Land of Lime

This Churumuri post (Everything is fine till something happens to you) by C H Swaroop was disturbing even for the cynic within me.

We all have moments of cynicism and find nothing redeeming, in our personal lives, communities and especially, nation.

So Swaroop has a question: ‘Post-independence, does India, as a nation, have achievements to be proud of’?

I have ranted before on many of our shortcomings; my previous post itself is a good example. Still, I could come up with a good response to this question, whatever parameter for achievement Swaroop wants to choose.

I couldn’t, however, begin to address the confused thinking and mixed up anologies. Take the following example:

Well, people can say that Singapore has no real freedoms, you’re just a puppet and so on. I have an analogy for that. We need a class teacher to maintain discipline (law and order) so that the classes can proceed and progress can be made, otherwise there will be just noise and only people who somehow learn to not get affected by the noise and study on their own (businessmen who succeed). It’s not like there is no freedom, you can always raise your hands and talk to the class teacher (citizens representation to the government) or at least approach the teacher after class hours (write to them)….

Irrespective of the type of government (democracy or autocracy or whatever), maintaining discipline should be the primary responsibility of the government, which is what is lacking in India today.

A nation is no school teacher. A government doesn’t teach morals nor does it inculcate discipline. What it does do is to prevent violence because the state has monopoly over violence, as the classic definition goes. It is the responsibility of parents and communities to teach morals and inculcate discipline. We are disciplined inside a classroom not because teacher (or class monitor) enforces discipline. Our parents teach us that, a lesson which may get reinforced in the school and community.

I got to say this: while the post seems to be raising a provocative question, it is a framed incorrectly and the thinking is quite sloppy.

The question should have been directed within, asking ourselves (as parents, citizens, community members) whether we are failing ourselves and then in what areas. The nation is no separate entity, outside of ourselves. Also, there are too many factual inaccuracies in this post, which I must leave for another occasion. I, however, had to respond to the misplaced cynicism, angst and disillusion, which funnily enough seems to be prevalent generally among middle classes and upper castes generally.