Thursday, June 30, 2005

President's Hyderabad address

I concede with our president’s argument when he addressed the crowd in Hyderabad. He says

“In Singapore you don't throw cigarette butts on the roads..”
“YOU would not dare to speed beyond 55 mph (88 km/h) in Washington..”
“YOU wouldn't chuck an empty coconut shell anywhere other than
the garbage pile on the beaches in Australia and New Zealand “


When I get together with friends and family, we talk about corruption and everything else that's wrong with India. Of course, we know whom to blame at all times. THE GOVERNMENT. I hardly know a handful of people who would take responsibility and contribute to the society in his\her own individual ways.

Americans have no family bonding, but they have community emotions. In India, we have family values (which are deteriorating by the way),but lack the community feeling. Let me explain that a little bit

”You say that the municipality does not pick up the garbage.”

Fine. It doesn’t. Does it mean we should live in filth?. Apparently we do. We only know, to clean our backyards. But we have no clue, whatsoever, on how to keep our surroundings litter-free. Oh, wait a minute! Why should we? That's municipality’s work. Weeeeeeee are not going to pick garbage. What are we scavengers now? But what we are going to do precisely is, contribute to the filth and make it more repulsive. Smoke and throw cigarette butts and the empty pack wherever you wish (We live in free country, you see). How about pan? What about water, noise pollution during festivals? I could go on.

What amazes me the most is, the highly educated people do it all the time. And it’s very hard to make them fathom. How many educated Indians realize the ramifications of sound and air pollution during Diwali? Even if they are aware, how many take action? How many impart it to their children? How many teachers inculcate this to our children at school?

I always thought we have to educate the uneducated. But time has come, to educate the educated. And it’s a tough job, mind you!

I truly believe that if every Indian is at his/her best international behavior in India, our journey towards progress would be a little less bumpy.

In addition to devising sophisticated plans to erase corruption at this juncture, we should work concertedly to create awareness among the masses.

Like our president said

"ASK WHAT WE CAN DO FOR INDIA AND DO WHAT HAS TO BE DONE TO MAKE INDIA WHAT AMERICA AND OTHER WESTERN COUNTRIES ARE TODAY"

His speech is really thought inductive. Don’t you think?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I totally agree.Civic sense is lacking big time. I have experienced it myself when I have been considered 'wierd' when I walked a few extra yards to dump some candy wrapper in the trash ,while in India.These people that laughed then,willingly do the same thing here!I think schools & mothers(yes, mentioning the two of them in the same breath does mean that both are sources of education)would play a BIG role in building the thought in the budding minds...& refreshing the stale ones!