DailyPost 2637
ISSUELESS INDIA
Issues plague human existence and more so a country like India where we have been plagued with serious issues all throughout our post independent history, when we got chance to sort out things and make a difference to the lives of the toiling millions. How much have we succeeded in that is one issue, but picking up an art to make it vanish from public domain and narrative of the nation, has been a trend that is being seen in the recent past. Not owning up issues is the biggest challenge the country is facing today. If we own up, only then can the battle begin.
These are protracted and complex social, economic and nation building issues. Not owning will not do away with these issues of the day. These issues will come to bite us in much bigger way in the days to come. By then we would also have lost the expertise of handling any critical issue and end up becoming a bystander to our own nemesis. The truism is that we can evade a problem but we will never be able to evade the consequences of such an evasion. There are lots of example of this nature, which we see all around the place and we would have faced many in our personal lives.
One such issue we can think of very vividly, is the lack of quality education. We could evade it for decades, but today it has become so endemic that we don’t know the handle the repercussions of it which are visible all over. There are numerable others, some of our creation, some coming down the line but all being aggravated by the approach of the concept of Issueless India, or bringing down the magnitude or declaring it to be solved when actually that has not happened. That is even a more dangerous trend and a situation, which clearly means that you given up on that issue and have taken camouflage as the escape mode.
People, statements, incidents, accidents, events, commendations, magical announcements, awards, surveys, travel et al have taken center stage in place of issues. From improving women safety to ushering in new technologies like artificial intelligence, it is presumed all can be made to happen in this fashion. Slogans and media blitzkrieg can be do the last mile. How much has changed of the reeking public health infrastructure, which we all saw during the second wave of Covid. What about the Delhi’s air quality? We are now not only bystanders to critical issues but to our lives.
ESCAPE HAS BECOME THE NATURAL CHOICE OF THE NATION.
Sanjay Sahay
Have a nice evening.