THE EASIEST WAY OUT!
Does the topic make anything ring in your mind? What does it explain the best? Does it not sound like a process so common and familiar to all of us? Is it not an antidote of all what we keep talking about day in and day out. You have guessed it right. This is our DNA. You can call it our national character. You also call it the lack of it. While we take the easiest way out, the grandstanding is for lofty ideals, leave aside tangible targets and goals, the proclaimed purpose being something tantamount to Ramrajya for you. It would need a world of research as to how we have landed in this predicament and it has become the predominant mode of our existence in all walks of life.
Some manifestations of this malaise which has afflicted everything in this country. Take the CBSE exam during Covid days, when exams were not conducted but it produced the best results. The formula created to evaluate was the easiest. Even easiest is an overstatement and that is where we are. In a totally different field, the women’s reservation act which went through parliamentary procedure in 2023, might see the light of the day only post 2029, dependent on census, delamination et al. What a way to find out the easiest way out of a vexatious issue.
See the hue and cry over education, as if quality of the education is not an issue. The school based public education revolves around education, but bypasses education. We talk of enrolment, buildings, mid-day meal, uniforms, books, cycles, teachers, salaries, budgetary allotment, but what about the quality of education and the output the educational system is delivering? On the face of it everything seems to be done, this is another example of the easiest way out escape route. What about public health? Here again the same story may be marginally better than education at least in a few of the main government hospitals.
What has been the impact of all that is being done, on the general quality of health of the masses? All health indices find us in an abysmally pathetic situation. Take the case of safety, security and empowerment of women. Money is transferred into differently named schemes, doles we can say, insufficient to make any qualitative difference. The rape cases, fear psychosis, Manipur types subhuman cases narrate a totally different saga. But the protagonists of the easiest way out methodology rise to fame, are having a field day. Far away from the politics / governance / welfare saga is the IT industry. The managed services, body shopping, differential pricing, call center type work still remains our mainstay, while the honchos talk of tech transforming India. A software industry sans software, and now a clear bypass to the AI juggernaut. The easiest way out is the best way out for this spiritual land.
TAKING THE BULL BY ITS HORNS IN NOT OUR DNA.
Sanjay Sahay
Have a nice evening.