The world's best CHAOS

To go on to visualize a successful chaos, lets begin with Singapore of all places!! Singapore, as most of us are aware, is amongst the most disciplined, organized and well-governed city-states in the world. You can't get away with littering or breaking rules. Shops and businesses strictly adhere to the time guidelines [and not tweak these on the basis of their business realities or maybe even by bribing cops/authorities]. There is no unruly traffic - since no one really breaks the rules!

But in all this, there exists a small area where
--> you could occasionally find litter on the pavement or
--> shops/businesses [Mustafa! - Frankly I don't understand why so many desis shop there of all places in Singapore!] have successfully tweaked the rules - Mustafa is the ONLY 24-hour shopping center in Singapore!
--> and you would encounter the occasional traffic chaos around the parking lots

and this place could only be called "Little India" :)

While these arguably are the negatives about Little India, the good points are those that are common to everything that has "India" in it:

1. Very buzzing and active - meaning lot of people, lot of noise and a lot of work happening all the time!
2. Business, trade and commerce thrives successfully here, setting new benchmarks all the time.
3. The food is brilliant!
4. And of course, it is very colorful here!

Again while these are true of India [or Little India in Singapore] - there's of course a lot more that goes on to define my super country.

Being the largest, oldest and continuous civilization in the world - we have given [and very passionately continue to give] more people to this world than anyone else. If there ever was a debate globally as to who gets the credit for the progress of human race - India should win hands-down - had we not procreated - there would be no people and hence no progress! [This silly argument apart, we should anyway be responsible for most progress purely on the basis of the quality of our people]. India and her people have had admirable qualities, some of which are:

1. Tolerant and peace-loving - we haven't invaded other countries or enforced our beliefs on other people [at least not forcefully!]
   
2. No word is rich enough to describe the heritage and culture - earliest school of medicine known to man [Ayurveda], the mother of all European languages [debatable but I am convinced it is Sanskrit], religions, scriptures, epics, vedas and it goes on
3. Hard-working and progressive - this is quite evident even in the current times where our junta is often blamed for taking the jobs away from some of the lazier folks :)
4. Hospitable and welcoming to all - Unfortunately could also be the reason why we had so many foreign rulers!

However, like everyone else, I too have opinions on what we should do and what we shouldn't do in our country :)

What we should do
- Focus on the basics - land, water, resources and above all people --> While it's probably good to have enough people to take over the world without having to fight a single battle - what we don't realize is that all these people don't go to settle in other countries and that we all are trying to use the same set of resources that half of us were using some decades ago. These resources unfortunately don't share our quality of exponential growth! And knowing this, there still isn't a single man [or woman], in the house that matters, who would talk about implementation of population control! The mindset is "It's something that the masses don't like and let's not raise it - we might just get a negative impact and lose the elections!"
- Stronger judiciary --> not the one Sunny Deol refers to in Damini
- Remove ANY political influence from the armed forces, police system, national educational institutions

What we shouldn't do
- Take decisions on basis of religion/caste --> be it hanging criminals or creating reservations in education/jobs or giving/not-giving benefits to a group of people
- Educated/well-meaning citizens, social activists and political outfits fighting the battles alone --> There are so many amazing people, who have willingly given up their comfortable and successful lives/careers and decided to make a difference - these folks would really make a difference if they were together - if they were one force

The list as such can go on..

What, however is interesting, is that with all the good and bad, we still click as a country - we are growing and succeeding at whatever we do. India and Indians have this innate quality of making things work - even if the best of resources may not be available, we make do with what we have and get the best out of it. Everyday the commuters in Mumbai's local trains complain of the extreme crowd and the mess - but they still continue to make it the most relied upon, fastest and most convenient mode of transport in Mumbai! India's biggest industrial house sets up one of the most ambitious car projects in a state which has historically not been too warm to industry - only to suffer later thanks to political reasons - but the project doesn't get shelved - it ends up in the leading pro-industry state of India and gets perfectly on track! The Tirupati Temple in Andhra Pradesh has 50,000-100,000 visitors everyday and without using any advanced logistic mechanisms or equipments, the authorities have designed quite a unique system where the time spent by devotees has gone down steeply over the years [although the number of devotees has been going up]. These are just some examples that go on to illustrate the "make things work" quality of Indians.

To come to think of it, it is our unique mix - of the experienced and the youth - of the conservative and the modern - of the right and wrong - that make us work - that make US the world's best chaos..

And lets leave it that thought for now.

Happy Independence Day!

Some pictures from India's first independence day - August 15th, 1947