Mera Bharat Mahan

‘I am proud of my country’. Well, I agree that this line has become a cliché and has been so widely abused that it has lost its true meaning in contemporary time. So if you utter this line to anyone, you draw a blank face with a degree of cynicism starting to crease in and you get a feeling that you have said the stupidest thing in the world. And I do not blame that person even by a cent since the state of affairs in our country is such that anyone with an iota of brain would find it difficult to find one good thing to be proud about. You name it and we are almost the leader in that area – Corruption (we are ranked 74^th which is even below the nascent democracy Bhutan in the latest corruption perception index as released by Transparency International), Poverty and illiteracy (the less said the better), Unemployment (7.2% in 2007 which is almost double that of China’s 4% for the same year), Terrorism (India tops the country with maximum number of casualties killed in terrorism related violence beating even the likes of Iraq and Afghanistan) and so on. So what really made me or rather spurred me to open the post with that cliché? Read on to uncover the billion dollar question!

I have brought this up in many of my discussions with my peers/close friends and have found it to be one BIG positive about the country I take pride in calling mine and that to put in one word is – Democracy. In my opinion, this is one thing which we as countryman have taken so much for granted that it goes unnoticed completely. Let me relate a real life scenario which will support my conviction – It so happened that the head of the country is out on an international trip and the government he heads suddenly looses majority in the parliament due to the pullout of a few alliance parties. This situation is akin to emergency/coup kind of emergency where in the head of a state is ousted by anti-party elements. A situation of this kind would have involved nation’s military/army interference to keep the situation in control. But look at what happened in this country – the PM continued his trip uninterrupted with absolutely peaceful law and order situation in the country (actually it’s so stable inherently that no one even thought of it as a law and order issue, the Sensex climbing by 500 points on the same day just to give an idea as to how healthy the system works). The political maneuverings have started in the background but strictly within the democratic boundaries as set by the constitution so to speak. This kind of situation is unthinkable in any other political setup but democracy. In other words, the system is so unshakeable that even when a government loses the right to govern, there is absolutely no anarchy, no lawlessness, no threat of instability. Hats off to this seemingly ‘Business as Usual’ system called Democracy.

Let me relate here an interesting anecdote which I still remember so distinctly. A few years back, I had the opportunity of interacting with my company’s top management and one of them was from the US and had come down to India for some strategic team meeting. In one such conversation with him about a specific key project, I was trying to explain him the challenges faced in managing people/employees when we were trying to introduce a new technology enterprise wise. He interrupted me saying we need not worry about employee’s sentiments (resistance) and just go ahead with implementing the new technology without bothering about them. I tried to convince him again but to no avail. I then took a different route which worked like a magic. I told him, in fact let me quote the exact terms which I threw upon him – ‘Hey Mike, here is the problem (in typical American accent). India is a BIG democracy and people out here are so used to the system that nothing can move until they will it. So we got to take our employees in confidence before implementing the new system’. And believe me, he got the message instantly though he was very subtle in his consent and kept referring back to that term ‘Democracy’ in a sarcastic way in his subsequent conversations (that’s their way of looking at the rest of the world).

So the bottom line is – People rule in our country in every sense. So even though one would find many flaws in the system, the basic structure which supports it is indeed a marvel in itself. Long live Democracy, Long live India.

Jai Hind