When I was a kid, I was fascinated by the Batman series and its villains scare the hell out of me. You must be more familiar with the batman through the recent blockbuster movies, but I was a big fan of batman through comics and cartoon show on TV much before. A little kid horrified with his parents’ death, inherits his father’s huge empire and decides to fight crime on his own without following any law. I was most captivated by the enemies of the Batman,….like scarecrow who uses some toxin on his victims to exaggerate their paranoia and bring their phobias to life and the joker, a psychopathic clown. But out of these outlandish super-villains, the one who intrigues me the most is the ‘Two-Face’-once a clean cut attorney, now a person with dual personality who decides to bring about good or evil based upon the outcome of a coin flip.
Having discussion with my friend the other day on what India has become now in the midst of this economic and political turmoil all around the world, strangely this image of the ‘Two-Face’ popped up in my head. There is no doubt that with globalization, India has ushered itself into the amazing era of prosperity and development,…but with disrupted politics and other unsorted social issues getting in the way, I believe India has become a two faced country now. All countries have little bit of good and little bit of bad, but India has reached to the extremes of both ends.
It is very usual to see in the same news update, a report like,…India having the highest number of homeless people in the world and in the next news, Mukesh Ambani, an Indian industrialist owning the most expensive home in the world, costing more than entire GDP on many countries. These differences have grown so big now that it’s hard to remember it is a same country.…..One side of it would sometimes make you wanna rip your brains out and smash yourself to death with it, and the other side,….how the British would say “would tickle your fancy” (try to say that with a British accent)!
With world entering into 21st century, globalization has got a new definition. We are now seeing the commencement of a whole new era, with huge advancement in communication and technology. World has now not only became smaller but it has shrunken to tiny. In his novel ‘The World is Flat’, Thomas L. Friedman talks about how the world has become flat now and with new innovations and collaboration between companies and people, a new India has emerged which is at level with other western countries. I am definitely in consent with this and believe that a new face of India is emerging with fancy restaurants, eight lane freeways, and tall buildings sprouting up like weeds each month. Sitting in McDonalds under my office, which now serves a breakfast menu for caffeine junkie generation, I see people, all of them with dangling ID badges around their neck, driving through their big cars, getting in or out of tall glass buildings which are all around. No, this definitely wasn’t America. It didn’t even seem like India. I can only call it a ‘New India’. But what I forgot is that, there is another side of it.
When you live with your parents, the world seems beautiful. For the first time when I left my parents house, I woke up to the realization that there is another side of India which is not as beautiful…..For the start, I always knew but never realised that India is so close to the equator : / .…..Looking at the things through the other side of the window, all my theories of new, modernized and globalized India seem to go down the drain. Then it did strike me that there is still a part of our country which hasn’t taken even a single step forward however, few steps backward. In this new competitive flat world, some are still living below the ground…..Even though this two face India has provide us with new opportunities, new partners…it also entails new challenges and new dangers. Coming from the generation of strategic optimists, the generation with more dreams than memories, the generation that not only imagine better future but also acts on that,……I refuse to live in fear of the Two-face, the way I have spend most of my childhood. May be in future I will get some courage and inspiration to eliminate these two faces and bring up the one clean new nation………….but for now my only advice would be…stay as far as possible on the other side!!
With world entering into 21st century, globalization has got a new definition. We are now seeing the commencement of a whole new era, with huge advancement in communication and technology. World has now not only became smaller but it has shrunken to tiny. In his novel ‘The World is Flat’, Thomas L. Friedman talks about how the world has become flat now and with new innovations and collaboration between companies and people, a new India has emerged which is at level with other western countries. I am definitely in consent with this and believe that a new face of India is emerging with fancy restaurants, eight lane freeways, and tall buildings sprouting up like weeds each month. Sitting in McDonalds under my office, which now serves a breakfast menu for caffeine junkie generation, I see people, all of them with dangling ID badges around their neck, driving through their big cars, getting in or out of tall glass buildings which are all around. No, this definitely wasn’t America. It didn’t even seem like India. I can only call it a ‘New India’. But what I forgot is that, there is another side of it.
When you live with your parents, the world seems beautiful. For the first time when I left my parents house, I woke up to the realization that there is another side of India which is not as beautiful…..For the start, I always knew but never realised that India is so close to the equator : / .…..Looking at the things through the other side of the window, all my theories of new, modernized and globalized India seem to go down the drain. Then it did strike me that there is still a part of our country which hasn’t taken even a single step forward however, few steps backward. In this new competitive flat world, some are still living below the ground…..Even though this two face India has provide us with new opportunities, new partners…it also entails new challenges and new dangers. Coming from the generation of strategic optimists, the generation with more dreams than memories, the generation that not only imagine better future but also acts on that,……I refuse to live in fear of the Two-face, the way I have spend most of my childhood. May be in future I will get some courage and inspiration to eliminate these two faces and bring up the one clean new nation………….but for now my only advice would be…stay as far as possible on the other side!!
Rightly said that India has become a two face nation but then every thing has its two sides. Glass is half full n half empty and we can't live by staying far from other side.
ReplyDeleteOne side is beautiful because other side is ugly. There is always a comparison and we sholud always work to improve the lagged behind part.