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United States of India
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Few
years back, I visited a multi brand consumer durables store. Each brand had a
sales representative, positioned there to highlight to the customer the
benefits of their respective brand products. And while I was trying to choose a
refrigerator, each representative was trying to convince me to buy their brand,
and it put me in a state of utter confusion. I am at a single store to buy
something and instead of the store trying to sell me any of their products
available in their shop, it was putting me in a dilemma. As a result, I did not
shop there.
It
is the similar scenario in our country too. A foreign investor comes to India,
and each state is competing with other states in wooing the foreign investor to
invest in their state, by offering attractive schemes, tax benefits, subsidies
etc, to ensure that the foreign investors, invest in their state and not any
other state. This brings about two different types of impact. One is the
foreign company, might use it to their advantage to pitch against each state
and get the best deal in their favour or it can get confused and decide not to
invest in the country.
“United we stand, Divided we fall” is a saying we have heard, right from our young days. But I don’t understand why, this common-sense approach is not known to the people at the top.
India
is One, yet it is divided. There is no common agenda. There is no possibility
to integrate rivers, have a uniform educational syllabus or an uniform civil
code.
We
often accuse the Britisher with this statement, Divide and Rule. But what we
see today, in our country is even worse. At least during the pre-independence days, we
had a common enemy in the form of a British Government, which our freedom
fighters toiled to overthrow by sacrificing their lives.
We are all aware of the efforts put by Sardar Vallabhai Patel, in unifying the post independent India into one strong country. We have rightfully acknowledged his contribution by calling him the Iron man of India and constructing the World's tallest statue in his memory.
However,
India doesn’t stand united. Within the country, at the macro level there is the
Dravidian and Aryan divide. We then have further divisions, such as states and
districts. And within this there is urban and rural divide. Regional
development is the focus everywhere.
It
looks, like we are surrounded by enemies, in the name of neighbouring states or
towns, who compete for investments and resources, political parties who
vehemently oppose each other just to prove their supremacy rather than trying
to see the truth. Overall, there is more competition and less co-operation, within
the country.
Our National pledge says, “All Indians are my brothers and sisters”. Let’s take the same metaphor to think of each state within the country, as a brother or sister, within a single family called India.
Like
in any family, not every member of the family earns the same amount of money,
not all the siblings have the same level of education and not every child has
same strengths and competencies. There are weaklings in the family, who have to
be supported, by other brothers or sisters. The resources of family get pooled
together and the head of the family ensures, that everyone’s needs are taken
care of. The idea of staying together as a family is to support each other and
not compete.
Similarly,
in a country like India, not all the states have the same level of GDP, and not
the same level of literacy rate, infrastructure or natural resources. So, when
we say we are one big country, we need to take into consideration the growth of
every state and not just be happy about the development of our own state and
take pride in that.
It
is only when we learn to co-operate, instead of compete, we can look at an
inclusive growth story for India.
A question for us to ponder, at this moment is: "Are we staying united as one country, by force? or by will?". I wish the answer is the later.
D. Senthil Kannan,
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