INDIA STANDINGS....

The financial year ends and ends thee hope of a world cup triumph. The share indices take a negative slope as even with the upward GDP and GNP trends, inflation rules at 6.5 per cent; import growths edging past the export margins. Bloody battle over Nandigram SEZ rests with the chief minister’s intervention- redemption at last!
And the Iron Maiden, Shakira concerts carried the sounds of western music deep into the head banging junta of India Shining!
The crests and troughs in the days of our lives no more seem to hurt the collective passions of ‘we- the people’! Rounds of abusive text messages, emails of loath and demonstrations of violence await team India. Bob Woolmer doesn’t figure in our prayers- not a moment spent to realize the enormity of clot skewing up sports at the global level. Industrialization leads to murders and still we are not convinced- the triumph of Mr Ratan Tata goes down as a fabulous victory over harried emotional politicians like Mamata Banerjee! Or was it a ‘swift’ move tried out by rivals from the northern regions? With the rolling of a new year, India seemed to have changed lanes, gelled together in several facets to emerge as a potential super nova- some might have gone ahead with a definite stand! Do we really align with the country per se? The high and mighty makes us bask in borrowed pride. We play for ourselves- be it the gentle man’s game or a crafty round of socio-political gimmick!
We do not own up to the happenings of India. Bouts of amnesia and the little knowledge of worldly affairs make us comfortably numb. A plethora of news channel makes us shudder at the ‘Big Brother’ to the Saddam’s execution but still an hourglass witnesses no change in the way we conduct affairs! We do not PDCA- plan, do, check and act. We do not evaluate the individual or the collective existence and essence of the biosphere we call our own!
All and sundry possess an opinion expressed at work place, at home or even a soliloquy while reading the daily papers, but applications, assessments and improvements of the much beaten tracks is never undertaken.
Social workers hog the lime light, footage, while the police provide a villainous touch; politicians and their press conference are all as regular as clockwork! And life for India, our native land traces the down slides of failures.
Individual excellence generates exhilarations rather madness en mass and this hysteria make us dissolve the banal realities that need to be addressed. On a gilded throne we are trying to christen ourselves the numero uno!
‘Water’ made it to the short list in Oscars and we try to align ourselves and wear the whiff of its perfumed glory, while it was our Machiavellian plot, which clouded the shootings in Benaras. Ironically RDB is also hitting on the under belly of Indian politicians! Do we at all realize that? The blunt judgmental myopic existence is taking the Indian-ness out of us! The land that hailed the first civilizations welcomed and juggled a thousand caste and creed needs to show a much matured application- driven by a collective sensibility! The blinkers of selfish dogmas and self-saturation are taking the wind from our sails. But these errata blamed on certain individuals are only a way out! Certain figures, revenues and glorified members do not ‘buy’ a halo for the nation… when would we really strike the rhythm of self and society? When would we realize that burning effigies do not eliminate the root cause!
When would this matrix of unequal expansions stop tearing into the fabric of the Indian landscape?