How to cope with the competition?

           I write this in response to the article of Mr. Sreenivas Injeti on 8th August 2010 in the open page section of ‘The Hindu’ titled The Snake boat and the Dragon boat (The same article has been posted in this blog below).  He has aptly depicted the way in which China has made progress in the field of sports. At the same time he has succinctly analysed why India has fallen back from recording similar progress in sports. I would like to add my thought to this Indian predicament.

When we compare India with China, we find lot of flaws in our developmental process. When China stood first in the rank list during the Olympics 2008 with 100 medals in hand, we were standing at 50th position with only 3 medals. Why this is so? In fact, the rule of single communist party has favoured China a lot. The developmental foresights of the administrators who rule China have taken it to this height with in such a short time. I do not mean that India don’t have foresighted leaders. But they are in different parties! If all these leaders had joined together in a single party India too could achieve much more advancement. Then, is it that the multi- party system is the blocking factor in the development of India? The answer is partly ‘yes’ and partly ‘no’. Because, the difference in political ideology keeps the political parties broken even in the issue of India’s prestige. Leaders are busy in blaming the others. Even if any action taken by a ruling party is good, the opposition party opposes it with a sense of ego. Further the politicians want to make the hay when the sun shines. They become ‘haves’ by accumulating money and add to the list of capitalists. But this problem is not there in China.

 Why the intelligentsia is quiet about this? Why the officers lack integrity in their action? What happens in India is that the IAS officers also  have to listen to the ministers who have very low educational qualifications. If they don’t heed to them the politicians use their power and transfer those officers who opposes the views of a politicians. Even the detective agencies like CBI are not acting like a constitutional body. They too have the pressures of political influences. So I think, unless we depoliticise the non-political institutions it is not possible to cope with the competition.

( I had sent this write up to The Hindu for Letter to the editor column. But it was not published.)