Amidst all the endless depressing news that is flung at us through our television sets and newspapers, the one unusual, interesting and challenging happening was in Lucknow ? the meeting of India?s top corporates with the government of Uttar Pradesh. It is about time that UP is assisted and put back on track. It will be the only way criminalisation, vested interests and corruption will cease to be. With sensible investment, the state could become an important business as well as a vibrant travel destination.
It was an impressive gathering of Anil Ambani, Adi Godrej, MS Banga and suchlike. However, having come together, they will have to announce and deliver one major something fairly fast, if only to keep the faith. Needless to say there will be the predictable political jockeying for and against this and that which the opposing leaders will indulge in. It is this that has held India back for decades ? selfish, self-centred and archaic attitudes of leaders who have used caste and religious bigotry to a point of no return. They have discarded all semblance of social reform. Let the poor remain poor and ignorant seems to be the intention. Do they hope they will survive longer and exploit us for more decades by keeping India at a standstill?
What makes Uttar Pradesh particularly important is that 80 parliamentary seats are from that state. It determines who sits on the throne in Delhi! It is today one of the most criminalised and backward states of the country and it is ironic that it should wield the political power that it does. It makes elections in India lopsided. Progressive states with higher growth rates have lesser say in who rules in Delhi. The time has come to break UP into four states. Only then will elections, change and growth begin to level and get rational. Smaller states make for better governance and the take is better distributed. There are enough examples that prove the point.
Mulayam Singh understands this. If he partitions UP into four, he will go down in history as a leader of consequence, a national leader. His team of corporate advisors should help him take that crucial decision. He should stand above the rest who ran scared to partition UP and who, as a result, forced that pradesh to descend into quagmire. UP once had everything going for it ? today most do not want to think about it. Likewise Bihar. Any government that is willing to take the initiative and risk involved will be the one to lead this country out of the mess it is in. Only then will we begin to crawl out of the past and step into the future.
No temple at Ayodhya will deliver that economic and social growth. Those are the deliberate distractions that politicians keep alive so as not to be accountable for their gross failure to deliver the goods and services that the people crave for. Ram Rajya will not come through the precincts of a temple ? it will come from selfless political dedication and hard-nosed decisions accompanied by commitment, accountability and the eradication of daily corruption.
Corruption is the most malignant disease that has taken on epidemic proportions in India. Aided and abetted from the top, it has filtered down into virtually every single life, including animals and trees. They too are ruthlessly exploited. We are being bombarded with religious talk and ?hindu? beliefs, views, call them what you may, but we do nothing with the same degree of passion to eradicate corruption and make life and living dignified. In fact, we break every norm and ethos that religions across the world propagate. And, we hide this horrible hypocrisy behind the demand for a temple. All I can say is that the Gods are watching!
It is not the people of this country that are holding Bharat back. The politicians have learned well how to mark time, how to agitate people with irrelevancies, how to build their personal fortunes and condone all that is unacceptable in civil society anywhere. We need a new age Gandhi to catalyse the new generation and throw out the baggage we are carrying…forget ?experience?, go for the dream.