WE THE UNDERACHIEVERS
on any count, if not totally failure statues, have to
pause and seriously introspect as to what went wrong with us in confidently
marching to our tryst with destiny and redeeming the pledges to the nation made
by innumerable freedom fighters for its full independence, true democracy, economic
prosperity, social justice and peaceful progress. No point in just engaging in any
blame-game; ‘we the people’ have to collectively rethink the strategies and
tactics to be adopted in our struggle for an egalitarian social democracy - the
vision of our national leaders of various hues – like Gandhi, Bose or Bhagat
Singh – instead of the current drift towards a rabid exploitative, eco-destructive
capitalization process in sad imitation of the greedy and over-consuming West
which achieved all its prosperity by downright swindling and pillage of the
vast majority of global population in colonial times and continues to do so
even now. It is true, as Pranab Mukherjee stressed in his presidential address
to the nation on the eve of this 66th ‘independence day’, that
British imperialism did wrought havoc; our economy, thriving in the 1750s with ~
24% of world’s manufacture to our credit, was smashed down to a mere 1.7% level
by 1900 and our growth rate during 1900-1947 was hardly 1% p.a. from which
point we have come a long way to the ~ 8% growth in the last 7 years period.
However, even smaller countries of Asia, not to speak of the bigger China
