India can never be a tiger. It is an elephant and will always be. It will keep on lumbering.
-gurucharan das in his book-ÏNDIA UNBOUND.
A buddhist excerpt says, Elephant is the most wise animal. It always remembers the past and learns from it. It progresses slowly but with its charm intact.
What kind of an elephant India is- lumbered or wise?
I somehow believe the former statement true. India is a lumbered elephant. And one of the major factor is sense of discipline. I wont take heavy words such as corruption, poverty because they all are indirectly related to discipline. And I believe corruption is one of the most easiest excuse. Discipline, organised- these are the perhaps the most irritating words used by our parents or our teachers. But it has a deep meaning inside it. And there comes a time when we realise it, but the only problem is its sometimes too late. In Germany, almost every citizen has to compulsory get military education after 12th std for 2yrs. It not only teaches you to how to use weapons or fight your enemies, it does a lot more than that, it creates a sense of discipline. And after reading the blog of one of my friend, gaurav ogale where he described how members of the committee were fighting and shouting at the top of their voice, I feel there is an urgent need of discipline in people. I used the word people, because even we behave in such way in some situations in some or the way. We feel no harm in bribing the policemen when they catch us for license or helmets. Once we pay the whole amount, we will know the value of that money and from the next time we will obey those rules. Its simple, its just that we need to take an initiative.
While reading the book- India Unbound, one point was constantly stressed upon and that was, that no matter what, we are always at the top, because the tradition and the customs we have, no other country has. This reminded me of the scene from Swades. It was rightly said that whenever we fall behind in the competition, we take support of these traditions and customs. But its totally unfair to take support of all these things. We cant say that our customs are the best, because they (Americans, Germans) have their own traditions, and they have built themselves upon it. We really need to come out of the closet and stop playing this blame game.
If we really work upon it and really look forward to this as a grave issue, maybe in the future we will be wise elephant.