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“A nation of a billion
people cannot wait endlessly for accidents. India deserves better”
It surely does. But progress, politics and policies are
beyond the scope of their knowledge as well as the will of understanding for our
average countrymen. And there is where we should hope to bring in some change
because unless the knowing and realization happens of what contributes to the
development, of what causes the problem we cannot find out what is the
solution. There is more to change than what we expect from tweets, status
updates, text messages, forwards, picture shares, candle lights and peace
march. The sooner we realize what makes and breaks our nation and do something
about this prime matter the better.
The book ‘Accidental India’ by Shankkar Aiyyar has captured seven events of national change over
the years and explained them with extreme detailing with excerpts and experiences from people involved in them, each section by itself reflects
the eagle eyed research executed in writing this book. There could not have
been a better time than now for reading it, I completed it today
morning. It just left me more aware of the facts, and more perplexed with the idea
that we are paying a ‘criminal cost of neglect’ a
phrase rightly mentioned somewhere in the book.
Change per se is a highly over rated but under executed thought.
Unless there is crisis, we do not think of the situation as a problem.
Revolutions happen only when we are on the verge of a break down. What makes us
wait till then, is it an Indian thing? Maybe not, there are a hundred other
examples to cite from the other parts of the world. But that is the last thing with which we can justify ourselves. Speaking of us Indians our
failures go carefully planned more than our developments which are mere
accidents for which we cannot thank our leaders enough. Read this book to know on how, when and where we went wrong and what
happened in the process. Our loss has always been more than our gain. Our
deepest regret would be what the author quotes here in this book, Milton Freidman, the economist’s
words way back in 1963 which is nothing less than right:
“India will stretch
into centuries what took other countries only decades."
Wish we prove him wrong. Amen.
-R
P.S : This review is a part of the Book Review Programme at www.blogadda.com Participate now to get free books.
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