Delivering India from state strangulation

For decades, through all the ?socialist? political phases of governance and therefore ideology, government and its many arms had us believe that making legitimate money was wrong. To accumulate wealth by hard endeavour was what ?those rich? did and generating national and personal resource was deemed as criminal activity!

This bizarre and culturally alien position was imposed on an intrinsically entrepreneurial society, where people across the board created goods and services. Suffocating Indians with controls and restrictions destroyed the true strength of India, that led to an all-enveloping corruption of the worst possible kind. It is unacceptable in a country where the goddess of wealth is worshipped on Diwali, where making money is celebrated, where energetic gambling on the day of the Indian new year is auspicious, where shops and establishments remain open for business. Where on the following day, workers worship their tools.

And it is here that governments compel its citizens to be unnatural about generating wealth. Abject poverty has never been overcome by restrictive norms, rules and methodologies. Whether rich or poor, Indians have a free spirit, a real sense of joy, despite having to deal with inhuman realities of infrastructure, the only area governments are responsible for and where they have failed India. The sectors that should be christened ?legacy industries? have been reduced to near-penury, because of administrations who knew no better than to ape the West in a manner that brought heightened sophistication and skill down many rungs. They actively destroyed the best of this sub-continent, from building mores and expertise to the design of products of daily use. From the heritage of planned cities, towns and villages to fine buildings and forts and places of worship, this new post-Independence breed of rulers and administrators diminished the quality of life and living by invoking the domination of the state.

This terrible, painful and highly contagious virus called The State entered every pore of our body politic. For decades, Indians struggled to survive and breathe, even as the disease multiplied like no other. The virus became stronger and stronger as Indians lost their immunity. And then, when no anti-bodies worked to restore the balance, people began to fight the illness individually, ingeniously discovering means to deliver the goods for themselves. That is what saved Indian economically, but destroyed it morally. Each for their own became the idiom. Rampant exploitation of resources and goodwill and the patience of the population is what became the mantra of the mighty. They have surpassed the negatives of the worst of the so-called feudals of yore.

In recent years, this same virus has become infectious and has spread like the plague once did. The brazen spread, often spoken about and exposed in the public space, has not been checked or corrected. Leadership across the landscape appears helpless, overwhelmed by the problem, emaciated to the bone, having been profoundly affected by the malignant cells. As they wallow in the mess, India is forced to bend the right and indulge in wrong. The guilty are those who rule us, both the political dispensation and its administrative arms.

We all know to what level politics in India has descended. Buying and selling is the norm. Humans have become commodities and the price determines the sale. We have an economic agenda, but harassment continues unabated for all those who wish to produce and generate wealth, within the structure, with honesty and integrity. Most departments demand monies to do what is an individual?s right. They demand money for illegitimate practices as well.

Despite this, Indians have gone out there and delivered. The boom in the economy is no thanks to government and its two-steps-forward three-steps-back policy initiatives. What they are doing today they should have done and accomplished in the early 60s. Indians would have had some semblance of dignity in their lives. When the noose around our necks, planted there by our own rulers and not some invading power, is lifted over our heads and removed, allowing us to breathe and grow, India will change and head towards becoming an economic giant, with reduced poverty and international clout. Till then, with our ruling class playing at the new board game of corruption, we are being left behind.