The future scenario of India, multiple possibilities
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| Old Delhi, can anything be actually worse? |
The same goes for our country, India. Being a nation of more than 1.2 billion people, hailing from a multitude of different cultures with different languages, religions and ethnicities, it is difficult to see India as something united. Instead, India should be better referred to as a sort of class-II federation, that has gradually accumulated more 'mass' with time and gradually distributed the power in between the central and state governments. But this degree of unity is doubted by many, and problems concerning it can indeed lead to a chain of different problems for us in future.
Current problems
India's problems continue to be of varying sorts. From political corruption to an increasing level of violence against women, from restlessly growing population to the lack of proper jobs for skilled workers, our problems haunt the dreams of mother India. Such challenges are indeed determining, crucial moments in the course of democracy to progress further. But weak governance and illiteracy are the major reasons for which the democratic setup of India can't be properly adapted to meet the growing demands that need to be answered at once.
Some of the major problems at hand are:
Population growth
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| This is what population growth leads to! |
This is a major concern for every educated individual. When we continue to cram more and more people into a region of limited capacity, it's certain to 'explode'. And the laws of the universe have their fair way of 'balancing' things. Despite reduction in the population growth rate of India over the years, this dP/dt (to use the terminology of calculus, i.e the rate of change of the population P with time t) doesn't have a negative value yet. That is, while space is limited, a positive value of the population growth rate will lead to annual, monthly and even daily increase in the population of our nation.
Some of the major factors contribute to such a negative occurrence in India, and these are:
- Illiteracy: This is possibly the primary reason behind such immense degree of population growth. More than 60% of India's population continues to stay illiterate, especially in the rural areas. To these people, more children = more hands for working and fetching money. Thus, they see raising more children as a sort of investment. "Feed them for 10 years, and they'll fill part of your table for the rest of their lives". Thus, the equation for these illiterates has become: More children = more money! And yet another reason is that, sex serves as one of their major channels of entertainment, to be honest. No matter how dirty it sounds, it is the truth.
- Lack of use of contraceptives: This is another major issue. These illiterates don't even understand the very basics of birth-control. Although the government is trying its best, with help from many foreign NGOs, most of these villagers and slub-dwellers (in townships and metropolitan cities) are still now aware of the benefits of contraceptives. And thus, sometimes even against their desire, their women become pregnant and continue to add to the growing list of worries for the country.
- Religious influence: Religion is one of the fiercest sources of ignorance of the common man. No matter how much science offers them in their daily lives, they'll always worship the invisible entities. But what's actually disheartening is that, many people are doing some active business out of it. Muslim Ulemas and Maulavis, Hindu Pundits and Purohits and spiritual Gurus, Christian Missionaries, nearly all of them practically spread more ignorance and intolerance among various factions of the Indian community. These people not only 'divide' India even more, but they often, for the sake of spreading the circle of influence of their pretty religions alone, encourage people to breed more. Recently, 'Fatwas' have been issued by Maulavis in eastern India to actively multiply the number of Muslim children, because they sincerely dream of 'conquering' India thus, turning it into an Islamic nation. But the Hindu priests are no behind! These 'Gurus', spiritual guides and 'teachers', go on singing songs about the mercy of Gods Shri Krishna, Shiva, Hanumanji etc and interpret their 'will' to their followers. They can easily help the community as a whole by saying at least a few words on how the extreme population is a burden, but they won't. After all, more people = more illiterates = more mismanagement = more problems = more need of 'Gurus', right?
- Failure of governmental policies: Nearly everything the government of India does is a failure, save and except defence research, sending a couple of spacecrafts to moon, etc. India is getting developed because of privatization and the increasing urbanization of its different parts, and I don't think the government has much to do in this regard. Nearly every government is corrupt. And more people = more voters who can be persuaded to 'join the cause'. As such, there's no problem if India bursts, for our glorious Netas at least.
Corruption
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| Magical way of getting things done! |
This almost goes hand in hand with population growth, but it does have separate existence of its own. Unequal distribution of resources leads to rising levels of greed, and this greed leads to corruption. For example, here in my city Kolkata, the drainage system was initially built by the British masters of our realm, and can handle a maximum of 2 mm of rainfall, if I remember correctly. However, rain is the lifeblood for Indian agriculture, even today. So while we do pray for powerful monsoons, every single year half of Kolkata 'floats' because of rain. The governmental machinery is too lazy to take any active measure.
Inevitably, every single year the productivity of Kolkata as a whole decreases during the rainy season. Is it any better in other parts of the country? A resounding 'No!'. Uttarakhand suffers from floods nearly every alternate year, and our government doesn't care if a couple of folks live or die. What about Delhi? Nothing has been done, possibly in years, to check the rising levels of Yamuna river during the monsoon season. And thus, the northern metropolitan is no better than its eastern sister. The slums of Mumbai, most populated metropolitan in India, show us an ever worse picture. The seat of Bollywood and the greatest city of India, the forerunner among the four metropolitans, Mumbai shows us two different faces. At one side, it's truly the financial capital of India, seat of the most commercially successful film industry in Eurasia, but one the other hand, its streets are flooded (and that too, with drain-water) every year.
