In these times of interactive journalism I make it a point to read the blogs this column evokes. From doing this,I have discovered to my huge distress a national characteristic that I thought died with socialism. And,this is our uniquely Indian inability to distinguish between India and the Government of India. In those bad old socialist days when I was growing up,the political atmosphere in India was not very different to countries that lived secret,totalitarian lives behind the iron curtain. We did not criticise our great leaders because that amounted to blasphemy and we did not run a tooth comb through their policies because that amounted to criticism of our great country. It was a post-colonial time and the chip we had on our collective shoulders was enormous. I thought it had disintegrated with the new confidence that Indians developed after our moribund economy was opened up in the nineties and after satellite dishes ended our isolation from the rest of the world. Alas,the blogs tell another story.
My column on the appalling state of Indias infrastructure,last week,evoked a surprisingly robust response. The chip-on-the-shoulder wallahs raged about how this column is always pessimistic. And those who are really pessimistic about Indias future said that things were never going to improve. And,that all good Indians should and do leave for foreign lands. A blogging battle occurred between the two camps. With the chippy ones taking the Mera Bharat Mahaan line: no matter how bad things are in India,it is a better country than developed and depressing Britain. The foreign camp said correctly that this was rubbish.
You would not know this if you see the letters I get every time I mention Sonia Gandhi in this space. Some accuse me of being jealous of her beauty. The more erudite charge me with having been denied a job in her kitchen cabinet and so being full of angst.
Luckily nobody can make similar charges when it comes to infrastructure,but one interesting comment was that I had no business to be criticising anything at all since I had refused to pay a fine when my dog littered Marine Drive. My protest was against the absurdity of a municipal law that made Marine Drive the only road in Mumbai on which the poop of pedigreed dogs is illegal. Stray dogs are allowed. The point I was making was that Mumbais municipal officials should first fulfill their obligations to keep the city clean and not make token gestures. In any case,what does this have to do with demanding that India pay more attention to building modern infrastructure?
The best blog last week came from someone who charged me with not suggesting solutions. So here are some. We must do away with antiquated laws and procedures that cause us to take decades to build a highway or an airport while other countries in that time build several. We must plan for the future and not the present. We must have environmental hearings in advance and make it illegal for the likes of Medha Patkar to play an obstructive role after hundreds of crore rupees have been spent on a project. And,above all,we must want better infrastructure. As long as the people of India are happy to live in cities that look like slums,we will not get sanitation or modern waste disposal. As long as we are happy with railway stations that smell of open latrines,that is what we will get and as long as we are happy to live without a single modern,access-controlled motorway,we will not get one.
It should be clear that our politicians are more than happy to do nothing other than serve their own interests if they can get away with it. And,our bureaucrats are perfectly happy to serve the interests of their political masters rather than the people of India. Their colonial training,which remains unchanged,ensures this. If this amounts to criticising India,then this column will continue to do so. Meanwhile,all you bloggers get rid of that chip on your shouldersit is unattractive and unnecessary and it seems to be confusing your perspective.
