What Young India Wants by Chetan Bhagat
I have just started reading it and I like his approach, style, and thought provoking ideas. I will wait till I finish to give my final opinion but I do hope that young people and politicians in India read and take these ideas seriously.
It is frustrating to see India struggle on issues that should have been long gone.During my extended stay in India this winter, the unruly traffic (because no one wants to pay attention to traffic lights), the uncontrolled honking (often without any real reason and by sheer force of habit), the complete disregard for others on the road, the most annoying habit of spitting after eating paan, I found such small annoyances put together makes you slightly irritated all the time. It is sad, I think, that most people who live there may not even recognize - like a smell that you may not smell anymore if you are there for a long time - this underlying irritation and take this behavior for granted.
Add to that the noise and air pollution that has also become so much a part of life. It seems that locals have stopped either complaining about this - even noticing it - or trying to change it. And this is in a city that is one of the better ones in India - Ahmedabad. Granted a lot has improved since the olden days, however a lot has also gone worse simply because of the increase in population and increase in number of vehicles on the street.
I mentioned that there is absolutely no consideration to others. It is obvious everywhere. Here is one example: Once we were trying to get out of our home in a car, when a young lady in her twenties came from the opposite direction in her car, stopped her car in front of a vegetable vendor to buy her vegetables, did not want to get out of her car to do her purchases so blocked the narrow street completely for anyone else to pass by. She took her merry time haggling with the vendor sitting in the car and when our driver asked her to move so that we can proceed, she got extremely annoyed and started saying bad words as if it was our fault that we wanted to go somewhere. This young lady had no qualms about taking everyone else's time.
Such incidents happens every day to almost every one and yet no one stops to think what can be done. Chetan Bhagat is rightly saying that such behavior can only be corrected as a community. Individuals are helpless because if you are the only one considering every one else, you will never get anywhere and therein lies the problem. Each individual knows this at the bottom of their heart but has come to realize that if you cannot beat the system, then join it.
So how can we change the system? Are politicians responsible to change it? Should police or any other authority try to change this? I truly, for India's sake, hope not. Though it looks like an easy solution, in the long run, it could be the worst solution. Giving control to anyone else, besides yourself is a dangerous thing to do on two accounts: first, it would mean that if for some reason the authority is not there, we will go back to our old behavior - may be even worse than before because the spring has been pushed too much. But second more dangerous reason is that once you give power to others to direct your behavior, the power can be abused anytime. Remember power is the fundamental reason for corruption.
My fellow Indians, that is why the only solution to all these problems is to change our own behavior because we want to - not because some one else tells us to, not because it is dictated by some political leader but because it is the right thing to do. The sooner we do this, the better we all will be.
Can we at least try?