I am not very sure about the south, although it's evident that things are a little better there. And even so, southern cities are no New York or London.
Lack of urbanization
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| Cities of India will be like this in 2030, if we don't change. |
The Gandhian philosophy of 'turn to villages' has failed India vitally. I am not willing to argue whether things would have been any better had Gandhi and Gandhi-like folks been there to guide us, but in my opinion urbanization is way better than turning to rural, self-sustained economies. Cities and towns in India are the gathering places for different people, meeting and intersection points of different cultures and etcnicities, and as such they hold tremendous importance here in our country. Despite their problems, the four glorious metropolitans and other great cities have contributed to our economy in a way no rural economy could have. Delhi in the north, Kolkata in the east, Mumbai along the western coast and Chennai in the distant south, and in addition, other growing urban centres like Bangalore and Hyderabad, Pune and Noida, how can we even think of living without them?
The great cities are practically lifelines for our country's economy. And yet they get clogged up more and more. In Kolkata, as Sanjeev Goenka rightly puts it, hawkers continue to venture across the streets and this gives an overall rural feeling to the place. 50% of our buildings here were constructed during the British era, and only 4-5% of the total urban area account for roads. The old Delhi is much similar to north Kolkata. Ruinous houses, dirt, oxen and monkeys, all continue to decorate the older part of our capital. And even worse, Discovery folks have shot monkeys sitting (and shitting too, if you've seen the documentary M Company) right beside the Parliament house.
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| The northern portion of the city of palaces, Kolkata! Just look at those palaces, and the 'chariots' parked beside them, happy sight, eh? |
But what's even more shocking is, the existing population of India needs to rely only on these small number of true cities for employment, education, healthcare and even more. As per the available data, in 2001 only 28% of the total population of India used to live in urban areas, around 290 million then. But it is projected that by 2030s, this count would be around 40-45%. That would still be below Europe and America's levels of 80% urban population, but as it's been evident by now, India is growing to be the most populated nation by 2028. So, by 2030s, the total population of our country would be around 1.6 billion. And 40% of that includes 64,00,00,000 people! And all these people living in, say 32 major cities all around India, if our government is ever successful to build so many true cities (for example, areas like Asansol and Burdwan in Bengal are hardly worthy of being hailed as global cities. The only true city here continues to be Kolkata). And even then, 2 crore people would be living, on average, in each of these new cities. And certainly the count would be more than 2 crore in existing urban centers like Kolkata, Mumbai and Delhi, where more population would lead to greater mismanagement, more crime rate and more slums. And we don't have much time. Sophisticated systems like metro transit systems are available only in a handful of our cities, such as Delhi, Kolkata, Bangalore and Chennai. What about other cities then? I'd want to see Patna metro operational soon, as well as the east-west metro project here in Kolkata. Only more technological prowess can save our country, that's a reality.
And if we fail to build so many modern cities? The scenario would be even worse. Rural economies, unable to provide employment to so many people, would crumble. Crime rate, as a whole, would increase. And finally, our nation might even crumble into pieces, as mentioned in the novel 'River of Gods' set in 2047.
Everyone can vote, yey!
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| Bravo, voters, bravo! |
This is quite possibly the most shameful aspect of India, universal adult franchise. A much better system would be 'Univeral educated franchise'. I recall, during the last Bihar election, a woman was shown on the TV who wanted to vote for some part but was tricked into voting for another. Such things are very common. But the problem is, the respective lady I mentioned didn't even know how to read her mother tongue, Hindi. And imagine, millions of such people are voting for our leaders, while more than 65% of the educated middle classes continue to sit idly at home! Is it okay to blame the leaders only? No, we do share our own shame as well. I've recently turned 18, and I intend to vote every time I get the opportunity of doing so, because I know about the choices available to me, and as an educated citizen of India I understand the current political, developmental and economic scenario in my country.
Just consider a simple case. Let there be two folks, a slub-dweller of 45 who hardly knows how to sign his name, and a lad of 17 who has passed class X and is a student of political science. Now, who among these two would be better as a thinking, logical and intelligent voter? The former, as per our system of 'adult franchise'. One of the major points that led to the failure of Indian civilization multiple times is that, adults are simply given too much prominence in our culture. They are just creatures like us who were born before us, nothing more. And so much for the fabled 'wisdom' of elderly men. The Indian youth today can understand the socio-political situation better, not that they do it though. We have our own problems, such as 'Love is in the air!', 'He dumped me! *sob* *sob*', 'ur girlfriend iz mine, lol!' and such shit. We need to become more modern citizens, better than our ancestors, because the future of India lies on our shoulders.
These are only some problems I mentioned, and there are several more. Tackling them all at a time is tricky, but one by one we must combat these evils, to build a more livable and lovable India.
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