कबीर का एक दोहा है
निंदक नियरे राखिये आँगन कुटीर छवाय 
बिन साबुन पानी बिना निर्मल करे सुभाय
यह लेख उसी श्रेणी मैं आता है . यह घृणा या द्वेष का परिचायक नहीं है बल्कि हकीकत है. हर देश भक्त भारतीय को भारत को सचमुच अछा करने की जरूरत है . सिर्फ सारे जहां से अच्छा गाने से काम नहीं चलेगा उसे बनाना भी होगा .
Please read the article below by Sean Kelley a world traveller.
All those who have been to West will certify that almost all that he says is true,Most of India does not care …………….
All Indians everywhere should read the following article on India by Sean
Kelley. None of us should be surprised by the ugly facts about India that
he has so honestly presented. …… *Please Read without prejudice…… *
One can’t deny the bitter facts…
Reflections on India by Sean Paul Kelley
Sean Paul Kelley is a travel writer, former radio host, and before that, an
asset manager for a Wall Street investment bank that is still (barely)
alive. He recently left a fantastic job in Singapore working for Solar
Winds, a software company based out of Austin, to travel around the world
for a year or two. He founded The Agonist, in 2002, which is still
considered the top international affairs, culture and news destination for
progressives. He is also the Global Correspondent for The Young Turks, on
satellite radio and Air America.
If you are Indian, or of Indian descent, I must preface this post with a
clear warning: you are not going to like what I have to say. My criticisms
may be very hard to stomach. But consider them as the hard words and loving
advice of a good friend. Someone who is being honest with you and wants
nothing from you.
Lastly, before anyone accuses me of Western Cultural Imperialism, let me
say this: if this is what India and Indians want, then, who am I to tell
them differently. Take what you like and leave the rest. In the end it
doesn’t really matter, as I get the sense that Indians, at least many upper
class Indians, don’t seem to care and the lower classes just don’t know any
better, what with Indian culture being so intense and pervasive on the
sub-continent. But, here goes, nonetheless.
India is a mess. It’s that simple, but it’s also quite complicated. I’ll
start with what I think are Indias’ four major problems – the four most
preventing India from becoming a developing nation – and then move to some
of the ancillary ones.
First: Pollution. In my opinion the filth, squalor and all around
pollution, indicates a marked lack of respect for India by Indians. I don’t
know how cultural the filth is, but it’s really beyond anything I have ever
encountered. At times the smells, trash, refuse and excrement are like a
garbage dump. Right next door to the Taj Mahal was a pile of trash that
smelled so bad, was so foul as to almost ruin the entire Taj experience.
Delhi, Bangalore and Chennai to a lesser degree, were so very polluted as
to make me physically ill. Sinus infections, ear infection, bowels churning
was an all too common experience in India. Dung, be it goat, cow or human
fecal matter, was common on the streets. In major tourist areas filth was
everywhere, littering the sidewalks, the roadways, you name it. Toilets in
the middle of the road, men urinating and defecating anywhere, in broad
daylight.
Whole villages are plastic bag wastelands. Roadsides are choked by it. Air
quality that can hardly be called quality. Far too much coal and far too
few unleaded vehicles on the road. The measure should be how dangerous the
air is for ones’ health, not how good it is. People casually throw trash in
the streets, on the roads.
The only two cities that could be considered sanitary, in my journey, were
Trivandrum – the capital of Kerala – and Calicut. I don’t know why this is,
but I can assure you that, at some point, this pollution will cut into
Indias’ productivity, if it already hasn’t. The pollution will hobble
Indias’ growth path, if that indeed is what the country wants. (Which I
personally doubt, as India is far too conservative a country, in the small
`c’ sense.)
The second issue, infrastructure, can be divided into four subcategories:
Roads, Rails, Ports and the Electric Grid. The Electric Grid is a joke.
Load shedding is all too common, everywhere in India. Wide swathes of the
country spend much of the day without the electricity they
actually pay for. Without regular electricity, productivity, again, falls.
