BANISH CYNICISM, CULTIVATE OPTIMISM
Indian intellectuals and pseudo-secularists must learn to practise the art of banishing cynicism and start learning to cultivate positive thinking within us. We are such a great nation. We have so many amazing success stories in recent times. We are the first in milk production. We are number one in remote sensing satellites. We are the second largest producer of wheat. We are the second largest producer of rice. Pharmaceutical industry remains a growth story, with revenue growing at over 20 per cent a year. Software remains a stellar growth area with seeming assured revenue growth in the 20-25 per cent range in the next two years, based on continued success in outsourcing. We have made genuine progress in infrastructure — telecom, roads and ports. Five years ago anybody who wanted a telephone installed had to bribe someone to get the matter expedited. Now five service providers are competing for his business. This rise in connectivity must be doing wonders for improving efficiencies and lowering the cost of doing business. There are now 11 million mobile subscribers while tariffs have collapsed by 90 per cent. The progress may be incremental and messy and the procedure infuriating but it is all ultimately quite healthy. This is despite the scepticism of many of India’s ultra-negative intelligentsia, who have inherited from the British a talent for cultivated cynicism. Why then are the Indian media and intellectuals so negative and embarrassed to acknowledge and recognise our own strengths, our achievements and successes? There are millions of such achievements but our media is only obsessed in the bad news and failures and disasters the reform process in India has gathered critical momentum. While India remains miles behind China in terms of the latter's propensity for building fancy new infrastructure, and power remains a problem, India's recent achievements are considerable given that they all have to be implemented via a democratic progress with all the resulting parliamentary check and balances. The point about the Indian Republic is that all the problems are known about, as they are well advertised in the noisy media, and therefore discounted. So, "My India, sweet land of liberty/It is of you I sing/Land where my forefathers died/Land of my pride… P.N.BENJAMIN
