Our back is against the wall. Tougher immigration laws amidst nationalistic tendencies seem to be the flavor of the season. Tens, or probably a hundred million dreams (if not more) of providing dirt cheap labor and partying in London’s dark grim clubs or taking selfies at the slot machines in Las Vegas might just get squashed.
Let’s be honest. We are a generation brought up in English medium schools. We know more about a coffee shop in New York than Malgudi (what is that?). We celebrate Halloween with more flair and shares on Facebook than Holi. They say India was a great country once with amazing scriptures, technology and universities (and Kama Sutra). Scholars from all over the world used to come here to learn our ways. And yet, most of it never got translated (or marketed) for the youth of this country. A whopping 500 million people (some of you who were schooled by your grannies might be exceptions) lost access to the wisdom that was the foundation of a Golden Indian Era. Maybe the greatest damage the English did to us was give us a language which we understood and used more than our own ones (could those buggers have been that damn smart?)
But what’s done is done. Today, our urban populace dreams of settling in the west. We eat west, we read west, we drink west and we binge watch west till late nights despite ourselves. And don’t get me wrong, the west is awesome; that is why they turn us on (The clean roads, wah. The creativity and Innovation, wah. The Telsas and the Googles, wah wah. Game of Thrones, Megan Fox and teenage sex, mashallah.) But the west might just close its door on us and then, will we do nothing but sit next to the paanwala and pause on hotstar when they show us the empire state building in an episode of Big Bang theory and dream about standing on top of that magnificent edifice (built probably at a cheaper rate than Ambani’s billion dollar monstrosity)? Is that all we will do?
Our world is a global one. Our sense of patriotism is not as rock solid as it used to be. And maybe the fears of the west going exclusive are baseless (After all, they can’t survive without our Satya Nadellas, Sundar Pichais and Rama Rams, can they? Rama Ram might just be some Infosys employee setting up meetings in San Jose from 9am to 9pm. Oh! The unbearable monotony! ). But there are other things to consider, my dear friends.
Around 65% of our population is under the age of 35, around 50% is under 25. We are a young nation, and even if the brain drain did continue as always, we still have a huge number of young adults left. Despite our KRKs and Yogi Adityanaths, one can safely say the future lies in our hands. And patriotism or no patriotism, global world or no global world, it is common sense to strive to improve the conditions of the place we call and will continue to call our home. But words, no matter how well put, will not be enough. It will require more from each one of us. We have the resources (what with the Internet and all), the time and the numbers on our side.
We will have to unlearn and learn again (fucked as we are by the education we received). India needs a makeover. And that doesn’t imply completely aping the west. It doesn’t imply reviving the old scriptures and knowledge of the bygone era either. It might need a little bit of both but more importantly, it will need young Indians to think differently, dream freely and believe fiercely (in that order). And if you think that’s easy, try thinking of a startup that doesn’t deliver stuff, try dreaming of a marriage after 30, try disobeying your elders and voicing your own different beliefs.