The Dirty Picture

This is not any fancy picture film directed by Milan Luthria, nor are there iconic figures like Vidya Balan, Nasseeruddin Shah etc. to add to its glamour, but a true story of what we see and perceive all around us in this country. These are real snapshots of my motherland, India. I think, I’ve seen enough and more, to produce a “Dirty Picture”, which I’m, sure will not go down well with many people and readers. These snapshots will also illustrate some additional reasons  other than corruption, black money and other issues why exactly we tend to lie backward in spite of having adequate talent compared to the developed nations of the world, and that even after more than sixty years, our nation is still counted as a third-world country.

Firstly lets take a look at our Work-Culture. Most of our Office Workers are not sensitive to time management. They end up wasting their work-time in gossips, and now, a new method has been on the ramp – social networking sites! That’s right, most people prefer to be online in Facebook, Twitter during their office hours. According to The 2008 Wasting Time at Work Survey – approximately 70% spend one hour or less commuting to work each day and most spend between eight and ten hours in the workplace each day. Sixty-four percent of respondents report wasting one hour or less each day, 22% waste approximately 2 hours daily, and 14% waste 3 or more hours each workday. Additionally ASSOCHAM (Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India) studies reveal that on a daily basis, 12.5% of the productivity of Indian workers is lost to time spent on social networks such as Facebook and Orkut. In a random survey of 4,000 employees in large cities and towns in India, 77% of workers admitted to using their social networking accounts during working hours, while on the job. And that’s just among workers who admitted the use of social networking.

More alarmingly, ASSOCHAM’s Social Development Fund found that in addition to the 77% who admitted social networking during company hours, 83% saw nothing wrong with surfing the Web during office hours. This kind of work-culture is not expected to thrive a country like India, where most workers prefer either dozing, socializing online or watching porn during office hours. This is also meant as an eye opener for the media who will hype up to an arbitrary extent if they spot someone enjoying pornographic scenes during office hours and gleefully neglect all those who keep on dozing endlessly during work-hours.

Secondly, most of the Indian people seem to have developed a tonic against charity. More, if some people form an NGO and try to collect funds from the general public for some charitable work, they will come up with thousands of excuses to help you understand that you are wasting your own time with them, let alone being helped with some handful donations. They are envyingly immune to the sufferings of our own countrymen, the poor, the orphans, the homeless! This includes all our big names in the sports industry and the Bollywood World as well. They keep aloof from any significant charitable projects, and in day-to-day life we spot many such NGO’s sitting idle due to lack of financial support.

Some statistics in this regard to support my views –

Adding to the plight of India, nothing as such to boast off our literacy rate exists either. Illiteracy is the mother of all issues as it gives birth to many other issues like poverty, unemployment, child labour, female foeticide, population burst and many more. The greatest number of world’s illiterates are in India. According to an estimate, only by 2060, we may see universal literacy in India. 

Such is our country, where, in spite of these spine tingling statistics and poverty, events like the IPL (which literally includes crores and crores of dollars being spent and earned by IPL Franchise Heads) continue to thrive. People do not hesitate to spend thousands of rupees for a VIP ticket to watch a cricket match sitting by Shahrukh Khan, or Film Directors (most of whom have never heard the word “charity” in their lives) do not give a second thought while spending crores on buying Ferrari for other Bollywood Actresses. The Bottom-line lies as this – whenever we are faced with this harsh reality, we escape by saying – “It is the duty of the Government to do  all these, not ours.”

Third reason why India continues to be backward is attributed to the young generation of the country (of which I’m a part). Much of this generation cannot see anything beyond their course curriculum, and while they do manage to find some time as respite maybe, they will plunge and for hours on, will sit glued to the computer screens on either Facebook or twitter or orkut. Social media is thus responsible for the poor plight of our country in a two-fold manner, one which literally explains our work culture and its types, while the second font spoils any thinking ability and/or spare time for the future generations of our country. Needless to say, the youth of today does not spare a moment’s thought on doing something out of the hat. They are willing to log in to social media and sit for hours either commenting on trash status updates, or “liking” obscene pictures, or worse, chatting hopelessly on childish topics like girlfriends with their fellow-types. Unfortunately this group of students include the likes of the cream of our student-hood as well, like the ones studying in the premier colleges of our country like the IIT’s and the IIM’s. The problem lies in the very root of our education-culture, or better, should I say, Home-Culture. Students are barely encouraged to do anything new from their childhood, (oh come on, don’t give me childish concepts of S.U.P.W taught in schools, half of the cases they turn out to be a nasty burden on the students and their parents as well.) either at school, or at home. The Education system, as I’ve told, is not one which always aim for inculcating innovative and imaginative powers in the students, so one is taught from childhood – ‘this is the way of doing it, cramming is the only way to get good marks in most subjects, and you will do it in THIS way itself, you are not an exception to our system..‘ .

This gets effective in our future days, as one turns to college, (I must say few dare to pursue a subject of their own liking, most go by what their parents like them to study) most of them go by the “norms”, as passing out with a decent degree, and getting a job, crang….game over! They are satisfied and happy, this seems to have become a routine for all of us here. More, most of them study because they have to study for exams and semesters, not because they have to learn something. All of us study the Photoelectric Equation in our high school science chapters, half  of us forget the reason Einstein was awarded the Noble Prize for. To top it, our teachers keep on making us understand that it is not important to remember those things, just go by what the books say. Very few of us manage in doing something original, not what the books ask us to do. With a country with half of its systems being flawed (this includes the education system of our country as well), little chance lies ahead for us doing some good out of the trash.

Useless craze among us is another big reason. Let’s take the game of cricket, for example. Shocking are the results, how we Indians living in a poor country as it is, waste plenty of our time in sch things. Those watch are not simply seeing; they are fully immersed in the game following even the nuances of balling and the way it is delivered and how the batsman responds to it. If it takes a wicket or if the batman manages a sixer, there is a euphoria or mad reaction from those who watch the game. It is not a mere sport meant for relaxation for an hour or less; it is soul embracing and it inundates one’s being. It has become the social psyche of Indians. Even if when one wakes up at night he will be asking the score to anyone he can see or switching on an electronic gadget that will give him the answer. His body and mind and every vibration of every cell of his being is completely taken over by the game. There is nothing left practically for doing one’s job or studying for one’s exam. India has about 110 billion souls and almost 90% are ardent fans of the game. The percentage may be a little less among the fairer sex. Even if one takes 50% of males and 20 % of females are addicted, there are about 35 billion people who be glued to the screens for days and days fully concentrating on the game! If one computes the totals, there will be 35×8=280 billon man hours lost per day. (These statistics are taken from here, more can be found as well.)

The worst thing is that these obsessions are rarely seen in other useful fields as reading books. The average Indian does not want to read two books after passing out from college. Even when they turn out to be adults, they are not interested in inculcating this reading habit among their wards. Common people (most of them, actually) do not encourage their children reading any book which has got perhaps nothing with their routine examinations. Perhaps they do not discourage their wards sitting glued to their television sets madly grasping Cricket Matches, or watching childish tv serials.

With this being the all-round “dirty picture” of our country, little hope lies ahead of making it one of the most developed nations of the world, and I cannot help being pessimistic on this view.