or underweight. The entire wealth is stacked away as black money by the political leaders and hoarders in secret foreign accounts.