A r-e-a-l-l-y bad week for India..:-(
Posted : August 1, 2005 at 7:00 pm [America/Los_Angeles]
A massive quake, riots, rains that claimed about 1,000 lives, a freak accident destroying a key offshore oil platform, a bomb on a train and a militant siege in Kashmir — it’s been a week that Indians would rather forget but won’t easily be able to.
— Sify News, “A week Indians would love to forget”
It’s easy to read this and conclude, with classic Indian cyncism I might add, that “everything just sucks in India”. We can brood about the lack of a “real” infrastructure in our country to deal with natural (or other) calamities. We can bitch about just how corrupt and incompetent many of our public officials are. We can scream at the utter lack of respect for “every” single Indian life and the stupid gesture of doling out 1 lac rupees (it was 1 lac when I was a kid) to the family who lost a loved one. And yes, they will all be true. However, I choose not to let myself be carried away by this one-sided sentiment. Why? Mostly because I have done it and seen others do it for as long as I can remember. Even now. And I am soooo through thinking like that. The fact is I detest this perennial and blind cynicism about everything India (or Indians) do (or don’t do) as much as I hate those incompetent public officials that I alluded to earlier.
For the sake of a “better” India, I would fervently hope and pray that the “new and upcoming” generation of Indian youth is not bitten by this silly bug. Optimism is a good thing. Sacrifice for the sake of a better tomorrow is even better. Sense of humor, especially in worst of times, is the best. “The best thing to do when confronted with a problem is to help solve it!” is a good mantra I hope they follow all their lives. Bottomline, I’d rather they be part of the solution than be part of the problem, or worse, part of the ruck that endlessly analyze the problem from their comfy dwellings in anything-but-India (hint..hint). 
- Anand
Category: Chindia