Whereas it is true that fifty years, is not a significantly large chunk of time in the history of a nation, the gradual downward trend in all spheres of human activity, makes very sad commentary on the life of our mother land. It is also true that during the first fifty years of the history of another great democracy in America there was greater chaos than what we have seen in India. Times have changed. While American constitution was written in 1772 AD, we had ours in the present century. That should have made a vast difference.

The logo that we have chosen for our independence "Satyam eva Jayathe" deliberately excluded the latter part of the saying in the Mundaka Upanishad (III 1.6) which goes thus in toto.

In retrospect we have practised exactly the opposite. "Anritham eva Jayathe Na. Satyam" Untruth only triumphs and not the truth, applies to every aspect of our living. Take any field and see how this dictum is followed without any deviation. In the political field we only have people who tell lies day in and day out, holding on to their positions of power based primarily on untruth. The Gandhian School of thought is given a go by including the Gandhi cap. Our present nethas put the cap on other’s heads - the gullible public and the poor people of this country.

While there are a lot of good people around, some of them in politics as well, they have become ineffective, mainly because of their inability to counter the bad influence of those minority of bad elements. We, the majority of people who criticise the politicians for their failures, are equally responsible for the country’s downhill course, because of our apathy. No amount of drawing room gossip is going to help improve matters unless all of us take an active part in building this great country of ours. Bob Hope, the American comedian, once said " All those who know how to run the government are only driving taxis or cutting hair." Very true, indeed!

They cry hoarse about eradicating poverty from every platform, but poverty has only increased in the last 50 years. The rich - poor gap was around 30 : 1 in 1947 and today it is around 61.1:1. The poor have become poorer, and they pay for their poverty with their lives. Every conceivable disease from common cold to cancer is much higher in the poor compared to the rich. The greatest ‘risk factor’ of all diseases is the anxiety of not knowing where your next meal comes from. The rich are afraid of the poor now. It is poverty and unemployment that begets criminals, drug addicts, and murders in society.

While the poor in the villages have all the ailments, the medical facilities are concentrated in larger cities where they are least needed. This inverse - care law is greatly exaggerated in the case of our netas who take their illnesses, minor or major, to foreign specialists at the poor tax payer’s cost.

Some of these netas get diseases at their convenience to avoid going to jail. I have named this new disease as "cell mediated angina"; where the cell is in the Thihar jail and angina is the chest pain. Ofcourse, they get obliging super specialists who vouch for the genuineness of their diseases. (Anritam eva Jayathe at work here also). The nobility of the medical profession reaches its nadir here !

Our netas vie with each other in competing for scams involving thousands of crores of money. Corruption is at its best. While a peon gets caught for accepting a few rupees, the net as go scot free even with crores kept in gunny bags.

WHAT IS THE REMEDY:

Having defined the disease, we should think of the management. I have some thoughts in this direction.

The time honoured British game of divide and rule is being practised in the more refined way by our present day rulers. They divide people in the name of religion, caste, region, social status, language and what have you. If we could make our innocent brethren to realize the truth (satyam) behind these moves, we may be able to defeat their game plan.

LANGUAGE:

Language is only a mode of communication. The first blow on the unity of the country was the plan to divide the country based on language. Ever since then thousands of innocent people must have died in riots in the name of language. Nothing could be more foolish. We should make our people realize that one could carve out a new language for India from our different languages and dialects. We have intelligent people who could put together a simple unifying language for all of us. If we study the history of the English language, we would realize that it is very easy to create a new language. English was born out of a wedlock between the invading Norman’s French and the local Anglo-Saxon dialects originally from Hungary and other parts of Europe. It grew and absorbed words from every language and has succeeded in being the language of international communication. All languages have the same root. The Indo-European languages are close to Sanskrit. We could get a few wordsmiths to create a simple unifying language for the country.

RELIGION:

God and religion seem to be our next divider. In the matter of religion fanaticism is the curse. Ritualistic religion is a personal choice and a personal matter. No one should have a right to meddle with it. But the theology of religion again could be identical for the nation. I think all will agree that we in India have had a special kind of ethics, called by Max Mueller, as Haenotheism; the ideal form of conduct that was accepted as the foundation of the right living by all religions orders, whether theistic, atheistic, or agnostic. I feel that the Indian Haenotheism is not a simple deviation of the monotheism or the polytheism, as was conceived by Max Mueller, but a new concept of respect for other man’s God or belief. It is the unity in diversity and the diversity in unity. What a beautiful concept. The original idea runs thus:

Rita, and Satya, (order and truth) are the two essential parts of the concept of divinity. I do not think anyone will object to this concept.

The natural law when combined with moral law becomes Rita in the true sense; which is cognate with the cosmic law. This idea is even older than the Karma theory. According to the former the inflexible cosmic laws rule the fate of man on earth. The original Greek idea of "fate" postdates the concept of ‘Rita’ in Indian thought.

Rita reduces chaos to cosmos, and gives order and integration, that result in beauty and order in society.

This concept of the theology of the religion of every Indian belonging to all conventional religions could be a great concept, the gluon, to bind us all, brothers and sisters, in this great land of ours.

CASTE & SOCIAL STATUS:

Caste system is another of our enemies. When looked at dispassionately, caste system is there all over the world. Mr. Smith is the son of either a goldsmith or a blacksmith. Mr. Baker must have come from the baking trade. But in India this system was used to abuse the less fortunate people in society by the rich and the powerful. It reached its lowest level in the practice of untouchability. The latter is not only barbaric, but it is an animal instinct in man. This has to be condemned in no uncertain terms. Equal opportunities to all must be the fundamental right. Our netas game of using these means to pay lip service to the minorities and the poor should all be exposed. Their very existence and their position, acquired using this kind of anritham (untruth) should not be allowed to succeed. (Eva jayathe)

Education and economic upliftment should be our aim to bring these people to the level of others in society. This could be done by the proper education and not the one that we are pursuing now. Today’s education in our set up is "filling the pail", of replicative knowledge. Our ancient system was that of meta-cognitive knowledge where the child learns with the help of nature the true wisdom, and not just replicative knowledge from the books and notes, to be repeated in the examination answer books. The latter lacks any assistance in the filed of human ethics. Value based education is the need of the hour, where the memorising examination takes a back seat in evaluation. Continuous teacher and peer evaluation, with only two grades- satisfactory and unsatisfactory-should transform the present set up to that of useful value based education.

Economy should be helped to look up using the Gandhian cottage industry norms. Even the great economist Schaumaker thinks that the mega indusrtrialisation does not result in real progress. In his recent book The Guide to the Perplexed he stresses the fact that the real progress could come only by improving man and not by producing more.!

Ours is a great country and it has a bright future. I have lot of faith in our youth, who should see through the game plan of our politicians. They should defeat their nefarious designs and put the country back on the path of righteousness proclaiming loudly and practising "Sathyam eva Jayathe".