Are we hypocrites?

This blog I am compelled to write, for I find it quite ridiculous and highly hypocritical that we Indians are rooting for, are gung-ho and almost jumping with joy that one Mr. Barack Obama has won the presidential race in USA.

I can understand if Indians living in the US of A root / vote / are upbeat about it cos the man has come to power on the oldest political gimmick - Change. It sure means something to them. But Indians living in India? Strange.

They call it 'living the American Dream'. Yes, good for USA, that it has at last transcended its racial beliefs and believed that change was good. Indeed, the country is in a quagmire which it has to get out of soon, more for its own benefit and that of the world.

The point here is, how many of us Indians, know even who the President of India is, much less dissect the speeches, views and opinions made by the President. We dont care who comes and sits in Rashtrapathi Bhavan. Many of my peers followed the presidential campaign so closely / intently making me wonder if they were on the campaign team.

Rather than look inside and wonder where we are, we are looking out of the window to see hows the world outside. Do we really care who sits in the oval office, are the policies being made for Indians living in India. NO.

Then, why this blatant hypocrisy, we don't want to know what the politicians are doing, what policies they make, we have never cared to listen to a PM / Presidential speech during Independence / Republic day respectively. Most of us dont even venture out to cast our vote but enjoy the holiday. We Indians sure have to start looking inward than stare glassy eyed at what is happening in the rest of the world.

Losing my religion

This blog has been influenced by the article in Cricinfo http://gulf.cricinfo.com/magazine/content/current/story/376791.html

We can see many a poster held up by Indian fans saying "Cricket is my religion, and Sachin is my God" or "Commit all your crimes when Sachin is batting. They will go unnoticed because even the Lord is watching!?"

As in the case of Hinduism, we have several gods to look upto (for different occasions / needs) and cricket in India is no different. I am compelled to write this article because 2 of the demi-gods who ruled the cricket grounds for more than 10 years have finally called it a day.

For a long time, these men have withstood our brainless chatter, the immense tribulations we put them thro and carried the pressures of a billion people on their shoulders with panache. We adored them, prayed for them, jumped with them, hated them, derided them.....the list is long.

Indeed the god of the upper echelons had plans for Indian Cricket when he gave us the Class of 74 (Sachin, Dravid and Ganguly), the bespectacled gentle engineer with grits of steel (Kumble) and the man with the rotatory wrists who finds genuine pleasure when playing Australia (Laxman)

We have seen them playing, giving us many a heart stopping moment and little less nails and grown up as an integral part of Team India. We used to switch of the television once these great men somehow seemed human and were back in the pavilion. This slow exodus will surely mean something, much like many stopped watching Formula 1 after Schumi retired, am sure many of my peers would stop watching Cricket when Sachin decides to hang up his boots.

I can surely feel, my childhood is ending, part of me just dying with the retirement of the Prince of Kolkatta and Jumbo. Indian Cricket will never be the same again but they sure have left it in a better condition than they found it.

Does Chandrayan prove we can excel on a shoe-string budget?

Chandrayaan-1, now successfully orbiting the moon, cost less than one-tenth of the Indian Premier League rights bagged by Sony Entertainment. Rocket science may be no match for cricket on the Indian popularity scale, but the economics of the Indian space odyssey could well be a lesson for everyone. While ISRO spent a little more than Rs 380 crores (about half the price of a jumbo jet) on Chandrayaan-1, a similar effort by NASA or any other space agency would have cost five times more. ISRO chairman said that the agency did not cut any corners. The key was optimisation -- tests that the Americans would have done six times, ISRO did just three times. It was a calculated risk but has been successful so far. Do you think that Isro's example proves we can successfully execute ambitious projects on a shoe-string budget? Or does cost-cutting mean compromising on quality?

We, Indians, can surely excel in anything we put our minds to. We have proved time and again that we can spring a surprise on the world, whether facing the US led sanctions during testing of the A-bomb, bringing FDI into India, achieving 8-9% growth and now Chandrayan-I.

The key here is, all things run parallel. Industry Growth, Economic Development, Eradication of Poverty and the Mission to Moon. Its not like we can do 1 thing and not do another at the same time. Its the will to succeed and aspiration to do something which makes the world stand up and take notice. If only our narrow minded politicians had the same dedication and aspiration of making India proud. Now, thanks to ISRO, we have a fledging satellite launch business, which will surely help us reap benefits, if not now, 5-10 years down the line and has put on the global map being only the 6th country in the world to have an unmanned mission to the moon.

One lamentable fact is that though we make giant strides in some areas, we fall woefully short in some. There is no uniform growth in all sectors. Borrowing a line from a popular Rajni movie - The rich get richer, the poor get poorer!!