Urban Mirror

(Yoga Day Special)

 

Dr. Smita Pandey

 

International Yoga Day was celebrated with much fanfare on May 21. Our much acclaimed leaders literally walked the talk and demonstrated intricate asanas alongside an energized populace. High octane speeches and vid eos taking up the fitness challenge dominate our discourse currently. The public is busy rating the fitness levels of the leading lights of our nation currently. Physical fitness is the new mantra to Making India Fit.

Celebrated political writer-philosopher Noam Chomsky had presciently stated, “that’s the whole point of good propaganda. You want to create a slogan that nobody is going to be against, and everybody is going to be for. Nobody knows what it means, because it doesn’t mean anything.’’

With fit leaders fit India slogan, brownie points are being scored across the political spectrum. Those leaders not up to this physical challenge are being perceived as being less worthy of wielding power. Social media is popularizing the physicality of healthiness .

 

Will this suffice to make India fit ?

 

What are India’s fitness levels? Is our Education Fit? We have the largest number of illiterates in the world. The literacy levels of a large section of our young children show a consistent inability to be fluent in the three Rs -Reading, Writing and Arithmetic. Shocking exposes of toppers of regional boards, who do not even have a rudimentary knowledge of their subjects exemplify the rot in our system. Why are most of our technical institutes not able to provide requisite quality of education? Why have management institutes mushroomed everywhere and why are their products so unfit to take up professional challenges? Missing students, absentee teachers, rampant cheating, fake degrees and entrenched malpractices have been assiduously promoted by education mafia. Their brawny muscular tentacles are robust enough to prevent any government from challenging their total mis fitness to rule the roost. The apex regulatory bodies in coveted medical education typify the same ineptness and culture of loot. Why has no government been able to make education fit even after decades and decades ?

What about the healthy fitness of our people? An astounding 55 million are plummeting every year into below the poverty line levels currently as the costs of healthcare are so exorbitant. The ratio of doctor to patients is abysmal-barely one doctor for over 2000 patients -and that is a conservative estimate primarily applicable to urban areas. A majority of our rural areas are devoid of even basic health facilities -a plethora of sarkari schemes notwithstanding. Their suffering is maximum. Illness for them means selling off their tiny plot of land to defray the cost of treatment in private hospitals in the city. The government hospitals are already overstretched and cannot accommodate them. Why has no government taken up this daunting challenge to resolve it comprehensively? Yet another high sounding scheme is the response every five years. The population continues to wait stoically for health for all to materialize in the distant future.

We have adequate and fit resources to resolve our pressing problems. we have totally unfit leaders. Poverty of vision, poverty of intent and poverty of conscientious action result in more than 30% of us, at least, living below the poverty line. Those living immediately above it, are so classified, but are eking out a penurious wretched existence. All our “mai baap sarkars” have been pledging to remove this “garibi”. All are constantly proclaiming their affinity and “saath” with their poor brethren. All are pledging their “vikas”. Still garibi is apparent throughout our vast land in unimaginable degrees. Why are these omnipotent elected rulers, espousing diverse ideologies of varying hues, not made accountable for prevalence of this horrific garibi? With every change of the government, we are promised that now the “aam aadmi” will become fit, the scamsters and criminals, who have looted the janata and reduced them to penury, will be punished, jailed and our stolen assets recovered. Results are the same every time. Pledges are never redeemed .Our corrupt, inefficient, selfish and self-serving rulers remain unfit to act and effect the acute transformation by crucifying the guilty and acting swiftly and diligently to promote common good.

 

What is the solution? The leaders making “Mera Bharat Mahan” believe that the panacea of all ills is enactment of new laws, regulations and ordinances. The real problem is not the paucity of laws but their enforcement. It is not the severity of the law but the certainty of its enforcement that maintains law and order. With over two crores of cases pending in the courts of law, the law-breaker is confident that he can break the law with impunity and statistically speaking, nothing is going to happen to him for decades. In the pursuit of ensuring that there is no miscarriage of justice, the whole system has been made so complicated and cumbersome that justice, when finally meted out, is generally only academic justice serving no purpose. And, on top of it, there is the interference of the powers-that-be from the FIR stage upwards .Our elected rulers are not prepared to risk their positions for ensuring that rule of law prevails in society. Our legal fitness never materializes.

 Wrong is constantly made right by the powerful “Bahubalis”. Money determines outcomes brazenly. Fiscal fitness of another kind! A contaminated moral atmosphere is the consequence of this venality. “Everybody Does It’’ absolves leaders of all culpability. Governance is reduced to one liners. Intrigue, manouvering, wheeling dealing, horse trading and meteoric amassing of fortunes define ruling elite. These practitioners of the political craft do not have the requisite skill or expertise to act rightly but have the knowhow to subvert the system and undermine it constantly. “Yogah Karmasu Kaushalam” must be implemented in righteous public service. To make ailing India Fit, our leaders must rise morally. Courage, honesty, fair mindedness, competence, intelligence must define their action for India to become fit holistically.