A Forward from a friend - Was Thomas Friedman thinking of India?<http://satyameva-jayate.org/2009/12/02/was-thomas-friedman-thinking-of-india/> Here is *Thomas Friedman* (*Advice From Grandma<http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/22/opinion/22friedman.html?_r=1&src=tp> *), lamenting about the state of affairs in US of A. *Almost every word excerpted below might well have been written for India* (emphasis mine).
…What I increasingly fear today is that *America is only able to produce “suboptimal” responses to its biggest problems* — education, debt, financial regulation, health care, energy and environment. *Why?* Because… *Money in politics has become* so *pervasive* that lawmakers have to spend most of their time raising it, selling their souls to those who have it or defending themselves from the smallest interest groups with deep pockets that can trump the national interest. The gerrymandering of political districts means *politicians of each party can now choose their own voters and never have to appeal to the center*. The *cable TV culture encourages shouting and segregating people* into their own political echo chambers. A…*business community that*…only comes to Washington to lobby for its own narrow interests; it *rarely speaks out anymore in defense of national issues* like health care, education and open markets These…factors are pushing our system…into the realm of paralysis. *To get anything big done now, we have to generate so many compromises*…with so many different interest groups *that the solutions are totally suboptimal*. *…So what do we do? * *The standard answer is that we need better leaders.**The real answer is that we need better citizens.* We need citizens who will convey to their leaders that they are ready to sacrifice…and will not punish politicians who ask them to do the hard things. Otherwise, folks, we’re in trouble. A great power that can only produce suboptimal responses to its biggest challenges will, in time, fade from being a great power — no matter how much imagination it generates. So true…and so unfortunate that this message is likely to get drowned in tomorrow’s headlines about another disrupted parliamentary session, another celebrity piece of gossip and another corruption scandal.
