India: The drag of apathy

Synopsis: India, aspiring Asian ‘superpower’ and soft target for terror strikes, is too tolerant of incompetence.


India, the aspiring Asian ‘superpower’, repeatedly suffers acts of terrorism. The half dozen incidents this year were topped by the horrific Mumbai attacks.

This too can become habit.

Soft target

Indians are proud to belong to the largest democracy. But in the eyes of the global community, India is soft target.

The devastation confirms the vulnerability of a country with millions below the poverty line. It exposes the nation’s doddering infrastructure and inept governance.

Surviving

Through five thousand years of her civilization, India’s nationhood has survived oppression, including invasions, conquests, colonizations and partitions.

Consequently, Indians developed resilience, the ability to cope with new realities. Perhaps history inspires their raising to new levels their cultural strengths of adaptability - and tolerance.

History repeats

History continues to repeat, because security consciousness for the majority isn’t a lesson learned from the past. Conditioned to oppression, the people may accept it as their way of life today.

Gun-toting bodyguards surround celebrities and politicians, while the average taxpayer and the poor fend for themselves against natural and man-made calamities, still.

Their experiences strengthen faith in the Almighty, because when God preserves, who on earth can destroy?

Internalizing

Preoccupied with just surviving even in a democracy, they don’t confront those meant to protect them leaving them defenceless. They take it all in as karma, internalizing the oppression.

Fact is repeated trauma encourages apathy, especially in the mind. People tend to lose initiative, to passively await change if and when, like the seasons, it should come.

Apathy

If political apathy is the main reason for the repeated terror strikes, it’s the public apathy that as repeatedly, puts incompetence into positions of leadership, and thereby letting oppression through.

People may vote it in unthinkingly, or with no vote, cause its default selection. The generalized apathy allows the world’s largest democracy being perceived easy prey.

Superpower?

To achieve 'superpower' status, the inertia to excellence in every field needs to be overcome. The billion head count needs to surge forward in synch.

Burdened by burgeoning population and entrenched corruption, India advances one step and slides back two. The present rate of progress hardly gets past the ‘third world’ label.

Despite the Indian presence in the exclusive space club, the drag of apathy may ensure that the superpower aspiration won’t realize – unless oppression is halted.

Citizen roles

Betterment of India is a collective responsibility. But ordinary people haven’t learned to question being forced to make do with almost nothing, while many of their representatives, forgetting role commitments, live the high life.

The silent multitudes have got used to being mutely tolerant. They scarcely remember their constitutional shareholder role, and the power to break the dysfunctional loop of oppression.

In the democratic setup, their task is to elect representatives most competent to rule, concomitantly dismissing the oppression of greed and self-aggrandizement. It’s time for the citizen majority to demand value for vote in astute governance.

Cont’d 2…focus of the hotbed