By Bhabani Prasad Mohanty
Election comes and goes. Political parties come and go. But Nation should excel. I have seen and analysed nearly eight national elections and realized that citizen of this country have been fooled time and again by different parties without naming a particular political party. Movement which was started 75 years before to define politics in a certain way has taken an “u” turn. Social service has been replaced by power politics. Keeping all this in mind, I have tried to put together a vision for this great country. India goes to vote this summer. How do we vote in this summer slam is important?
- Economic Vision:
Economic management in this country has been based on how much vote one can garner through the economic policy. Let’s review following.
- Can we create a country where economic disparity between richest and poorest can be managed? Instead measuring “per capita”; let’s measure “differential per capita”
- Can we bridge the gap between employment vs employability. Instead of building institutions to certify; can we build institution to jobify.
- Irrespective of religion, caste, greed; can we create economic development based on prosperity index rather than “BPL” index.
- Can we go back to Gandhi’s idea of building rural economy where each village runs its economic activity independently and become self reliant.
- Each one Industry mentors a village entrepreneur in nearby area.
- Environment Vision:
World is going through difficult time. Pollution and climate change has become a killer for the society. Most populous countries are going to face the issue of climate change much more than others. Question is what kind of world we gift to our next generation?
- Can we create a benchmark to do a census for trees to understand “per capita tree” index.
- What is the policy to protect and leverage natural reservoirs and forests? This also has a linkage with rural economy where economy can be built around these to make villages self-reliant.
- How do we preserve and reutilize water resources? What is the water availability vs housing density ration before allowing new construction?
- Vehicle penetration vs house hold requirement to help with check and balance of pollution control; at least for the new cities that are growing rapidly.
- Cultural Vision:
My observation in the last few elections has been that we have allowed the narrative to be set up through religious lens; where in religion is a personal choice and constitution of the country is paramount. By participating in these discussions, we as citizen divert the agenda towards “Mandal-Kamandal” and “Ali-Bajrangbali”
In a multi-cultural and multi lingual countries like ours; strong practice should evolve to make religious preacher and administrator accountable towards citizen at large. Case in point; teaching in madrasa has not evolved to make it ‘s student future ready. Similarly; political parties should be banned if they build their movement around religious places.
- Religious places should have a strong orientation to preserve and spread ancient culture and scriptures to manage knowledge of past and guide the future through new research and wisdom e.g. Jagannath Temple should create research and preserve scriptures on “Jagannath Culture” than creating a place of superstition.
- Nationalistic Vision:
Nationalistic vision in this country has been counted by the numbers of times one recites “ Bharat Mata Ki Joy”. Time has come to debate and define nationalism.
Every citizen can have a nationalism indicator based on factors like tax compliance, criminal record, corruption charges, participation in democracy, etc like voting. It can be like a CIBIL rating where each citizen can measure itself against his/her nationalism quotient before pointing fingers at others.
- We need to evolve a consensus around the country to define a brand identity of “India as a country”. Over a period of time it has been diluted.
- National Security Vision:
National security sometimes gets equated with Nationalism. How do we build a nation where we are fearless but simultaneously we are tolerant.
Our competition is not with Pakistan or smaller South Asean countries. Our completion is with world leaders like china and USA. No country in the future can afford a war because of different military capability and apparatus. Only way to preserve and establish our credential as a nation is to economically sidelining some of these countries who plays big brother. Like Israel, there has to be a policy of give and take.
- Reduction in quantity and enhance in quality. Future conflict would be built through air and water; how do we become self-reliant in enhancing our capability.
- How do we combine Information, external security, internal security and science as one unit?
- Sports Vision:
With 130 billion people, can we ever become super power in sports. Sports is one area where a nation can assert its soft power.
How do we build capability and enable athletes to win Olympic golds and which are those sports which can allow us to excel.
- Building a sports curriculum in our education system wherein sports can be encouraged as alternate career.
- Can we win 10 golds in next Olympics?
- Education Vision:
Taking RTE and Sarva Sikshya Abhiyan forward; how do we make higher education affordable.
- On this front already we had a vision post-independence. Unfortunately; We dithered little bit and the entire policy has been derailed. Higher and employable education has become privatized and quality of education has reduced drastically. For some education is also not affordable.
- Identifying and auditing areas to see how our top 10 institution can become part of Global top 50.
- Health Vision:
Post 90s many hospitals buildings have really been beautified but the availability of doctors is a huge issue in district headquarter.
- Some work has been done in terms of protecting health through “ Ayushman Bharat” or through Yoga Awareness campaign etc. However; National Policy health has been far from reality. Healthy India can lead towards a Wealthy India as well.
- Doctor capacity utilization through technology intervention; diagnosis can be done on the ground but virtual consultation can happen through district HQ.
- Equality Vision:
Time has come than 50% of population gets their due irrespective of caste, religion and orientation
Basing on population representation can women have 50% representation in parliament, assembly etc
- Can we abolish all age old rituals like “Tripple Talaq”, “Parda” system etc.
(Writer Bhabani Prasad Mohanty is a social thinker, writer and enterpreneur)
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