The Ports are a joke. Antiquated, out of date, hardly even appropriate for
the mechanized world of container ports, more in line with the days of
longshoremen and the like.
Roads are an equal disaster. I only saw one elevated highway that would be
considered decent in Thailand, much less Western Europe or America and I
covered fully two-thirds of the country during my visit. There are so few
dual carriage-way roads as to be laughable. There are no traffic laws to
speak of and, if there are, they are rarely obeyed, much less enforced
(another sideline is police corruption). A drive that should take an hour
takes three. A drive that should take three takes nine. The buses are at
least thirty years old, if not older and, generally, in poor mechanical
repair, belching clouds of poisonous smoke and fumes.
Everyone in India, or who travels in India, raves about the railway system.
Rubbish! It’s awful! When I was there in 2003 and then late 2004 it was
decent. But, in the last five years, the traffic on the rails has grown so
quickly that once again, it is threatening productivity. Waiting in line
just to ask a question now takes thirty minutes. Routes are routinely sold
out three and four days in advance now, leaving travelers stranded with
little option except to take the decrepit and dangerous buses.
At least fifty million people use the trains a day in India. 50 million
people! Not surprising that wait lists of 500 or more people are common
now. The rails are affordable and comprehensive, but, they are overcrowded
and what with budget airlines popping up in India like sadhus in an ashram
in the middle and lowers classes are left to deal with the overutilized
rails and quality suffers. No one seems to give a damn.
Seriously, I just never have the impression that the Indian government
really cares. Too interested in buying weapons from Russia, Israel and the
US, I guess.
The last major problem in India is an old problem and can be divided into
two parts: that’ve been two sides of the same coin since government was
invented: bureaucracy and corruption.
It take triplicates to register into a hotel. To get a SIM card for ones’
phone is like wading into a jungle of red-tape and photocopies one is not
likely to emerge from in a good mood, much less satisfied with customer
service.
Getting train tickets is a terrible ordeal, first you have to find the
train number, which takes 30 minutes, then you have to fill in the form,
which is far from easy, then you have to wait in line to try and make a
reservation, which takes 30 minutes at least and if you made a single
mistake on the form, back you go to the end of the queue, or what passes
for a queue in India.
The government is notoriously uninterested in the problems of the
commoners. Too busy fleecing the rich, or trying to get rich themselves in
some way, shape or form. Take the trash, for example, civil rubbish
collection authorities are too busy taking kickbacks from the wealthy to
keep their areas clean that they don’t have the time, manpower, money or
interest in doing their job.
Rural hospitals are perennially understaffed as doctors pocket the fees the
government pays them, never show up at the rural hospitals and practice in
the cities instead.
I could go on for quite some time about my perception of India and its
problems, but in all seriousness, I don’t think anyone in India really
cares. And that, to me, is the biggest problem. India is too conservative a
society to want to change in any way.
Mumbai, Indias’ financial capital, is about as filthy, polluted and poor as
the worst city imaginable in Vietnam, or Indonesia – and being more
polluted than Medan, in Sumatra, is no easy task. The biggest rats I have
ever seen were in Medan !
One would expect a certain amount of, yes, I am going to use this word,
“backwardness,” in a country that hasn’t produced so many Nobel Laureates,
nuclear physicists, imminent economists and entrepreneurs. But, India has
all these things and what have they brought back to India with them?
Nothing.
The rich still have their servants, the lower castes are still there to do
the dirty work and so the country remains in stasis. It’s a shame. Indians
and India have many wonderful things to offer the world, but I’m far from
sanguine that India will amount to much in my lifetime.
Now, you have it, call me a cultural imperialist, a spoiled child of the
West and all that. But remember, I’ve been there. I’ve done it and I’ve
seen 50 other countries on this planet and none, not even Ethiopia, have as
long and gargantuan a laundry list of problems as India does.
And, the bottom line is, I don’t think India really cares. Too complacent
and too conservative.
__._,_.___
