India is a country with an ancient history and a rich philosophical approach to life, and life's meaning and purpose. Yet in recent times the country has been challenged with severe pressure on its values and identity. There are myriad causes for this and while all of them are important, they are not the concern of this brief reflection.
The philosophical approaches to life India is known for focus on knowledge, spirituality, diversity, tolerance, and nonviolence. Elite Indians built perspective on these cardinal issues of life, and through a trickle down effect the perspectives influenced all of life in India for centuries.
But these values have quickly been eroding in recent times and the 21st century Indian barely is aware of this heritage. The chief reasons for this change of culture and values are demographic and economic. India's population has surged in recent times beyond the country's capacity to meet the population's basic needs. And that's caused confusion and stress for the ordinary citizen which has made life precarious in the country.
During colonial times the population was relatively small, and still the more efficient British administration also found it difficult to cater to the survival needs of the whole of India's population. Their approach was to ignore all those Indian regions that were not directly governed by them, and to focus only on the British India presidencies that were directly under British India administration. And in the presidencies the British often limited their interest to urban locales and to people groups who favoured the British India administration. What resulted from this parochial interest was the death of millions of poor Indians from dry famines (noted eloquently in the 1998 doctoral thesis of the Nobel Prize winner for Economics, Dr. Amartya Sen).
After independence for about forty years, the Indian National Congress stringently pursued a socialist policy that maintained a low cost economy which sought to ascertain ease of living for the average citizen. Economic growth in this low cost economy was slow and the capitalist West provocatively mocked India in a sustained manner in all these years for its 'Hindu rate of growth.' But the simple lifestyle of the farmer and poor centric economy promoted by the Indian National Congress enabled a slow and peaceful living suitable to a large and diverse population.
All this changed with the liberalization of the economy by Manmohan Singh as Finance Minister in the Narasimha Rao government in the early 1980s. Liberalization encouraged break-neck capitalism and industrial growth, exposure of Indian finished goods to the world market, and the opening of the Indian consumer market to global players.
These changes brought quick money and improved lifestyles for the cream of the population, but with it came steep inflation and the lack of supply of essential goods for the common man and in particular the economically weaker sections of the population.
Continued inflationary pressures since then, and the dearth in infrastructure and basic amenities created a killer web which began to tighten the noose around the necks of millions of Indians who couldn't succeed well in the liberalized economic environment.
A hug gap in demand and supply has been causing a rat race for success ever since - success not to conquer the world, but for basic survival. The rat race is stressful, and added to this is the fear of a loss of face and of shame if one fails to respectfully survive.
Only some youth could succeed in this poisoned economic environment. They have succeeded not fairly well, but barely well with whatever the system has to offer.
Others had to find their own way to their success. In the process a substantial number just failed.
Among those who failed and continue to fail are many that lose all hope for the future.
Many in this category see suicide as their only means of escape from a traumatic situation for life that would otherwise await them.
Comments