Entitlements

Vasu Reddy From Chicago
vasureddy@aol.com

India has been run on political entitlements since 1947. For some reason the country continues to favor the privilege of the past or privilege of the family in looking for leadership at every level of the country. From the smallest village, town, city, state and the country; at every level politics are typically run as entitlements, and the country despite being the largest democracy continues to push through political entitlements. We love to keep talking about the legacy of someone or some family, and always are looking backwards on the glory of the past, and try to recapture the glory of the past in the current generation of people who represent the past.

While the value of remembering the past and the people who we look up to, the idea of a current generation of people are the same representation of people of the past is far from real. The claims by almost all Indian politicians at every level of politics, is difficult to miss even in this age of mass media and 24/7 coverage. The politicians simply will claim their right to be in the race as the legacy of their fathers, and will only use the past to constantly remind the voters of the totally irrelevant record of members of their family. To be on the record, India really doesn't have a record to boast of anything in any sector. It is a country of more than a billion people, and much of them live under desolate conditions. India is the largest democracy on the planet, and perhaps its only claim is to being the largest free society.

India is a country of contradictions, and people of easy gullibility. Contradictions exist with everything in its people, places, geography, languages, traditions, caste, religion, wealth and whatever human conditions that can possibly exist and distinguish people. Despite the contradictions, people simply find common ground and by and large live and let live in peace. In fact the contradictions add to the beauty of the country and its diverse and difficult fabric. Not too long ago, India really was a much larger country with multiple countries evolving with in the short span and now have become hostile neighbors. Whatever you do and however you view India it is still a cosmos of great diversity which is held together with sheer intensity of its people's will.

While the country makes great strides at becoming a global power with its democracy and the sheer size of the population, and its diversity, it really has never deployed all of its human minds and vast natural resources to the best use. It we forgive the invaders and conquerors of India until the independence from the British in 1947, even the newer India has never been able to find leadership that will truly devote the country's human and natural resources to the best use of the people of the country. India is constantly engaged in either useless wars or infiltrations, and large scale scams which simply destroy the country's ability to best deploy its resources to best serve the country's ever expanding population.

We also have the population, which is simply oblivious to the leadership and its doings. When we did not have mass media and relied only on radio and news papers, it was given that the people fully were not informed of the deeds (misdeeds) of the people in power, or it took a long time of the public to be informed of how their wealth was being squandered. In 2014 it is difficult to imagine that people don't know what is happening? India has 100% mobile phone use, 100% people have access to TV and mass media, and we still follow the words of few without personal evaluation of what they are saying and what they are really doing (or what they did when in power). There is no magic to meeting the country's needs, it can be as simple as use all of its resources without scamming and abuse. That could mean that politicians will really want to get elected to serve people, and almost all of Indian politicians are absolutely uninterested in public service. Politicians are in for only to scam or take an ego trip after achieving wealth that is beyond a person's means.

Wealth and history in democracies do have a lot of intrinsic value and Indians are no different than others in having the respect for both. The problem is not with wealth or history, but the Indian problem is with the politicians entitlements to the legacy of their families and their past politics. If the people of India really look at the worst possible legacy of every government that has been in power, and every government that has squandered public wealth and country's past since 1947, they would simply start looking at the future of the country without the entitlements to any person of the past and start to look at what would be best for their future.