Today, when nation is passing through a tough situation many who had been always skeptical about India’s claims and its growth story would be saying ; Nothing can happen here.
Everyone has an answer for our poverty, illiteracy, high infant mortality, poor state of health care and astonishingly, everyone is also aware as to Why despite investing hundreds and thousands of crores since independence in hundreds of schemes our progress has been tardy?
Without any hesitation all would unanimously hold ; Politicians and Bureaucracy responsible for the aforementioned problems.
But even then we do nothing, we continue pumping more money that too the Tax Payers' money into the same inefficient and corrupt system that does not allow us to grow. Recently PM announced that he would be issuing free rations to poor till Diwali, and surprisingly no one asked him ; How? Is it going to be supplied through the same corrupt system, which is already facing lot of teething problems? How is he going to ensure that it would reach the needy?
Surprisingly, not a single soul asked Where is the money coming from when the economy is contracting due to covid?
We see muck all around us, and still have virtually turned a blind eye and seem to be indifferent and show no concern. We have learnt to live with this and have accepted this fait accompli.
However, for someone who has spent his major portion of life away from the civic society or is an observer from a foreign country it would prima facie appear that people here are more concerned about Ishrat Jehan, Godhra, Secularism vs pseudo secularism, Beef, Triple Talaq, Padmawati, Shiv temple under Tajmahal, Ayodhya, Baba Ramdev and history, changing the names of the Stations and Roads etc rather than in Good Governance and Science and Technology.
Many of the educated people in society are not even interested to enquire where we stand on UNO’s Human Deveopment Index and what are its parameters and why are we stuck so low and what is the Govt doing to take us ahead. And if we are so lowly ranked and the Govt is doing nothing about it then How are these Emotive issues going to make us a Powerful nation.
This clearly shows that our priorities are wrong and the entire setup including the media deliberately wants to focus on emotive issues which will take us no where. Had we taken interest in our own growth and development our minds would not have been so Politicaly vitiated and Communalised and we would have been much better off. We thought, that with some Jugaad here & there we will be able to become a prosperous nation, forgetting that a mighty edifice cannot be built on a foundation of rotten administrative machinery.
The mis governance is visible all around us in every walk of our life; at public places, in educational institutions, in hospitals, on roads, in markets, in sports field and heights of it even just a km away from Parliament and Rashtrapati Bhawan.
While India may be having large number of billionaires (ranked eighth in the world), but, it remains a country where disparity between poverty and prosperity is distinctly visible and is a poor reflection of our entire administrative setup. A huge battery of IAS and IPS officers, the Judges and the political leaders who have been responsible for governance of this country, who are living in palatial houses have to share the blame for making our lives miserable. Rabrindranath Tagore had said that darkness usually intensifies under the lamp, so it is in India.
The outstanding progress in some areas should not make us blind to the inefficiency of administration in providing some essential needs of life – from education and health care to justice and sanitation.
What has happened in last two months was bound to happen, because we preferred to live in a delusion and had wrong priorities.
The data related to child mortality, poverty rates, crime, conviction rate, cases pending in courts, hygiene and sanitation, availability of roads, availability of doctors , number of police men per thousand population, power theft, transmission losses etc would vindicate this view point that it is an indication of a total collapse of administrative machinery and the 21st century instead of renaissance may turn into a century of miseries, if the admnistrative machinery is not overhauled on time.
The Political masters turned Executive are not interested in Administration, their sole interest is in acquiring Power and wining elections, So the responsibility to manage the Govt Admnistrative machinery primarily lies with the Bureaucracy.
The moot point now is given the circumstances as they exist now ; How and What should be done to reform the Bureaucracy? To be continued