Can’t get there from here

Indian roads are more fatal than bomb blasts and AK47s. They are disorderly and chaotic. The red signal is just a fucking joke – that’s what most of us feel…
Whoever tells you that India is ‘shinning’, that it’ll be a superpower by 2030 or whatever year is a fucking liar.

How can it be a superpower? On what basis? The bloody GDP and FDI? I don’t care about them, no sir! Give me a good road to walk on and some public transportation first. Fuck the Indian cricket. I don’t care if we loose every single match henceforth or Sachin gets out on 99 till he retires, I simply don’t give a fuck! Those are the least important things in our country’s context.

We need real growth. We need mobilization of funds and people, of minds and acts, to put the people first. The one billion people are expecting some basics in their lives from the government. And those expectations have been there for ages now. Don’t sell us the story of a shinning India for there exists none. The multi-millions of poor have always been in the rear view, much closer than they appear. But we have been ignoring all of them…I say we since it is not some alien superpower or our very ‘friendly’ neighbors that have caused the exploitation of our masses. It’s been us all along the way. We have shunted our own growth. We, who don’t pay taxes, we who break the signal everyday, we who bribe as per our convenience and then close our eyes and shout in protest, we who realize only after a dozen and more cops die from the 7.62 mm Kalashnikov bullets that ‘OH! They did not have good enough bullet proof vests’. You fucking morons, it took you a bunch of brave hearts cops’ death to realize that???

And in argument, some fuckhead will tell me – why don’t you do something then?? Go join the Army. I’ll say this – Firstly, I’m doing what I want to do, and then, I do what is expected of me – I pay my taxes, I stop at the red light (before the zebra crossing), I don’t bribe. I expect or rather DEMAND, that the government I have elected do its job. And more than that, I expect the fellow Indians to do their duty. Don’t be a filthy hypocrite bunch, yelling abuses at the traffic cop while your million rupee vehicle mows down people on the road. Change. Change yourself.

We have reached here without any planning. This country is an accident. The causalities have been low, but they are increasing. We are growing, but that’s inflation. The cities have no roads, but the fucking builders are producing bastard malls by raping the earth. Where are the roads? The road that was 10m wide 10 years back is still 10m wide – the traffic- that’s 10 folds…and now there is a five story mall by the roadside, right in the middle of a residential neighborhood. Which country worth its soil has this??

The list is endless – millions without sanitation, electricity, EDUCATION! I sound like an everyday chest beater who cries his country’s follies and then snuggles up in his warm bed and blanket at night, forgetting everything. But lately, it’s been tough having a sound sleep. It’s a point blanc life we live these days. It better get settled down and WE need to ensure it does so.

Change is very important. Even a promise of it made someone the President and an election campaign probably the most successful in that country’s history. Well, I don’t see an Obama in India’s future. What we do have is us – a billion Obamas. We are everywhere. We are the ones who run the civil services, the hospitals, the courts, the schools, the farms, the buses - everywhere, everything. We need to change. No other way will do.