It was sheer delight to be away in Kenya, away from the inconsequential news that we are bombarded with each morning. Strange, but true, life goes on. Ideas come forth, and the disconnect with what the political and administrative class in India is talking about or doing cleanses the spirit and the soul. As one disembarks on desi soil, happy to be home, the horrors of this country pile on. No baggage trolleys, impolite Air India ground staff, equally unpleasant airport authority minions, X-ray machines out of order, touts beckoning you as you walk out of the airport, thinking you may be an NRI! All the joy of ‘coming back’ melts away. One wonders why India continues to be so utterly backward and impossible.

The vast stretches of forest and savannah that house a myriad mammals, birds and insects are true ‘sanctuaries’, protected zealously by all. This allows these wild and stunning tracts of land to remain one of the greatest natural gems of planet earth, with the valuable bio-diversity alive and constantly regenerating. India’s massive failure to do the same with its god-gifted treasure hits one hard on the face. Our leadership, post Indira and Rajiv Gandhi, our policymakers and the administrators who tender advice and implement policy, many motivated by greed, have successfully destroyed the single-most valuable resource of this land. The contrast between the two countries — both poor and struggling, both third world, both living with the frightening truth of unimaginable disparities, social discord and shortages — is sharp and crystal clear. We have failed to protect nature and we continue to destroy whatever little is left. Those at the helm just do not comprehend the problem and the reality because in their days at the school and university, environmental studies had not entered the curriculum.

Out of the box

The unpleasant, aggressive and overwhelming presence of the bureaucracy is not there in Kenya. There are no touts despite the poverty. There are no asinine, archaic colonial rules despite Kenya’s being a former colony, like India. Kenyans are proud of their heritage. We, by contrast, spend time and energy damaging our legacy. When you walk through Nairobi airport you wonder why Delhi and Mumbai airports are so utterly third-rate and abysmal, mismanaged, dirty and unkempt. Keeping our space dirty seems to be our great skill, our national pastime! Our leaders, escaping the truth, are swept into those same spaces surrounded by ‘security’, hoisted blindly onto airplanes and flown to cleaner pastures for exchanges. They rapidly become accustomed to this new ‘life’, one they had not tasted earlier. They fall in love with it. They forget the grime of the real India while in power and then, to never have to experience the truth again, they cling to power at all costs … celebrating corruption.

What Bharat has, in civilizational and historical terms, is pretty much unmatched. What it has in entrepreneurship and gracious hospitality is also unmatched. The human, intellectual and cultural resources are abundant but fragile because of the overarching and stifling bureaucracy ruled by unacceptable and archaic norms. The bureaucrats need to change their mind-set, get educated and trained anew, then get thrown into the field with a mandate that is structured for the people and they have to be made accountable to the people. Democracy is what we need desperately.

On that note, the only piece of ‘relevant news’ in the papers was that the bureaucracy will be trained again, this time round abroad, at Harvard and Syracuse, a foreign jaunt that may be worth the tax-payer’s money! Till we decide to step out of the hole we have dug ourselves into, and till we pledge to conserve, develop, grow and respect our inherent strengths, we will not assume the status of a regional power.