By Umika Sharma:
When I listen to the latest, beautifully composed jingle advocating the ‘Bharat Nirman‘ by the government I feel rage building up inside of me. Do not take me as someone who is anti-Congress or anti-Manmohan Singh, I am just a young girl, who actually never used to care about politics or what our politicians were up to. But today I stand at that point in my life where I am bothered about the sorry state of my country. I feel angry when international agencies comment on the Indian economic and political system and when our Prime Minister reacts angrily to international media comments but refuses to talk about the current disastrous scenario in our nation.
Every few months, a new and bigger scam turns up. Thousands of crores go into our politician’s pockets. Added to this, the poverty line gets defined at a mere Rs 28 per day. How is it even possible to say that a person in India, who earns something more than that amount, is not poor? I do not see how it makes sense when the inflation is at its highest. The subsidies are slowly being taken away and eating into the common man’s pocket. This is not definitely the nirman our government keeps talking about. The amazing singers and the melody can’t wash away the fact that the government has miserably failed at what it is supposed to do. There is no sense of security left in our citizens.
We feel agitated and distressed about this pathetic scenario and yes, we do support Anna Hazare and Baba Ramdev in their efforts, but how does it really help? For a few moments it seemed as if change was about to come, but eventually all the hype died out. The Anna team chose the political path and Baba Ramdev somehow disappeared. We are ultimately back to square one.
When I was a kid, I wanted to become an artist. A phase came when I even wanted to be a superhero but I can never recall aspiring to become a politician. Today I am an adult and still don’t see myself choosing that field. All my friends either want to be doctors, engineers or teachers. Not even one harbours political ambitions. Why is that, I ask myself. What could be the possible reason?
The simple answer is that nobody wants to get into the murk. We whine about the horrible mess but we are not willing to clean it up. We are turning into a generation which only wants white collar jobs, we want to live our life comfortably and earn big chunks of money. The sad part is that we don’t even want to have a say in the building of this nation. Most of us don’t vote, contesting elections does not even come to play here. The need of the hour is to stand up and fight back. Let us fight corruption and clean the dirt. Let us just not discuss. Let us do something and bring about change, because, at the end of the day, we are the future of this country.