Developed nation

Once I was watching Malaysia photographs in Delhi at my cousin brother's house, who just returned from there. I was really jealous of Malaysia. What a tiny country which developed beyond our imagination. But then I realised, there are many countries around world who are nowhere near India, when we compare them with size or population. These countries are developed to such a magnitude that we are really surprised and awestruck to watch them. Let it be Singapore of area 100 sqkm or be Thailand. Take the case of Taiwan or Indonesia or for that matter a micro size of Mauritius. But the quality of life in those countries is much better than even Mumbai. In fact as a countrymen, we are far better than many countries on the business aspects of transparency. We are flexible and adaptable. We Indians are neither stubborn or rigid nor arrogant. We are frugal. Despite all such beautiful qualities, we are left far behind than rest of the world as far as prosperity is concerned. 

I was accompanied once by an American in car while traveling from my home to the company. We were stopped at signal in Swargate square. We were surrounded by many beggar kids knocking glass for want of money. Fellow American said to me "Rajesh, I have traveled so many countries around the world, but believe me I have not seen such poverty level anywhere else in the world. As a society, why can't you do something to eradicate this?" I was depressed for next couple of hours. 

Keeping aside political conditions, I feel that we do not follow some of the basic things in day to day life. We lack in self discipline, passion for cleanliness, integrity at every stage of life. The over glorification of history is one big hurdle in our progress. We are too much engrossed in pampering our past which has no relevance for today or tomorrow. In short we are falling short in strengthening our social commitments towards nation. We feel too good of ourselves as a country when Mr Nadela, Ms Nooyi or Mr Pichai  head some foreign companies. But we forget to anlyse if it was possible had any of them stayed in India to pursue their professional career.

Indeed, we all have to work hard. We all have to put up our sleeves and make this country livable and lovable. We should stop beating the drums of calling our country as "prospective superpower". We have been calling this ourselves for years together and still carries the tag "developing nation" instead of "developed nation".  

I know, it is really futile exercise to write blog on the subject. But we can pass on the message of following basic mandatory qualities through this social and professional media network. And who knows, a chain reaction can be developed to pass on such messages only to bring change in the society and then subsequently in the nation. Finally, this is the first step by keeping faith that we have to shoulder the tag of "Developed Nation" by 2020.