Where we top hope optimism

Where we top hope optimism

Mr India and Mrs Bharat go before a judge. After hearing Mr India's testimony, the judge says, “It seems you are right.” But after Mrs Bharat presents her case, the judge says, “It seems you are right too.“ The court steno chronicling the case pipes up, “Judge, how can both be right?“ Judge: “Hmmm...you are right too.”
India speaks in many voices. India is also seen from many angles through many prisms and many eyes, making it hard to assess objectively. Famously it is said, “Whatever you can rightly say about India, the opposite is also true.”
Many see India at 70 as a stupendous (आश्चर्यजनक/ विलक्षण) success. The very survival of a young nation born of an old civilisation, derided by the racist-imperialist Winston Churchill as “a geographical term... no more a united nation than the Equator,” is accomplishment enough for most Indians and Indophiles. Some see India as being more united than, er (exclamation) , the United Kingdom. That it has stuck steadfastly to its founding ideals ¬ and civilizational underpinnings ¬ and has thrived as a plural democracy in the face of many odds, occasional aberration (a departure from what is normal) aside, is cause for celebration. The rest is bonus.
Others see abject failure. A nation of immense promise at its birth, helmed by progressive visionaries, has muddled along in fits and starts (without regular activity or progress), wracked by internecine (घातक) warfare involving regions, religion, caste, and class. From “functioning anarchy” it appears to have descended into anarchic functioning; a small affluent society has no eyes or ears for the large effluent (अपगामी/not developed) society. A country that has landed spacecraft on Moon and Mars cannot overcome its dismal infant mortality rates, its abysmal (बहुत खराब) social practices, its infantile (immature) politics.
For these among other reasons, India is alternately admired and scorned (feel or express contempt or disdain for.) , venerated and derided outside India.
Hot Borders: At a moment when its borders are overheated, it is evident that one of India's biggest failures in the global and regional domain has been its inability to arrive at settled boundaries with contentious neighbours ¬ two in particular. Of course, it takes two to tango. No country can make peace ¬ or concessions ¬ unilaterally. But for a country of its size (and self-importance) India has been singularly lacking in sustained energy and focus to resolve an issue that would have allowed it to adequately parlay (transform into (something greater or more valuable).) its influence beyond its neighbourhood.
The result has been a country hamstrung in its attempted tryst with destiny, locked instead in seemingly petty neighbourhood squabbles. Compared to the immense skill with which it navigated the Cold War, where it managed not to antagonise or aggravate the United States excessively despite its non-aligned alignment with the former Soviet Union, New Delhi's regional policy has been lackadaisical (lacking enthusiasm and determination; carelessly lazy.) ¬ an approach bordering more on hope (that somehow the problems will disappear) than on purposeful urgency.
Second Failure: Some half century later, its two main borders still unsettled, India appears to have ceded its natural sphere of influence stretching from the Gulf and Africa to southeast Asia, to China. Our history textbooks are heavily centred on north to northwest India, all but ignoring peninsular ties around the Indian Ocean, Arabian Sea, and Bay of Bengal.Our singular obsession with Pakistan and its provocations has simply allowed China to get around us and get a lock on many countries where India has deeper roots.
Our biggest fiascos (failure) though have been domestic; our global slip-ups (उतार चढ़ाव) pale in comparison to the self-injury we have brought on ourselves with our inability to address basic issues relating to healthcare and sanitation, education and employment, infrastructure and development, all areas that countries (such as South Korea, Malaysia, Indonesia) with even lower metrics than India at the cusp (शीर्ष) of its Independence have improved dramatically to race ahead in the global economic sweepstakes. We are still playing catch-up.
There is in India a tendency to take comfort in small, sectoral successes: the fact that life expectancy and literacy have improved significantly since Independence; that agricultural production has increased so much that we are self-sufficient in foodgrains; that we have had signal successes in our nuclear and space programmes; that we are finally getting a decent communications and highway network. There is both self-gratification and self-glorification over all these admirable feats.
But as we are reminded every single day, our success is spotty and random. Our increased (low quality) life expectancy is weighted down by our grim infant mortality metrics, lower than that of sub-Saharan Africa, reflected in the unspeakable tragedy in Gorakhpur. With some of most fecund (उपजाऊ) and arable (कृषि-योग्य) lands and riverine systems in the world, we remain a low-yield agricultural society despite becoming self-sufficient in food, our messy market mechanisms making a meal of farm incomes. Our annual roadkill stats ¬ more than 150,000 lives lost ¬ would qualify as a genocide. Our cities and towns speak for themselves ¬ grim, dirty, and chaotic ¬ with not one qualifying to be worthy of a Top Ten tourist destination.
Where we top: Hope, optimism, and where both fail, a sense of resigned acceptance. Karma.
So how and what do we score for India given its dodgy (poor/of low quality.) record both on the domestic and global front? A 30/100 or a 70/100? A 100/100 we certainly aren't (unless you are one of those delusional hyperpatriots working up a lather on social media), so a 50/100? It's your call.
Purely subjectively, i'd go with 35/100 (pass marks in Indian systems), with the reasonable prospects of nailing a first class, if not a distinction, if we act with urgency and purpose in the thirty years to our centennial. Happy Independence Day.