I am India - A functioning anarchy

As I open the news websites today for India , I'm greeted with these three top news items:

1) India's first mission to the moon
2) Raj Thackrey's arrest over extreme regionalism shown by his political party
3) Gay rights and legalization of homosexuality

Three totally unrelated events somehow all intertwined in the amazing web that is INDIA. As I get kicked from one country to another for work, I'm often asked the same questions again and again and i thought maybe its time to post something about it and point everyone to the blog.(Wink ;) gets more people reading it too). The most often asked question -"What do you say xyz in Indian", can actually raise and answer all questions about India in my mind. When I'm asked this question I often go into a big monologue description of India so that the poor questioner wishes he never had asked the question. But honestly the answer has to be in this way for the person to get a complete context of the question.

What follows herein is as much of a personal debate as it is an opinion

Here's my typical answer : Well i can't tell you what xyz is called in Indian cause there is no such language called Indian. I however can tell what xyz is called in any of the 25 major languages in India.(Please don't kill me, the actual number of major languages and their classification is varied from different sources,so I'm taking a round number here) To understand India better think of Europe as a single country. The Danes are as different from the Spanish as are the British from the Poles. This is India in a nutshell. We speak different languages from one state to another,wear different clothes, eat completely different food (yeah almost everything is spicy to the bland European palate...thank you very much) and have different social setups and customs . Not all over India is beef banned (its even a delicacy in south and east India) as much as not everyone in India is doing yoga. Yes, religions and castes are very much prevalent and their effects are very noticeable. But to understand it ,you need to probably read a contemporary book (readers please suggest a good book which discusses religion and caste system in Modern India) about it. And we still stand United in our diversity.

Yes we are the world's largest democracy but its a joke. The rich don't care as no one can touch them, The poor are too hungry to worry about democracy when they have stomachs to feed(and hence the votes are bought for as low as a promised day's meal) and the most populated "educated,sensitive and highly opinionated"middle class (myself included of course) are too concerned about dirtying their hands in the muck that is Indian politics. Thus it is but natural that the leaders are representative of such a society-the politicians aka the Indian mafia.

Yes we are a trillion dollar GDP economy growing at 8-9% per annum. We have the highest population of educated ,English speaking Under 30 population in the world. We have the highest number of billionaires in Asia and quite a few businesses making it into the Forbes 500 list. Business CEO's across the globe swear by the Indian IT companies & in fact many of the global CEO's are Indians.

Yes we do not have the infrastructure to sustain the growth and need 300 billion dollars of immediate investment in infrastructure just to hold all of this growth together let alone fuel it.
Yes we have a free and powerful press and media and yes my blog can be blocked if Raj Thackrey takes offence to it.

So it is this contrasting views of India that is again shown in the top 3 news items of the day. We are proving our scientific and economic might by sending a mission to the moon and showing we are in touch with modern society and its sensibilities by for the first time taking serious steps in regards to gay rights and homosexuality .However we also take a step back by showing extreme regionalism. Raj Thackeray is the political leader who is trying to make Maharashtra for Maharashtrians ONLY.

But we push on. There's a great confidence in today's India and its young minds. We will make a difference, we will make the politicians accountable, we will push Indian industries to greater heights,we will clean up the system and we will build our infrastructure and we will make sure no child goes hungry. And remember when a billion people say this you better not be in the way.

This my dear friends is the contrast that is India.If you thought you could describe it in one sentence then you got another thing coming. But if we think again, it IS possible to describe India in one sentence. And that is to rewrite the quote of my dear friend Neelabh :

WE are - I am -India -the world's only functioning anarchy.