Friday, August 20, 2010

FREEDOM @ 63...

At the night of 14th august, I was standing outside the Church Gate Station in Mumbai, waiting for the taxi. A traffic policeman standing nearby to me, he was diverting traffic to other side of the road. I asked him, “Why are you diverting the traffic as this road is always open?” He replied, “For tomorrow the traffic plans is changed, there will be a visit of VIPs here so we are instructed to abandon the road”. Then I asked him, “How are you going to celebrate this Independence Day?” he started laughing by this question as I have passed some joke. Then he said in a satirical tone, “I don’t even have a time to pee and you are saying for celebration. Do you think I will celebrate it? I have no independence; tomorrow also I have to drag this traffic till night, and in the morning I will have to more vigilant as VIPs are coming on this road only.” He lighted a cigarette, while taking a puff he smiled and pointed me that this is my ‘celebration of Independence’. I gave him a return lack lustrous smile, took a taxi and moved towards my end. I stepped outside the coffee house in Colaba, met my friend there and told him all about traffic policeman, He was laughing at me and said don’t u have any other work than interviewing people on the old crap topics. He was telling me how his one holiday would be a waste just because Independence Day would be on Sunday. I laughed and told him to make a double celebration as for Sunday itself and another one for Independence that the country had got independence 63 years back. He started abusing ministers, bureaucrats, and in the last the latest offender ‘The Suresh Kalmadi’, came into his abusive tongue. We talked a little about Kashmir issue, but then nothing will be changed with our discussion, so we dropped the idea of discussing it and started enjoying the coffee and hot peoples surrounding with their independent dresses and ideas. After having our coffee session, we went to marine drive, sitting and facing towards Arabian Ocean, enjoyed the cool and wet breezes of sea, keeping our philosophical thoughts with in our mind, talking, walking, commenting, abusing we moved again towards Church gate station. I showed him the place where I met the policeman; he abused me again and went to the ticket counter. My eyes were trying to locate that policeman, but were unsuccessful. I boarded the local to Goregaon. I saw the time, it was 11:55, my friend was talking to me, but my mind was their in the past, 63 years back. This was the time when we got the freedom, our nation was declared free by our first Prime minister, Pt. Jawahar Lal Nehru. He gave the speech on the parapet of Red Fort at the stroke of the famous midnight hour in 1947 and since then raises a tradition of Independence Day tryst with the nation for every Prime Minister. The local train stopped at the Goregaon station, we got off, took an auto and left straight away to his flat. I was little tensed, happy, thoughtful, patriotic, a mix of emotions coming out of my mind, making me reckless and anxious to think about my nations past. When I reached his flat, I opened the facebook and posted on my wall, “Happy Independence Day” along with another quote, “Independence might be a dream for Indians, but after 63 years it still remains a dream…” I don’t know why I posted it. Are we still not independent? We still dream of independence, independence from whom, from poverty or scandal ridden common wealth games holding the country’s reputation to ransom and the government stubbornly refusing to be accountable for criminal mismanagement of public resources. What a common man think of it, on one side a poor public struggling to meet its daily expenses in this back broken price rise and on the other, the government spending lavishly on the commonwealth games for just 10 days of games to uphold its false image, which in actually doesn’t matter. The government who still is not able to understand, why there is an outburst in the valley of Kashmir, why people felt agitated and came out on the street? The answer knows every common men, but sorry to say not our government. We choose them, we made them and at the end we have to suffer them. I fear, whatever is happening in Kashmir valley, one day it will happen in all over India. At last how much a common man will suffer with this? Is this not anarchy? Everything seems to be in disorder, Naxalites took the advantage of our politics, we lost several thousand lives of CRPF, but then also why the government hesitate to give a chance to military personnel’s, they are well trained to handle these types of situation than those Para-military forces who doesn’t even having a proper training for these situations. It seems to be political agenda, introduce a little anarchy; everything will be in chaos and then rule over it. All to all, we are not even able to solve the issues of Khap Panchayat, comm’n they won’t be able to stand in front of our powerful judicial decisions, these are very trivial matters which irritates the public, it breaks the trust when the government do not take any stand just because the vote bank might shattered. We are paying for our choices, we indirectly choose the people on the top even though they are not efficient. I don’t think people chosen Omar Abdullah for this, he is sitting in a AC room and doing conference with other Indian Diplomats, why not he directly goes to the public and listen their voices what they actually trying for.
I don’t want to see figures that India’s GDP is growing with this percentage, let people feel it if it is growing. The newspaper has given the figures that how much fold India risen from 1947, but they haven’t given the figures of corruption that triple folded than those times. Whether it’s an IPL issue or a commonwealth games issue, all issues are showing that the government using public resources at large and we are sitting like schmucks, aren’t? We know that the corruption is there but then also we can’t do anything, because we are just marionette of freedom. We are happy to walk freely on the malls, eating in the MacDonald’s, wearing a branded jeans with our choice, if we think that this is the freedom, then my dear fellows, we are wrong. The meaning of freedom is changed, it is not that freedom where some group of revolutionaries, sitting and conspiring for British people, naah, now we want something more, we want freedom for our better being, a better and secured future. We don’t need a patriot who can die for the country, today we need a person who can live for it. We need awareness among the masses. And the awareness comes only through education, transparency and accountability, the government introduced RTI for better transparency and accountability but still we need more method to access public resources, the recent scandals shows that the government is still far away from the reach of common masses. Right to Education bill, and Right to Food bill is passed after 63 years (we were rejoicing…!), this would have done much before by the government. The definition of literacy is unique in our country, a person is considered to be a literate, who can write his name in Hindi or English, I won’t say write it, they actually ‘Draw it’. And with this definition we calculated our literacy rate as 67 % I fear how much it will be in real. We are living in darkness, yeah definitely no doubt we got independence, but we are not free yet, we need to break the shackles of intellectual isolation. Until we don’t make them accountable, we won’t able to solve the conundrums which limit our country’s growth. That policeman was right; we are still clearing and giving the way for anarch. It is much like anarchy of ruling class, of sovereign, and we are the puppets of sovereign. And in the end we use the term ‘Independence day’, think again, ‘Are we really Independent?’

