Lame to think?

Lame to think?

Well, on the eve of completion of 61 years of independence of India, we have so many achievements to be proud of. It is a very interesting exercise to prepare the Balance Sheet of the country on its independence day.Our focus always tends to be on tallying it but hold on…Are we doing justice to the ‘tacit’ entries?
The most important things for any nation are growth and development. True, there is no need to talk about India’s growth story. The transformation from the Bharat’s growth rate to the Indian growth rate is definitely worth treating as a gospel truth. But are we equally confident about the ‘development’ saga? There is no other country as perfect as India to study this ‘dialectical materialism’!
The development starts with the most precious resource of the nation and that is human resource. For human beings to flourish we need both physical infrastructure and social infrastructure. While physical infrastructure is taken care of in growth, social infrastructure often fails to grab the spotlight.
Social infrastructure is defined to include material things like education, healthcare, employment etc. Quality and nature of people are largely shaped up by these things. But are we truly ‘empowered’ today to think independently? Apparently, the current generation lacks the direction, depth and devotion for flawless thinking in terms of decision making. Does only financial independence at a very early age makes them subservient to money as their think-tank or is it our fundamental incapability which stops us from evolving in true sense?
Today, we live under conditions that are drastically different from our ancestors. External environment has changed most of the things practically but we are still left with the strategic rigidity when it comes to making our own choices based on an impeccable thinking process. The answer lies neither in our ancestors nor in the current generation, it lies in our pattern of upbringing.
In those good old days all the family decisions would be made by the family head and no one would desist from the norm in an attempt to conform to the ‘value system’ which unfortunately got skewed by the ‘respect’ factor. We could never allow the thinking process to grow, to flourish and most importantly to stay intact. Today, things have changed externally but internally it is still the same. Even today, we are scared to stand out as a maverick. Even today, we feel secure to call such a behaviour taboo. Even today, we are lame to think! The only difference is that the place of our so-called ‘value system’ is hijacked by the financial independence. Today, we strive to achieve the behavioural pattern which is convenient, suitable and most importantly ‘respected’ in the world of financial independence.
We need to be truly liberated from all kinds of shackles in the path of evolution of human beings to call our nation independent. So let’s free ourselves from all fears, doubts, conventions. Let’s dare to think…about ourselves, our society, our nation, our neighbours, our universe and most importantly the need to ‘think’!.....

DEEPALI S. BASUR
Co-founder & Chief Editor,
www.ethinksharp.com, an e-magazine dedicated to the 'YOUTH'.