Are We Really Independent???

A few days back, every news channel had the racist attacks on Indians in Australia as their breaking news. Like every other news this too was hyped a lot with discussions, debates etc. taking place (media in India is very fond of highlighting bad news to a large extent).A large amount of students feared going to Australia and the ones there, came back. We called Australia a racist country…but aren’t we one? We always like to point out others faults but who is going to rectify the mistakes we do? We follow a different kind of racism altogether…we segregate on the basis of caste. Indian Students in Australia are getting beaten up by the native citizens because they are taking away their opportunities at work…and Indians in India get beaten up because they take away the opportunities of the people of that region…now isn’t that great? And we call ourselves a peace-loving nation! We blame Pakistan for being incapable of fighting the terrorists, but what about us? We are feeding a terrorist in jail instead of hanging him for killing innumerable people. I’m a true patriot by heart, trust me, and that’s the reason why I can’t see my nation going towards the negative extremity.62 years after independence and we still have a large amount of our population under poverty line…but no, we don’t want to talk about it! We hate it when some director portrays this poverty and wins an Oscar, we hate it when our politicians are exposed taking a bribe, we hate it when our president is frisked at the airport (though we claim that security of the nation is of utmost importance).I don’t think the people who sacrificed their lives for this independence would be happy seeing us as slaves of corruption, poverty, malpractices, discrimination on the basis of caste, religion, sects, gender.

We blame the youngsters, migrating to other countries for jobs, for the large amount of brain drain…but what have we done to stop it? Obviously when you are offered a good salary elsewhere, you will tend to move in that direction. Everyone wants to progress in their life, right? I was watching ‘Swades’ today and it truly depicts the condition of our country. More than the government, I feel the people are responsible for our nation’s lag. We can’t see any other person progressing. (Reminds me of crabs, if one tries to move up, the other pulls his leg!)

Even after so many years, we still believe inter-caste marriages are not good, girl’s…howmuchever they progress, ultimately the main aim of their life should be settling down and having a family, giving jobs on the basis of caste and not on merit, sentencing rapists to only 7 years of imprisonment(in most of the cases they are set free) when the crime is equivalent to murdering someone, following fanatics who don’t know what their real motto is, and the most important one…learning household chores is much more important than studying in a school(for girls that is).The conditions in city as compared to villages is much better but not something commendable. After witnessing this literally everyday which Mohan Bhargav would leave his NASA job and come to India to help people, when people here themselves don’t want to change?

I salute the people who laid down their lives so that we could experience this freedom, but I can’t say whether they really would be happy seeing what we have done to our nation! We are the youth; the future belongs to us so let’s pledge today that if not for them at least for ourselves we’ll try to make our country a better nation than what it is now!

HAPPY INDEPENDENCE DAY!