AT THE STROKE OF THE MIDNIGHT HOUR...

“At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom.” For those who don’t remember, these lines were said by Pt. Jawaharlal Nehru on August 14^th, 1947. Every life sacrificed, every drop of blood shed on the soil, lay to rest, with their eyes closed peacefully as to what they strived for, was at last achieved-Freedom! Freedom from the chains of the foreign rule-the feeling was ultimate! If we ask our grandparents, their eyes would just light up with a spark of achievement to describe that very fateful day our nation stood mighty.

Since 1947, the world changed drastically, with technology playing a new key in everybody’s hand and the modern world just proved to be too fast for our old timers as they lay there watching the very freedom they shed their blood for losing its true value.

In today’s world, we read ‘freedom’ only in our textbooks and when we watch a patriotic movie. The spark lasts only till we come out of the cinema halls after which we resume a normal life. The new world or modernization is not to be blamed but the fact, we don’t have a clue about, is the real cost of freedom. ‘Are we really free?’ is the question I put forth to you and the answer may vary from person to person as everybody has their share to say. We live in a country where pizza reaches home faster than the police & the ambulance, where you get car loans at 5% but educational loans at12%, where rice is priced at Rs.40 but the SIM card is free, where millionaires can buy a cricket team instead of helping the poor, where everybody wants to be famous but none wants to follow the righteous path, where we follow inspiration but fail to inspire, where people like us only talk but no one dares to question the government because we think “What can I do as the only one?”, where we always say ‘Proud to be an Indian’ but never try to make India proud. We remember our country only 3-4 days in 365 days and the rest of the days, plan to work in various other nations for their prosperity but not for our own nation.

India is, what I feel is a reflection of the people who make up the country, so the country is what each one of us actually is. We all blame our politicians for the state of this country. Who are these politicians? They are one amongst us. The very people we elect are corrupt, selfish and narrow minded. These things will never change until we change ourselves. We ourselves bribe the “babus” for getting a license/passport/sanction letters for land/electricity/water etc. as we want things done quickly/easily. Once our jobs are done, we blame the very system we help in creating, as ‘corrupt’. Even after 60 years of independence, a majority of us want reservations in education/jobs based on religion/caste and not on merit alone. Today, more Indians have access to television than to tap water at home. An estimated 1.5 million children die every year of avoidable water-borne diseases. When we go to another country, we are treated as inferior mortals and in India we take pride in bending backwards to please foreigners. So, we Indians are second class citizens here as well and we seem to be okay with that.

 Let’s come back to today’s situation. The poor are becoming poorer, the rich becoming richer, the middle class striving to make it up, the lower middle class trying to fight for their very existence. Whereas our babus come up on TV to shed a fake tear and a list of promises for a better tomorrow during the elections and the next day after the election, they are no where to be seen while God knows how much their Swiss bank accounts hold of every Indian’s hard earned money. L.K Advani once told that if all the black money hid by our very Indians was brought back to India, we would be able to clear all the debts we have and still be able to clear poverty in India.

We live in a time where hope is just another word with no real meaning. It is time we brought back our faith into idealism and inspire ourselves into getting that spark of fire that once ignited every Indian.

Jai hind!

ARTICLE BY : SRIRAM SHARMA

1^ST YEAR, B.A. (PJOE)

MES DEGREE COLLEGE