Few nations can match India in diversity - or in paradoxes. As Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru once pointed out; we have nuclear energy, but we also use cow dung! We are among the ten most industrialized nations of the world - and one of the twenty poorest. We have the third largest scientifically trained manpower in the world. Yet one-third of our people are illiterate. The survival of our democracy is regarded as a modern miracle. But over half of our eligible citizens do not cast their votes in the elections. We claim to have an independent judiciary. But close to two million cases are pending in our High Courts and a staggering twenty million in the lower courts; a backlog that makes law a source of helplessness - and often a source of lawlessness itself.
Renowned jurist Nani Palkhivala wrote, 'We have too much government and too little administration, too many public servants and too little public service, too many laws and too little justice.' We revere Mahatma Gandhi, one of the greatest apostles of non-violence, as the Father of the Nation. He was killed by two bullets, Indira Gandhi by 37 bullets, Rajiv Gandhi by a bomb explosion. This is the progression of violence in the land of Gandhi. Today, the stengun-wielding bodyguards are as much in the public view as are our leaders. The glory of a five thousand-year-old civilization does not, somehow, seem to reduce the stench of prevailing squalor. For all this we find no dearth of excuses. Our colonial past. Exploitation by multinationals. Trade barriers by the West. Vagaries of monsoon. Population explosion. If scapegoats were edible, India would never go hungry! We need not be pessimists, but it is good to take a bold look at what lies ahead.
A billion Indians today desperately need houses, drinking water, jobs and dams. Bigger hospitals and schools. Better roads and trains. We need bold new strategies and structures for economic development and population control, for electoral reforms and mass literacy. It calls for the best of politicians and businessmen, bureaucrats and managers, scientists and teachers. Each of these, and many more such inputs, will have a distinct and indispensable role in changing today's complex, pluralistic society. Modernizing India will undoubtedly be one of the most challenging tasks in human history. However, our vast potential as a nation will continue to remain dormant unless we inspire our ordinary people, which is our greatest and largely untapped asset, and involve each individual in the task of nation-building. Contributions from numerous individuals, each small in itself, cumulatively build our common heritage. As I am, so is my nation. It is the daily struggles and triumphs of the common man that ultimately make up our society.
Renowned educationist and writer Will Durant wrote, 'Civilization is a stream with banks. The stream is sometimes filled with blood from people killing, stealing, shouting and doing things historians usually record, while on the banks, unnoticed, people build homes, make love, raise children, sing songs, write poetry. The story of civilization is the story of what happened on the banks.' To underestimate the ordinary individual is to ignore the banks of the river.
Today the average Indian is largely demoralized. Everyday he sees degrees and jobs being bought, innocent terrorized and the guilty garlanded, moral values trampled upon while the unscrupulous rule. Satyamev Jayate (Truth shall Triumph) remains enshrined in the national seal. Thriving corruption is his daily fare. Frequent exposure to cruelty and violence has benumbed his sensitivity. Every aspect of his life is being callously manipulated - his poverty or caste, his ignorance or religion, what he has as well as what he lacks.
No wonder he, by and large, feels hopeless, bitter, apathetic or cynical. Just the same were they feeling on March 12,1930 when Mahatma Gandhi set out from Ahmedabad on Dandi March. That marked a turning point in our freedom struggle. It electrified the whole country. The patriotic fervor it generated all through the sub-continent is best expressed in Nehru's stirring words. 'Today the pilgrim marches onward on his long trek. None that passed him can escape the spell. And men of common clay feel the spark of life.' That March activated an entire mass of humanity into a memorable non-violent freedom struggle, the like of which was never seen by mankind. Empowering the individual, activating the common man, was perhaps Gandhiji's magic touch, his secret. How do we activate and empower the common Indian of today in the task of nation - building? This is our challenge.
It is in this wider social setting that the personal change individuals experience at Asia Plateau (the IofC center in India) and their ripple effects assume a special significance. Consider a couple of examples: An agriculture student from Delhi is rusticated by the university for leading a strike. He hates his father whom he holds responsible for the suffering in the family including the need of his mother to be treated with electric shocks in a mental hospital. At Asia Plateau he writes a long letter to his father owning his mistakes, gives up drinking and gambling and apologizes to the father for his bitterness. He also apologizes to the Vice Chancellor against whom he had led the strike 'mainly because I saw in him the face of my father whom I hated so much.' Together they succeed in changing the atmosphere of the Campus making it one of the best in the country.
Today he is the Managing Director of a leading seed-making company and was honored by the Queen of England for his contribution to sustainable development. A young engineer from Mumbai gives up his well-paid job to work at Asia Plateau. He catches a vision to make India great. In the garage of a friend and with hardly any capital he starts a business supplying equipment to hospitals. At an exhibition he sees that there is hardly any pathology equipment being exported from India. His dream is to put India on the world export map in his product range. Today 400 highly skilled technicians of his Company make products which are sold all over the world.
These, and many more individuals, have a hope that however gloomy the present may appear, tomorrow can be different. This hope is deeply rooted in personal experience of change, which enables them to believe that their surroundings can also become different, and society itself can change. They have found a purpose for their lives and an inner freedom to pursue that purpose, while their own hidden potential blossoms. They are not meditating in a monastery or preaching from the mountaintop. In the ding-dong battles of everyday life their experiences ring true. The change that has come about in their lives and in their surroundings is worthwhile in itself. But the potential, which they symbolize, of bringing about such a change, is even more significant. Steps of personal change activate one's conscience. Heeding the voice of that conscience over a period of time increases one's sensitivity to it. A candle gets lit in one's heart. It guides you along your own unique journey. It gives one great hope to see that even the men of common clay can feel the spark of life. Every ordinary man can become an effective catalyst of change. The purpose of Asia Plateau is to demonstrate this simple truth.
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