Reforming the Mind Set

Vasu Reddy From Chicago
vasureddy@aol.com

The day of reckoning is here for the Indian democracy to face the challenges of leadership and guiding the vast country’s population and its diverse needs.  The transparent democracy that was destined when it achieved its independence from the UK simply has remained a paper democracy.

To start with the country’s initial leaders were part of achieving independence from the UK, and had tremendous acceptance for their contributions to achieve the country’s independence.  They were freedom fighters and philosophers, and men and women with ideals for a independent India, but not administrators and politicians of experience to handle a vast nation with complex social structure, many language and traditional differences and demographically challenging population; all of which with many more complex issues to deal with, immediately following the pillaging of national resources by the occupying forces.

There was a lot of leverage for the initially elected leaders of independent India, and it continued for a couple of decades with the romance of the leaders efforts in delivering independence to India.  While the process of independence was lead by a few, the entire nation was in full support and made great sacrifices in driving the British out of the country.  A great deal of respect was bestowed in the leaders who came into the power in the independent India, despite the lack of political or constitutional leadership, as it was in the case of the USA, the initial leaders of a independent nation are typically freedom fighters who command great respect for their sacrifices and leadership in achieving the independence of the country.

The case of the USA is a great example of leaders truly guiding the nation for peace and prosperity and accounting for national integration, development and proper planning.  India could have taken a similar route to becoming a great democracy by establishing a transparent policy making government that truly had its people in the planning, rather than the people in power determining the use of the country’s great resources.

India’s population was so used to hearing to rhetoric of pre-independent leaders and forgot that the post-independence rhetoric should have been totally different as it should have been towards the well being of the country rather than fighting an occupying force.  We continue to hear great voices which sound far too familiar to pre-independent speeches rather than achieving objectives of today’s needs.

It is the people of the nation who really should stop hearing to long winded speeches of plans that can never be achieved, and banter about the other guy who is so bad, and needs to be replaced by the new guy who can be worse.

There is really no prescription to what the country needs to do to find the right leaders, as even great promise the new leaders seem to evaporate as soon as they get into a seat of power.  People really need to stop listening to banter, focus on their well being without the politicians taking them for a joy ride every time there is an election year.  It requires a reform of the Indian mind, rather than any system.  Once we start to stop believing the absurd promises and blatantly absurd promises, we will probably begin to see that there is no truth to what we hear.  There is no immediate prescription to changing the system, except pushing for meaningful delivery of basic needs of the population.  Perhaps the Amish mindset is what the Indian communities need, so they become self sufficient in small groups, and really don’t care about what someone else is going to do for them, rather work as a great big family to tend to the needs of overall community.  If every village, town, municipality, city, and on work towards self sustainability by having people work together and achieve sufficiency, the country will see progress.  First we must reform our mind on not worrying about just me, but my community, and the rest will be progress.