Let us make a new beginning in the New Year. Our resolution for 2018 should be to give up the practice of aiming at short-terms gains. Rather, we should plan in a manner which helps us to create an India where every citizen will be happy. No one will go to bed hungry. Everyone should have access to quality education and health services. The gap between urban India and villages will be narrowed. Fruits of development will be distributed equally. India will regain its glory as a country of peace, love and brotherhood.
All these cannot be achieved overnight. If we go back to history, we will find that after Independence there was as effort to set long-term goals. For example, during the first Five-Year plan the focal point was agriculture. Agriculture was replaced by industry during the second Five-Year plan. But since then, there was no such plan which can be termed as an effort to provide us long standing benefits. Even Green Revolution has failed to bring an overall change to agriculture in the country. Its benefit was largely limited to two states namely Punjab and Haryana. Other states of the country were simply denied of the benefits.
What is more worrying that in recent years garbing power has become more important than projecting a proper blue print to build India as the best. The citizens are regularly asking for that, which is evident from their voting pattern. In 2014, India voted for Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Narendra Modi as it made development its major poll plank. If the trend of changing the government after every five years is fast becoming a pattern of India politics, it is because of the fact that for long people are devoid of development. All the benefits went to a handful of people. It happened in every regime. How hollow is the claim of much publicised Gujarat Model came to light after the recent Assembly elections in the State. BJP was on the verge of defeat. The party could save its skin only after giving the campaign a communal tone. If one analysis the election results of various states, he or she will find that all the regimes were thrown out of power as the regimes neglected development.
To avoid such situation, these days the political parties of our country are indulging in short-term gains. The parties raise issues like religion, language, caste to get the support of the people. How these political parties are fooling the electorates can be judged from a simple fact. During the Gujarat elections, Congress party claimed to prepare its manifesto based on the feedback received from the people. As a result we have seen many promises like loan waiver to increase in salaries of government servants. But a careful study of the manifesto would reveal that that those promises would incur an expenditure of one lac. 20 thousand cr., while the annual income of the state is merely 70,000 cr. It means that if Congress has to keep its promise, the state would have to borrow more than it earns and in the process would fall in to a debt trap. Thus it is our request to all our leaders not to make any tall claims or hollow promises. Be practical. Make only those promises which can be fulfilled. Be far sighted. Myopic approach will lead neither you nor the country anywhere.
