Recently, I had an opportunity to be with the former Chairman & Managing Director of FACT Ltd, one of the largest fertilizer manufacturing companies of the country, located at Cochin. We were together at the office of the Head of BPCL - Cochin Refineries, related to a function being organized by the Cochin Chapter of Indian Society of Training & development which I am chairing this year. At the reception of the corporate office of the Refineries, we saw a photograph of Mrs. Indira Gandhi, the then Prime Minister of India, inaugurating the company. Seeing this, the former FACT CMD said that at his corporate office, there is an unique photograph of four Indian PMs in one snap, taken during the inauguration of FACT Ltd. Upon my checking up, he said it was Pandit Nehru, the first PM of India who inaugurated the Factory and on that occasion, he was accompanied by his daughter Indira Gandhi and grand son Rajiv Gandhi (both of whom became Indian Prime Minister later). Of course, the fourth person on the photograph was Lal Bahadur Shastry, who became PM after the demise of Nehru. Shastry was the Agricultural Minister then under whose purview came the fertilizer manufacturing.
This sets me thinking. We have had a father, daughter and grandson as our Prime Minster. And of course the fourth generation (Rahul Gandhi, son of Rajiv & Sonia Gandhi) is soon to take over. He is already being projected within and outside the Congress Party as the heir apparent. In fact, if he wanted, he could have become the Country’s PM during the beginning of this Lok Sabha in 2009, but he chose against it.
Though we have had other Prime Minsters (Except for A B Vajpai, other Such as VP Singh, Chandra Shekhar, Narsingh Rao, Deva Gouda, Inder Gujral etc had very brief stints), Nehru & Indira Gandhi ruled India for the longest duration. Rajiv Gandhi was PM for only one term. He could have continued for more but the LTTE decided otherwise by assassinating him.
India is a country touted as the largest democracy in the world. But in this democracy, we have no problems in appointing father, daughter, grandson and great grand son as its Prime Ministers. Do we know of any other democracy which had done this in the world? For a country which holds one sixth of the population of the world, do we have dearth of personalities and leaders who could head our democratic system? Are there not better, credible leaders within Congress party and outside who could be groomed to take over? Why is it that we are so happy to have the same family rule the roost? How could India, a country which had hundreds of local kingdoms before the British took over, which had plethora of languages, varied geographical culture, with so many indigenous and outside caste and creed inside, still accept one family to control its democracy? So many questions pound my mind……..
One reason is the subservience mentality that the Indians display. He is happy to have a God father controlling him, be it the King, Queen, the head of the family or the Mafia Dada. Though so many monarchies had given way to democracy in the world, and with so many of the democracies display matured norms in its election process, Indians are yet to mature to start doing a kind of ‘stand alone’ independent thinking. It could also be that many Indians are yet to understand democracy and are still on the State/Raja/King as the ultimate accepted choice to rule over him. The ‘Raj’ mentality is yet to go away from our mind and thoughts, that is.
Secondly, with so many sects and sub sects of religion, caste, sub caste and their hierarchies strongly existing continuously, our political system does not want to upset the apple cart by having new upstarts to take over the polity. Though there are so many such upstarts coming up now as regional political parties based on the caste/geography/language hierarchical system, they are yet to get the country’s mandate. By retaining the same family to head our country, the Indians are trying to keep the status quo which they feel will not splinter the country. Good thought, I must accept.
Above all, our attitude is that of ‘chalta hai’. The average Indian is not unduly bothered if the family rules or regional parties rule. He has so many things to bother about, including his own very existence. He doesn’t have any time for indulging to think of maturing the democratic norm of the country. He has no interest to control things. He is happy to be what he is. For him, ‘sab chalta hai’.
On this thought, I rest the case!
Saturday, October 23, 2010
Thursday, October 7, 2010
COMMONWEALTH GAMES (CWG) NEW DELHI 2010
And finally the CWG is on! It got inaugurated on the third of October jointly by The Prince of Wales, Charles (representing his mother, The Queen of England) and The President of India, Madam Pratibha Patil. My family and I sat through to watch the full inauguration on the TV. The organizers had worked hard to make the inaugural function colorful. To a large extend, they had succeeded in it.
CWG New Delhi 2010 has been the major news item for the last few months for all its negative (majority) and positive (Minimum) news. Probably, the good show at the inauguration will rub off some of the negatives. The smooth conduct of the games during the next fortnight would probably take away all the bad publicity that the organizers had been receiving from all quarters. Finally, everybody had been forced to involve in the project, the PM, the Council of Ministers, the Bureaucrats and the Army; in addition to the sports administrators who were originally handling the affairs.
