Act on your thoughts! You will make a difference!

Act on your thoughts! You will make a difference!

If there is one thing we can do for our country then that must be living up to our civic responsibilities!

A Japanese proverb says: "Vision without action is a day dream. Action without vision is a nightmare"

What a powerful statement! It will absolutely make sense to any logical mind. People like me and you hate the status quo in India, the bureaucracy, the corruption, the lawlessness etc. and have tons of ideas as to how to solve them. We are very confident that if only the people or the govt. would listen to us, things would be different and we can create the ideal society of our liking. But in reality nothing happens and we shall wonder why?

We do have a decent size of the population that we call the elitists, the educated, the intellectuals, the bureaucracy etc that should have made a big difference in this country’s advancement. But apparently they make no difference to the development path of India. When I say development of India, I don’t necessarily mean the military or the budget size of India. I meant the overall quality of life, liberty and dignity of Indian citizens. We love to claim that we are the best and yet we would be hard pressed to convince someone of the same if they had taken a look at a typical neighborhood of any of our metros or have seen the way the bureaucracy treats its citizens. If not why then so many Indians are so keen to migrate to foreign countries? I am sure you will be tempted to deny that but ask yourself this: What % of our fellow Indians would apply for foreign citizenship, if YOU have the authority to issue a citizenship to all developed countries of the world? I think we should roughly know and agree on the answer. No point in denying the truth.

I think the reason the intellectuals of this nation (like you and me!) are not able to make a big difference to this country is that we are mostly day dreamers! We make not enough effort long enough to realize our dreams. We are idea mongers but unfortunately we want someone else to implement our ideas! Why would they? Wouldn’t they rather implement their own instead of ours? That is exactly what our politicians and bureaucrats are doing.

IMHO, this is the biggest hump that we, the intellectual crowds of India, must overcome if we were to be of any impact. We must find a way to live up to our civic responsibilities without giving up to lame excuses such as, “I am too busy at work”, “It won’t work in India”, “I have family commitments”, “My workplace is too far”, “I have a better idea but no one would listen” and the story goes on and on!. We must give up finding excuses and start acting on our dreams! We can transform this country in only 20 years if we can get only 10% of our citizens to live up to their civic responsibilities! I mean civic responsibilities in broader sense and include politics as it is the thing that binds us together and is integral part of our community living!

Mr. Gandhi once observed that "The real Swaraj will come not by the acquisition of authority by a few but by the acquisition of capacity by all to resist authority when abused". If you truly believe in freedom, liberty and democracy then we must help each other and live up to the expectations of Mr. Gandhi.

Raj

What I say is just my view and I am sure you have one that is better!