Wednesday, October 06, 2004

What does Freedom in particular and Democracy in general actually mean to us?

Well last saturday when i met friends i was telling them how i felt like leaving this city and country for good. I have always loved this beautiful city of mine called Bangalore. But with the second boom of IT happening currently which the city is witnessing, it is unable to handle the amount of people who are coming here everyday. Someone told me an average of 1500 people come to this city(p.s. i have no source to prove this data).

Well with so much of influx into the city; city which has lacked planning and above all the bad governance at the state to provide the city with basic amenities like good roads, no decent public transport will cause Bangalore to loose all its pride.

I was telling my friends look at how Shanghai the fastest growing city in China has been coping with incereasing demands and they are able to provide the infrastructre, and on the other hand India's fastest growing city Bangalore is crumbling due to the lack of governance. Well they started defending by saying that China is communist and the people have no Freedom of expression; they also told me that people don't even have the right to choose thier jobs and that they are harassed to work for long working hours. I don't know if what my friends said is true, someone who has been to China can cofirm this to us.

All i can i say is India has been a democratic Country for many years no doubt on that. We have got the freedom to expression in our own Indian way, i can quote this blog i am writing as an example for my freedom of expressing my thoughts. But we Indians have always taken freedom for granted i guess and misused it in every posssible way.

Does Freedom/Democracy to us mean any of the following things:
  • We have every right to dirty our roads by littering, spitting where ever we go?
  • We can drive/ride our vehicles the way we want to without caring for others?
  • We pay bribe to get away from cops when caught for drunken driving or break any law for that matter?
  • The government doesn't need to provide good infrastructure?

Well this was enough to silence my friends, the recent decisions taken by our very own Kannada Film Industry to postpone the screening of all the non-kannada movies by 7 weeks, which is not even endorsed by the State Government; well is this called freedom of expression?

While we take the pride of saying we are living in a democratic nation, is it really making so much of a difference between a communist and a democratic nation?

I feel ashamed to say this being an Indian, but the virus called corruption has infected every section of our society and lack of governance at both Centre and State has made me feel that it would have been better if British had ruled this land for some more years. Atleast then the country would have remained united, we would have better infrastructre & growth and above all free from corruption.

Well i know many of us feel that way but we never tell it out.

5 comments:

.dxr said...

Nicely put. You have very clearly stated the issues that are hampering the organized growth of India. It is true that corruption is one of the biggest problems. It is also true that people seem to care very little about their environment. What we all need to do is not only draw attention to it, but have the people actually desire the change and act on that feeling and Vote. Get these clowns out of politics. Let's get a different set of clowns that will do the bidding of the masses that actually care. The people in Bangalore that can affect change are the IT professionals. They are constantly, as you alluded to, coming to the city in droves. If we get them to vote we can see change. I don't know how the biggest criminals get hooked in to this change, the bureaucrats, but that is something that would also have to be taken into consideration.
Cheers, Deepak
crazybangalore.blogspot.com

vevck said...

Thanks! Deepak.

As i have said before and will repeat myself again, " Most of the citizens living in India are aware of these problems, and we are kind of mute spectators to this."

Vote is only a pseudo power people have. It doesn't really make any dent in our Political system. We have parties which mushroom themselves every now and then during elections and then merge back into their parent party post-election.

If u have observed the political changes in the past 10 years in the various states of India u would be astonished by their facts. Just take the example of Bihar and TamilNadu. The economy of TamilNadu is N times better than Bihar so i can't compare them, but i can make a comparison in the behavior of political outcomes in both the states even though they are separated miles apart. The behaviors of masses are almost identitcal in nature with both states where Laloo gets re-elected over and over. In TN, Jayalalitha who had amassed so much of public wealth when she ruled the state 8yrs ago, is now ruling the state again:).

So does Vote really have the POWER to bring the change in the system?

.dxr said...

You are correct, but what I am speaking of is local government. MLA's and the like.....if we start kicking them in the nuts, metaphorically speaking, we can hopefully see the change move up the corruption chain, oops I am sorry, the political hierarchy. I will have to understand more on this since I am pretty uneducated on the system. I am however looking at a grassroots campaign....

Cheers,
Deepak
http://crazybangalore.blogspot.com/

vevck said...

Oh that way! then it would take a life time to accomplish the change.

.dxr said...

I got my lifetime! Cheers! ;)