2 comments:

sana said...

well ur dis article is also quite interesting aur i say yeh humare politicans ki antar atma jagane ke kaam aa sakta hai........but leave it...yaar.....i totally agree wid ur frnd... bhai hum log bas soch kar ya baat karke iss ka solution nahin nikal sakte iss desh mein itna corruption hai ki sala (sorry i use abusive language but i hv 2 b'coz iska descrption iske bina ho hi nahin sakta) so where i'm hmmmm.really itna corruption theekh hona mumkin hi nahin hai..aur jo awaz uthayega usko apni jaan se haath dohna hi padeyga its a reality.......i just remember d end of "rang de basanti" movie .really dat movie is d real face of ur country......neways i personally never felt freedom yet now b'coz as one side we say our country is a democratic country but is it really so!!!!!!!!!aaj bhi sala yahan par quota system kyun hai...we general category ppl still face a lots of problem .hum log 200 mein 190 question bhi kar aayen toh selection ki koi gurantee nahin but all dat reserved category 50-60 bhi question kar aayen toh unka selection ho jata hai.....why so??????itna bada difference kyun????dats why half of our talented ppl move outward n never wish 2 return back 2 der home country...........is dis type of independence hv been dreamt by our martyrs????????...........

Unknown said...

hii .. farhan ... well dis article of urs reflects ur love for our motherland...INDIA..EVEN I LOVE INDIA,,but i m more into seeing d better side of things.... just remember we ve just completed 63 years unlike america .. which has completed more dan 300 years of independence... soo things will be better at its own pace...