About me. And India.

I am a Indian who has lived almost all my life in India. I have been proud of my country. It is a third world country, but a country that I has lots to be proud about. And I was proud about all of those. Proud of the fact that it withstood partition. Proud of the fact that it got its act together and reamined one. Proud of the liberty it gives me as a citizen. Proud of the almost unbiased media. Proud of the way it has treated me. Proud of the opportunities it gave me.

I have spent the last few years outside the country. And this gives a very different perspective of all that I thought was good and was proud of. I almost feel like a neutral bystander, standing aside and gazing at what would otherwise have been normal life for me. And when I take a neutral bystander's perspective, I see things I never saw before. And I ask questions I never asked before.

Unfortunately, not all that I have seen has been nice and pretty. Infact a lot of it hasn't been so. When I look back at all that I have seen, since I became a bystander, I see a lot that is perplexing. I fail to understand why a nation needs more reservations, when history shows that it hasn't worked very well in achieving its noble objectives. I fail to understand how important policy decisions, often of national interest and security are reached, not based on what is good for the country, but based on what sounds good to the country. I cannot understand how a city can attract the best in teh world, but cannot get its roads right after fifty years of attempting. I cannot explain to my co-workers why buses have to be burnt if a movie star dies a natural death. I find a lot of these depressing.

And as these questions come up, as these thoughts pass my mind, I realize that the fact that we have lots to be proud of does not make us infallible. We have done lots of good, but we are also doing lots and lots of bad. Being a bystander probably gives me an opportunity to see both and evaluate them for what they are.

I say all this right in my first post, since many of my blogs are likely to be focused on India and things happening there. And I want you to know that I'm not an India basher. Rather, I'm as proud of India as I ever was, but that doesn't stop me from calling a spade a spade, when I see one.