Road to becoming a Super Power

Road to becoming a Super Power



What India needs to Achieve in the next 20 Years



Economic dominance



India is everywhere. It’s a great time to be in India or being an Indian anywhere in the world. Everyone is talking about India as the emerging economic power. The domestic and international media is full of reports covering the economic success. But hey, just do a reality check. We are no where near becoming a dominant power on the international economic stage. And all this hype is not going to help. Don’t you see what happens to our cricketers, the media make them feel invincible after a good performance, it gets into their heads, and even before they get to know they are down in the dumps.



We Indians tend to get excited too soon and let our guard down. I some ways are actions are justified too. We have a tough life and I thing we do have to right to enjoy our moment of glory. But we need to learn how to put our heads down and get back to work after savoring the glorious moments. We have to learn to keep our focus.



Getting back to main topic. Yes, I’v heard of Indian companies going global, acquiring (at times aggressively) companies in the US and other developed countries. I too am excited about this. But lets not forget, we still are a developing nation and we are nowhere even close to becoming a developed nation anytime soon. Forget about becoming a dominant power. The only way to reach to the top is to provide each and every citizen of this county with enough opportunity to empower them self.









We need a major change in the civil administration. We keep hearing that again and again and again and all of us what to fix this problem for once and for all. But why aren’t we able to do this? Let’s face it, most of us have the inherent tendency to abuse power when given the opportunity. All that we need to do to justify an action is to convince ourselves that we are right. We cannot train people to stop misusing their powers and it is practically impossible to keep a check, from the top, on every administrative officer. Especially when the official on top is not incorruptible.



The only way stop the abuse of power is to educate and empower the people at the bottom. Encouraging people to form social groups that can fight against abusive and corrupt officials and a separate department in the government to look into complaints. It is important that any such social group is not funded or supported by the government in any way as that will open a way of officials to influence such groups. I know its easier said than done. Any such effort will require a long time and a committed team of well educated, forward thinking citizens.









Deadlines



We need to do a lot of things. Empower the poor, push economic growth, resolve our disputes with neighboring countries, develop international relations, develop a strong infrastructure, and the list goes on. All these activities have an open ended time line.



Its quiet obvious that the list of above tasks is nothing new. This list has been there ever since India gained independence. The problem is that every passing government focuses on one or two of these tasks and the others get ignored. With a regime change, the order of priority of the tasks changes, the focus shifts to one of the neglected tasks, and all the work done towards one of the tasks by the previous regime gets undone.



What I’m trying to emphasize here is that we need a groups or task forces for each area of development. They need to have clear milestone to achieve and clear timelines for achieving these goals. We cannot have regime changes affect the work of these task forces. The force has to be led by strong minded people, who are focused on their goals, and are determined to achieve their goals irrespective of what the government thinks. Yes, I am talking about a soft of dictatorial group of people. The need









Yes- We are Divided



One of the biggest problems with India is the hypocritical thought that we are a united country. Yes, we are united as Indians. When it is India versus another county we all stand together as a united nation.



But why are some of our politicians shy to admit that when go one-level deeper, at the regional level, or two levels deeper, at the cast level, we are clearly divided. There are many of us who vote just based on the cast.



We need to change this notion that people who openly claim that they are caste’st are anti-nationals. Why I can not be proud of being openly a Bengali, a Brahman, Sikh, or a Muslim and promote my welfare of community, while still being a proud Indian. When I do something for the welfare of a particular community or a region am I not uplifting an Indian? No matter what we do, there is not way we can provide an exact equal opportunity for everyone. There will always be that one person who gets more than his fare share and the one who gets less than his fare share. They why do we promote this hypocritical notion of equality for all. That is not possible, even the communists with their radical thing failed miserably to that. Its in the open now, how for decades USSR was controlled and run by an elite group of Jewish Godfathers.



Why cannot we come out in the open and say, yes, we are divided, we have our differences, we are all united as Indians, and we will use our differences to our advantage. And believe me there will a hundred ways of out differences can be used on positive ways. Encouraging competition between different communities can uplift all. It is easier to galvanize a small community to work together as one for their own upliftment than to trying to get everyone this diverse nation to sail in the same direction.



Let me put forward one such method that I could think of. I don’t say that its doable, or is guaranteed to succeed. But whats the harm in putting forward ideas and working towards a workable solution.



The uneducated population and democracy are a bad mixture. This has mixture given us the worsted breed of politicians that a country can have. We need a dramatic change in the quality of our politicians for our country to be anywhere close to where we are dreaming her to be.



Why can use we not give weightage to votes based on the qualification of the voter.



Communities with lower educational rates, due to the fear of marginalization, will be forced to actively work towards getting them selves educated. Lets take for example the Muslims. Most of them are not educated, but that doesn’t mean that there are no well educated, well off Muslims in India. The upper class Muslim blames the government for not doing anything for their community, but you won’t find one of them taking up the responsibility of educating one fellow Muslim. Same is the case with the SCs/STs. They will fight for reservations, but none of the educated one will make the slightest effort to help one of their down trodden ones.



Populas Policy



Such systems will have a two fold impact:



§ For one, the government will have a clear understanding of the popular opinion.









We do have voter id cards. Lets digitize them to include the educational level of the voter. Can’t we use the ATM machines as voting devices too? I can change my vote even after my government is place. The ruling party go in and out of majority multiple time during its tenure, thus giving the politicians immediate feedback from the public about the word they are doing. Every time I go to withdraw money or connect to the internet, I can be asked about my views on a particular policy. And best of all, because my vote is weighted, it makes sure that the educated masses have a higher say in the decisions. We can use consensus voting to make important decisions.



Political dominance



Just being economically strong will not be enough. We need powerful friends. Germany is a great example from which India must learn. Germany was economically and technologically far superior than most of the other European countries, what it lacked were good powerful friends. However, we should be careful of not drawing too many parallels, as the nature India’s aspirations of becoming a dominant world power is very difficult.



I see that India being included in the UN Security council is not far away. However, I don’t see India benefiting from this inclusion very much. India’s foreign policy is driven by changing regimes. The problem is that with each changing government we start sailing on a different course and that, in the long run, does not take us anywhere. The current congress government, for the first time, has shown some determination and perseverance towards forming a long lasting foreign policy that has some clear and achievable goals. A policy that is not based on past loyalties, but based on likelihood of benefits in the future.









We need to get out of the mindset of who is our friend and who’s our enemy. The attitude of the left bloc has been very upsetting. Even they need to understand that communism is not just about being friends with other communist countries and being anti-America. We have to develop a practical ideology, an ideology that only thinks about the betterment of our country.