As an Indian, I am happy that Indian could hold the Commonwealth games. It is after 28 years that an international sports extravaganza of complex nature is coming to the country. The only nation outside England, Canada, Australia and New Zealand who hosted CWG had been Malaysia. Slowly, Indian aspirations are coming to the fore. With this, maybe now India could aspire to hold the Olympics in the near future!
One of the Special Director Generals of the CWG, while presenting the games to an invited audience in Cochin months ago, had said about the opening ceremony of the games that the ceremony itself would be a INR 200 Crore function. Since then on, as a citizen of India, I had been feeling guilty of the lavish ceremonies being planned in the name of the prestige of the nation. Two hundred crore Rupees is too much of money. Spending the same on a single function is quite ostentatious, I felt. In a country where a substantial percentage of people are living below poverty line, with so many Indians going hungry every day, I felt it as criminal to throw away such huge amount of money. No doubt, CWG is a prestigious thing but does it call for spending this huge a sum for the inauguration? The function was akin to our rich politicians or corporate leaders spending lavish amount of black money for the marriage of their children.
There is also another side to the story. And that is about the rampant corruption that the organizers had been indulging during the makeup of CWG 2010. If the media reports were to be believed, more than fifty percent of the allocated amount had gone into the pockets of the organizers, middlemen and their cronies. Does that include the Chairman of the organizing Committee? Who knows?
With such rampant corruption and ostentatious spending, the question to ask is whether India really deserves to hold the CWG 2010. If we reduced the splendor of opening ceremony by half, would we have received flaks? Can you belive, it costs INR 40 crores to fill Helium in that floating platform!
It is not that growing India should not take up such projects. We must and we should show the world our capabilities. The only thought is whether we could get the projects done without cost overlay and without corruption and of course, by applying experience, wisdom and with cost optimization in mind. Many often, these things are camouflaged to amass wealth by the concerned. Only recently have we been reading about one Lait Modi and his rag to riches story through the IPL league. As India progresses, one is saddened to see the color and quantity of corruption also going up.
There must be accountability. Today, that is the last thing to come by in India. And so long as accountability takes the back seat, whatever we saw and heard about CWG, IPL etc would continue to happen.
And that indeed is very shameful for growing India!
CWG New Delhi 2010 has been the major news item for the last few months for all its negative (majority) and positive (Minimum) news. Probably, the good show at the inauguration will rub off some of the negatives. The smooth conduct of the games during the next fortnight would probably take away all the bad publicity that the organizers had been receiving from all quarters. Finally, everybody had been forced to involve in the project, the PM, the Council of Ministers, the Bureaucrats and the Army; in addition to the sports administrators who were originally handling the affairs.
As an Indian, I am happy that Indian could hold the Commonwealth games. It is after 28 years that an international sports extravaganza of complex nature is coming to the country. The only nation outside England, Canada, Australia and New Zealand who hosted CWG had been Malaysia. Slowly, Indian aspirations are coming to the fore. With this, maybe now India could aspire to hold the Olympics in the near future!
One of the Special Director Generals of the CWG, while presenting the games to an invited audience in Cochin months ago, had said about the opening ceremony of the games that the ceremony itself would be a INR 200 Crore function. Since then on, as a citizen of India, I had been feeling guilty of the lavish ceremonies being planned in the name of the prestige of the nation. Two hundred crore Rupees is too much of money. Spending the same on a single function is quite ostentatious, I felt. In a country where a substantial percentage of people are living below poverty line, with so many Indians going hungry every day, I felt it as criminal to throw away such huge amount of money. No doubt, CWG is a prestigious thing but does it call for spending this huge a sum for the inauguration? The function was akin to our rich politicians or corporate leaders spending lavish amount of black money for the marriage of their children.
There is also another side to the story. And that is about the rampant corruption that the organizers had been indulging during the makeup of CWG 2010. If the media reports were to be believed, more than fifty percent of the allocated amount had gone into the pockets of the organizers, middlemen and their cronies. Does that include the Chairman of the organizing Committee? Who knows?
With such rampant corruption and ostentatious spending, the question to ask is whether India really deserves to hold the CWG 2010. If we reduced the splendor of opening ceremony by half, would we have received flaks? Can you belive, it costs INR 40 crores to fill Helium in that floating platform!
It is not that growing India should not take up such projects. We must and we should show the world our capabilities. The only thought is whether we could get the projects done without cost overlay and without corruption and of course, by applying experience, wisdom and with cost optimization in mind. Many often, these things are camouflaged to amass wealth by the concerned. Only recently have we been reading about one Lait Modi and his rag to riches story through the IPL league. As India progresses, one is saddened to see the color and quantity of corruption also going up.
There must be accountability. Today, that is the last thing to come by in India. And so long as accountability takes the back seat, whatever we saw and heard about CWG, IPL etc would continue to happen.
And that indeed is very shameful for growing India!
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