Reading Time: 5 minutes
Neelum revisits the August 19, 2002, issue of the India Today. The special Fifty-Five Years of Freedom issue carries a lead article listing fifty-five things that made India proud in the years 1947 to 2002. It covered a vast range then. As the columnist looks back with pride, she finds a dissenting voice in her that somehow won’t buy into the big myth, not all of it. Things have changed a lot in 2016. There is a ring of sadness in her. She revisits and reviews our hits and misses now, exclusively in Different Truths.
You wouldn’t think of 2002 as pre-historic exactly, it being this side of the millennium that our lives straddle. But I find this particular issue of India Today intriguing as an insistent recap of achievements. A tonic recommended for those days when the road our country has travelled since 15th August, 1947, till now seems discouraging. In short, a feel-good piece. You may agree with specific items of it or find yourself disagreeing but you might, by and large, be persuaded to cheer, as I was. If you are historically perceptive you might also wonder why in August 2002 it was thought important for Indians to feel good about themselves.
They cover a vast range. The first is India’s Fire Wall, its Armed Forces. I find this para worth citing: “The high morale and motivation of the armed forces remain an enigma despite the shortage of officers, paucity of high-tech equipment or ‘force multipliers’ and poor career prospects. But the armed forces appear to have taken all these negatives in their stride and are actively pursuing the doctrine of turning India into a global military power….” Not just that, but handling floods, earthquakes, kids-fallen- down-bore- wells, riots, you name it!
The second is our Space Program, something really commendable, if a tad controversial. Since 2002, our Indian lunar mission Chandrayana 1 found traces of water on the moon – the first to do so. And there was our Mangalyana too! The Americans and Russians did it after several trial and error hitches but it goes to our credit that the Indian space mission went smoothly without so much as a hiccup the very first time round.
Among the things to be proud of is our democracy and our constitution, the first in the world to grant universal adult franchise. Our border roads, our judicial system, organisations like SEWA. Our I.I.M.s and our Udupi restaurants, our Mumbai dabbawalas, our Chipko movement. Listed too is something like our Rural Water Supply program, and in the magazine the pic alongside shows village folk heaving and hauling away at a hand-pump in a desert-like landscape. Oh well, I’m not so sure about this one. The next in the list is Our Dams and Our Banishing Drought Achievement. No comments on that in 2016, I guess. Then come our ‘over a hundred satellite channels, over 5000 dailies, 16,000 weeklies and more than 6,000 fortnightlies.’ Followed by, yes, our Amul phenomenon. A big hand there. The Jaipur Foot. Another round of applause. Our yoga. Oh, yes, do we need reminding? The Indian Railways, the largest railway system in the world. And, the magazine says, the Great Indian Joint Family. Now that, methinks, is a Facebook and WhatsApp reality in 2016. Cricket, Lijjat papad, and what’s this? Temple Management in places like Tirupati. Tea, the diamond industry, tourism and our roadside dhaba network, Indian advertising and handicrafts. Yes, Bollywood! That world possession. The article includes our dynamic Indian NRIs as well as our wonderful kabadiwalas on the same page, then our ethnic fashion designers and our beauty queens. Rather low down in this list is the Indian writer who writes in English and has gone international. The Green Revolution and Ayurveda. The
After such a surfeit of affirmation, why does the perverse critical sense auto-kick- start? One part of me wants to go on and write about our great pharmaceutical story that kept generic drugs accessible to the poor in the teeth of severe opposition, our RTI and NREGA, our granting rights to transgenders at par with OBCs, our telecom and mobile penetration into the interiors of the great Indian landmass, our upbeat young, our massive publishing scene. Our excellent film industry, which has contributed a great many world-class films in recent years. I feel like writing about our robust mixed economy, thanks to Manmohan Singh, which kept India unaffected by recession when it overtook so many so-called first world countries.
But there is this dissenting voice in me that somehow won’t buy into the big myth, not all of it. I can’t help thinking of the rich plural culture we had and which stands besieged. I can’t help bringing in the massive human rights violations against the Dalits and the tribal people, the horrific saga or rapes and farmer suicides that each day’s newspaper carries. I can’t help mourn the scientific temper we seem to be losing fast. If citizen journalism and social media have boomed, there is also that shrill hate-pitch that surrounds us as also the noxious fumes of a nameless fear gathering in the air. Remember, this India Today issue belongs to August 2002 and 2002 has come to stand for a sort of turning point. I have inventoried the good, the bad and the ugly, a bit of stock-taking all too necessary in our 69th year of Independence.
©Neelum Saran Gour
Pix sourced by author and Net.