As a youngster, my favorite pastime, was trapping bumblebees and trying to get them to fly, in my houses rambling garden. The exercise though seemingly morbid was great fun & importantly kept me out of greater trouble. The bumblebee was a revelation. Bulky, squat, it still managed to fly and made good progress at that, while providing a mystery, as aerodynamically it is most unsuited to fly. In defense many say that the BB flies because it does not know that it should not.
I liken the BB to India. Why, because we still manage to function & even sometimes sprint despite our dysfunctional sub sets……………………………
My friend Bob Hoekstra (Ex CEO Philips India) while lecturing in my class said that, India was probably the only nation, where grinding poverty and dazzling wealth could exist besides each other, without the poor tearing the rich down out of frustration. Why do the poor accept their fate? Why do they silently watch as the rich get richer? Is it the Hindu belief in Karma? Why does not India implode?
My own explanation is that the Indian poor, has a safety valve, built in where they have immense freedom in many areas:
# 1. All open spaces are public toilets.
#2. The need for discipline does not exist. It is a free for all.
#3. There is little accountability in any sphere, and even if there is, the wheels of justice grind so slowly that many times justice barely reaches on time.
Compare this with the state of Singapore. A roaring economy, proud people………….but with their nose to the grindstone all the time. You’ve got to survive in a competitive, society! If you ask the right questions, you can sense a growing anger, amongst many, at the intense pressure that they face to get by. In Singapore the cannot do’s are more than the can do’s.
My theory has an inherent flaw, because many times, the rich behave exactly like the poor and uneducated, in using freedom not meant to be. (Remember the Honda City gent, watering a plant in the Lal Bagh)
Then why do we function and how do we function? I think it’s like my Bumble Bee; we function because we do not know that we should not.
Ignorance, like they say is bliss…………………..
3 comments:
Ignorance is bliss.. a concept which is apt in many situations as in case of Indian poor( at least they survive without submitting to violence
) and is tragic in other situations as in case of subservience of women in villages who do have rights but not the appropriate knowledge and thus they suffer... its just the way people live and we can't do much about it...
well said sir!! ignorance is truly a bliss:) who can forget childhood days when we do things the way we want to..may be too much intelligence today restrict us to play with sand and make clay houses near shores or enjoying candies! but one cannot be ignorant about behavior which is not personal and affect others too..and as far as Indians are concerned, we are among the agreeable populations across the world..ask an Indian student and an American student to write an answer..Indian will read his answer thrice before submitting to edit his own answer again and again..unlike American who will write and submit..because we are good at finding faults in ourselves..but we will hardly find fault in others who may be senior to us..the below poverty line population has accepted its fate(or may be waiting for the predicted apocalypse by some or the other priest to come true) but they will hardly wake up and do karma to change their fate..we are accustomed to live like this..and the sad part is that the handful rich citizens are ignorant too..they don't want to understand that with great power comes great responsibility..they are not helping in reducing this wide gap between two equally ignorant India's!! its surprising sir that this bumbling economy of ours is one among the stablest economies of the world who still maintains a positive and good growth rate of 6-7% when the complete world is drowning due to recession!!
What an anology?
Good one.
Shankar
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