Crisis faced in India: Moral and economical

 

6^th August, 1945 world witnessed an unprecedented catastrophic sequence of event, when USA nuked one of the city of Japan named Hiroshima and ravaged it. Similar event followed in one more city of Japan on 9^th August 1945. Similar catastrophe prevailed there and Japan surrendered to USA and this event lead to the end of World War 2. Just 2 year later, an unconnected event occurred in India and it became free from a foreign dominion on 15^th August 1947. Both countries had a task on their hand, and that was start from fresh to build a nation. Japan chose pacifism as their policy and embarked on the path of development. Now, with the advantage of hindsight, we can see how they reacted to the challenge emerged out of crisis and became one of the most developed nation.

Nation is not a static and its ever building process creates many opportunity as well as crisis. Identification of crisis is the first step towards its elimination. Morality simply means to judge or to act in accordance with the principles developed over time that what is right and what is wrong. It may be at personal level as well as at societal level. Even though India is a very ancient civilization and inspiration for the whole world, yet on moral front we still have to work on. Categorical description on the issue will help a bit to understand

Crisis on moral front:

Corruption is killer; yes it’s the killer of democratically established institution. Transparency International released a report and in terms of transparency India is still ranked on 85^th, way below than most of the advanced democracy which we cherish. Corruption not only financially deprived the chances of the eligible but a sense of deprivation prevails on the victims. National resources depletes for the benefits of the perpetrators.

Even though we may boast our culture as the ancient, but the stark reality is that even after having political equality enshrined in the constitution, half of the population, i.e. female population still faces sexual discrimination in many parts of the country. Female feticides, skewed sex ratio in favour of male, sexual abuses such as horrendous event like Delhi gang rape malign the dignity of nation.

Cast identity and communalism is also one of the detractors of our moral fabric as a nation. Though it is guaranteed by the constitution that state as well individuals should not discriminate on the basis of cast or religon, yet we witnesses many cast based stir, communal riots, atrocities on Scheduled Casts. One of the reasons that, we became colony of Europeans is the same feeling, still we are not learning the lessons from past.

One more attribute, which is galvanized in our morality over the years in us is “West is Best”. There is no doubt in the fact that west particularly European and Americans, were ahead in terms of political, industrial as well as economical and so they dominated the world. But this doesn’t mean that every aspect of them were correct. Colonization is criticized even in Britain now days, the relentless and injudicious use of natural resources by them has posed and existential threat to human civilization in terms global warming, family concept is diminished and many more to count. The point is that we should be modernizing, not to westernize. Japan can be one example in this front. Cleanliness, civic discipline, attitude towards public property there are many front in which our nation is lagging compare to other developed nations.

Challenges on economic front:

Even after 68 years of independence, the number of suicide committed by farmer was nearly 3,200 in year 2015 alone. This is abysmal for a country which is claiming to be the third largest country in terms of GDP (PPP). Number of poor is huge in terms of the government data released, nearly 26%, civil society even doubt on the data and claims the number even more.

Gross inequality is prevalent in social as well as economical front. At one side there is a large water sports amusement parks for the niche, on the other hand female has to walk for kilometers to fetch water, potable or not that is different question all together. This inequality is also found in educational, health care, sanitation, social infrastructure.

Unemployment is a serious challenge in front of the government. We have benefit of demography this point of time. A large population (more than 70%) is under working age group, but they don’t have much opportunity and job to do. Post reform era, our GDP was impressive, but the period was marked by “Jobless Growth”. Still more than 60% population is dependent on primary activity, which is not an healthy sign for a developing and aspires developed country.

Skill of the person is asset of them. In terms of skill, if we compare India with many developed and even developing country we have to concede a lot. South Korea’s 84%, Japan’s 91%, Chaina’s 76% population is skilled, but when we talk India it’s Just nearly 24%. Even with this abysmal number, when KR Narayan Murthy says that only 18% of the engineers are employable, that pose a serious question on our policy towards skilling youth.

One of the astounding reasons of the rise of Europeans in 18^th century or for that matter USA in 20^th century was the amount of research and innovations done in their country. In twentieth century, USA became the epitome of research from atomic energy to Internet, from Google to Amazon all came from USA, Whereas India is underperformer in this segment. Japan and recently China spends a lot of amount in this front.

Though, we may have seen that in there are crisis like situations in both moral as well as economic front, but we should treat this as a challenge rather than Crisis. We have performed very well in compare to the past. Our agricultural output has increases manifold.  Our industries became widespread and diversified. Service sector witnessed huge upward trend.

Some of course correction could be the promotion of equality in economic front. Some of the benefits of capitalist’s tendency should be encouraged, but when it reaches the point of exploitation government has to step in.

Women participation in economic sector has to increase. Financial independence will help them to make their own decision and hence they will be able to do better both for them as well as for nation as a whole. Financial independence will also help in reducing sexual discrimination.

Government has to invest on infrastructural front heavily. Which in turn will attract the private player from both India as well as abroad and ultimately help in creating Job.

Government spending in social sector such as health and education has to be increased, as health related issue is affects marginalized the most. Spending on skills and education is the need of the hour.

In sum, though there are numerous challenges are there but every challenges brings opportunity with it. Moral as well as Economic crisis has answer to each other in many sense. If we address moral challenges such as corruption, then in turn it will help us economically. If we increase women participation in workplace and reduce discrimination it will  help economically as well socially.

 

 

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