Slavery in the internet age.

It was legal to own your slave in the USA, just around the time
Mahatma Gandhi got freedom for India with his monumental methods of
non violence.

One would think after sixty odd years India would be the truly free
country. But one look at our educational system, and we'll realize we
have enshrined slavery, celebrated obedience over pursuit of
knowledge, and concluded that our "system" is more important than the
results it brings us.

The results our system has brought us are as follows:

- The education we consider most important for our children are those
mandated by foreign needs. If the Silicon Valley hires software
engineers, we rush our kids into computer science. If their stock
market dives without a clue, we dive with it!

- Virtually none of our "educated" masses are able to solve any
problems we face. We routinely turn to foreign "experts" even for
very national issues like cleaning the Ganges.

- Our educational system doesn't inspire any of our young minds to
turn innovators. Since the invention of the aeroplane, 90% of the
world's patents have gone to Americans.

Our construction and civil works standards have not been updated since
the 1940s. In other words, we still follow standards set by the
British Raj, while in the USA, these standards are updated every six
months. With the amount of innovation and technology and new
methodology that has evolved in this period, we in India have not made
a single attempt to come up with our own new standards.

Our government machinery and the bureaucrats it has spawned talk
regularly of e-governance, like it is some sort of revolution. Go to
the www.bsnl.co.in website and try e mailing any one of the forty odd
senior officers whose e mails are there in full public view. NONE of
them work! Ditto for most of the government websites, including the
Tamilnadu Police Department HQ. And there is a message from the TN
Chief of police about e-governance!

It was suddenly a hot idea to get on the internet, and so we did,
without a thought on how it would or wouldn't work. We are slaves in
our mind, and looking for a slave driver to force us to do something.
We were forced into the internet age because the rest of the world was
going there and not because we have genuinely embraced it for what it
can do for us.

- Why in heaven's name should the Indian Railways website "shut down"
every night?

- Why doesn't the Tamilnadu Directorate of Technical Education website
have a single means of contacting them?

- Why aren't we still able to vote online?

Out of sheer pride, we built something called a Light Combat Aircraft,
which was by no means the most advanced aircraft in the world, but we
called it "indigenous". The indigenous Kaveri engine produced less
than 70% of the thrust needed to propel our indigenous aircraft, and
we're still pouring our indigeous tax money to buy a foreign engine,
and to somehow convince the Air Force to buy this plane. Why?

Because we're slaves, and we would like to pretend like we love our freedom.

Hindustan Motors and Toyota started functioning the same year. HM had
the protection of the Indian government, while Toyota had to survive
in the world market. We nurtured slaves to our own laziness, while
Japan chose to compete with pride against the best in the world.
Result - today Toyota is the world's #1 auto maker, and HM needs one
stroke of pity from someone's pen to shut it down.

Why do we have to buy a certain brand of gingely oil because the
American Heart Association somehow endorses its goodness? Why isn't
there an Indian Heart Association? Maybe we are heartless?

Why are there white people in suits on most of our corporate websites?
Why is it always a white man telling me what underwear to buy and
what shirt to wear? And yet, why is it okay in the same industries
for white people to wear shorts to their jobs while we follow dress
codes like we're going to jail?

What DO we really care about and do well? Everything that foreigners
tell us how to do. Aviation, for example! How we maintain our
aircraft, the standards we set for selecting pilots - all foreign,
since we don't make planes, and we don't trust the ones we do end up
making once in a while. The big fear guiding us here is not even that
people will die if standards are not adhered to, but because planes
are expensive and aren't worth much when they fall from the sky, even
once.

How much of a price are we paying for keeping our faces in the mud?