India is a culture hub, a culture hub unlike any other. We are the one country that encompasses within its boundaries the landscapes that picture postcards are made of. From snow-capped mountains to golden shores and everything that lies in between, name a terrain, and we’ve got it. India has it all and more. With the amount this country does have to offer, why is it that such large numbers of individuals are trying everything to get out? Why is it that our aim is to ‘Go abroad’? Why are scores of Goans waiting in those snake like lines that crawl around buildings in this scorching heat to get their Portuguese Passports? Once we get out, what next? Again here, I throw in my disclaimer, I salute those who have the guts to leave their comfortable lives and travel the seven seas for a better future. Hats off to those who are willing to give up all they have and all they have envisioned for themselves to go to a new country and start off from scratch. Yes, there is definitely an extremely tangible economical difference. But why is our country not progressing? Why is it that we can’t sustain?
As I started off, this country actually does have loads to offer. Sadly, we have loads to cringe about as well. When it comes to working in this country, we have not really given up on what we have been taught prior to independence. Something that has stuck is the craving for cheap labour. From the time we are young we are actually fed information like the only way up is hard work, but in practicality this doesn’t apply. All over the world people can fall into one of the two categories. The hard workers who deserve quick escalation and those that make nice with the higher ups. In India we have another category, the ones who have seats reserved for them because of the hard work and inhuman treatment those ten generations before them faced. So as a country, we are actually being run on guilt. We also have this other little group who use the mighty weapon of ‘INFLUENCE’ to get ahead. Can we actually be proud of these few well known facts? On a personal front, we believe that India being our birth right doesn’t really deserve the full extent of the respect we so willingly give lands far away. India with all its beauty, has still turned into our public toilet, dustbin, garden and party zone.
The stench we have created, the dirt we have accumulated and the garbage we have collected was a joint effort. Now we want to jump ship and go follow the rules and lives of countries further away. Till date, those other countries have welcomed us with open arms because we really are a hard working lot who will do the stuff others don’t necessarily want to at a much lower cost. Today however, we seem to have overstayed our welcome and it’s sad to see that individuals who live in the places we aim at settling in cringe at the knowledge that an ‘Indian’ is moving in. Why? Because we are taking their jobs, living in their space, crowding their streets, introducing some of our very strong traditions to their environment. Sound familiar?
Over the last few days we have been bombarded with the sad news of the treatment we are meting out to individuals who have decided to make India and more accurately Goa, their home. I have stated before and it’s sad how this keeps coming up but we Indians have made our country among the top three most racist in the world!! We waste no time to point fingers and pass judgement based on colour. It’s pitiful to accept but accept we must. We dance around those of a lighter pigmentation, we stop at nothing to make them comfortable, to make them feel like kings. A different shade and we are turning up our noses and inventing various dubious careers that the individual is involved in. We find that it is our right to look down upon these individuals. We sneer and subconsciously expect them to pull out a gun and point it at us. This attitude that has become us is proving more negative by the day. We look at them like they are from a lower strata of society, one too low for us to bend down to. On the flip side, we act like it is their duty to accept us into their countries when we so wish to go. It is imperative that we stop with this double standard. As we all know and most of us have found out the hard way… We do actually get what we give.
