The bigness of our smallness

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India suffers from a congenital disease: it is about the bigness of our smallness: when it comes to anything, it is almost always self interest before national interest; when it comes to establishing things for the future, our horizon will be as long as we live whereas the Americans will plant seeds for many lifetimes. In politics, the situation is no different: we as an electorate are as small-minded as any can be: given the vagaries of our country, we will elect people on the most trivial of reasons rather than listen to any reasoned logic from that candidate as to why he or she wishes to be in public office: the state of our media is the same as well. Most editors and journalists are not keen on reporting the news: they wish to be the news themselves: look at most of our talk shows? The interviewer speaks more than the interviewee. And what is put on the table is again reflective of the small mindedness of our nation.

Any sociological study of this country will tell you the fundamental problem lies elsewhere. The problem is that there is so much of self-interest floating around that people just don’t care about what happens to the country. It is I for the individual and not I for India any more. Is this a common phenomenon around the world? Not at all. There are more Americans who dream the American Dream or for that matter more Israelis with each passing day who would die than give up Gaza whereas the situation here is slightly different. I just heard that Suresh Kalmadi stormed out of Rashtrapati Bhavan when he was not offered the appropriate chair during the felicitation of the our Olympic medal winners: now this is what I mean about the small-mindedness. He would be more concerned about this than getting India a seat on the high-table of medal winners across the world.