Don't let your country down

Our country, the land of culture, the golden bird, the mother of all has been ill-treated time and again both by outsiders and insiders and yet India has shone when the hour was darkest, smiled when the moment was of grief, risen when downfall was so evident and fought when the battle was almost lost.

Brain drain is history – today organisations world over are awed by the intellect of Indians and are dying to have a footing in India. It is a void notion that companies only come to India because the manpower is cheap – they come here because our people work hard and are not unreasonably demanding as those of west. They come because we are sincere in what we do. They come because we do not work by the clock but we make the clock work by us. And they come because there is no match for an Indian in any corner of the world.

This is also a nation where culture breathes freely. Our kids may have adapted the wild, wild west ways but they respect their parents and teachers, love their siblings and honour their wedding vows. And this is not because they are made to do so but because this is what India has taught them.

“Sanskriti” is not just a jargon written in our Vedas, it is our way of life and each one of us follows it in our own unique way. Affluent, while planning a swimming pool and Jacuzzi in their plush houses do not forget to keep a sacred place for “mandir”. Commoners while saving money for the wedding of their children do not forget to keep a penny aside for their “tirth yatra” and the pauper never forgets to say “ishwar bhala karega” while he is sweating through his nails in the hot and scorching sun for his one and only meal in 24 hours.

We praise the neatness with which westerners keep their streets and while doing that, we spit on our roads, we crib the way government runs this country and we shy away when the society we live in calls for an AGM, we condemn our national teams for not winning the world cups whereas chose not to participate in sports days during our academic years fearing that we might lose.

And the worst is when we deliberate and debate on how carelessly our security forces have been in letting the infiltrators slip through the borders while most of the weekends we forget to latch our doors before sleeping because we are too drunk!!

India is what we are. It has done enough for us while we were cribbing and now it is our turn to show that we are responsible citizens and can take care of our country. It is time we start praising those few politicians who have made a difference, it is time that we start respecting our police and defence forces, it is time that we start participating in making India an ideal place to live and it is definitely high time that we start fighting our own battles so that India can fight bigger wars with the infiltrating neighbouring countries and ungrateful in-house terrorists. The time has come. Let us all put our drops of effort… Ocean is not too far!! Vande Mataram !!

“Dedicated to all those Indians who lost their lives in making India – INDIA”

Amit Haathi   (Sr Manager, Human Resources, TVS Interconnect Systems)