View while sitting atop a sack of potatoes in a train can be really hilarious.
In general bogey of a train there is understandable hurry and mutual
suspicion against everyone till you adjust yourself on smallest piece of land
inside the compartment. Once you have unlocked that achievement time comes for
a considerable amount of satisfaction and contentment. 10-15 minutes after the
train starts and once satisfaction has outlived it's utility everyone is
looking at scaling the next challenge of the journey, that's usually being able
to eat or sleep amid all the chaos. During this period one can see a
lot of happy faces chewing something and many sleeping beauties
mumbling,snoring or simply swinging along with the train.
Every station along the way presents a small battle for those inside
to preserve their land and those outside to push, pull, shout,grab and somehow
make space for themselves inside the compartment. Inside these trains you can
very easily find a big businessman,a tall politician,a journalist, Muscle-man,a
great thinker, poet,writer or anyone along same series of thought. If you are
wondering how will you find these great people so easily, the answer is they
will themselves tell you in detail about their greatness.
View while sitting atop a sack of potatoes in a train can be really humbling.
Inside the same train you can see many ladies sitting
on floor,one or two trying to breastfeed their kid amid such a large crowd. A small
poor man pushed around by a strong poor man. An old man braving the
journey looking through all of this noise with profound sense of acceptance of
the way things function. You can also see lines of men and women relieving
themselves along the tracks few of them covering their faces as the train
passes and few sportingly smiling.
The train manifests in it cross section of India.There are people in
it who know nothing about poor except occasionally turning the other way on
seeing a living example of it and then there are people in it who know nothing
about rich except glaring intensely on having seen an example of it.
The right of a dignified life with basic usual facilities is
responsibility of a nation state and if 67 years after independence we are
still going 2 steps ahead and 4 steps back while doing that then the nation
needs to shake up and ponder. India is the 3rd largest economy of the world. It is one of fastest growing emerging economy as well and we regularly hear of a lot of schemes and programs which promise to change many things but the fact is mostly things stay the way they are.If we carefully see till now broadly we have tried to govern India in a "Top
Down" manner wherein there are a set of officials from top to bottom who
have been entrusted with the responsibility to implement various schemes .The method has clearly failed since
there are a series of middlemen,brokers
and corrupt officials who make sure that by the time money reaches the bottom
very little or nothing of it remains. Alternatively we can use a "Bottom Up" approach to
governance & implementation of various
schemes. In today's age where more and more citizens are getting directly connected to
the financial system through bank accounts and PAN cards, doing it is actually
possible.
A concept of "Participative Implementation and
monitoring" needs to be evolved. For example in a district or Tehsil identification and prioritization of projects for entire year can be done by organising a seminar of
village elders during a fixed time and period of a year and selected projects sanctioned
amount may directly be credited to concerned village account. As the
implementation is carried out the implementing agency may be paid by the
village Headman keeping proper records and after informing concerned individuals.
At every stage to perform checks and balances a village committee
can be constituted for that financial year. At every stage all records must be
updated online for transparency.
The example may or may not make sense to many but failures in this
model will be fewer and learning quick because people spending money are also
the user of the projects implemented. After due consultation and learning from experience a proper model for
"Participative Governance and
Program Implementation" may be adopted.
View while sitting atop a sack of potatoes in a train can be hilarious or
humbling depending on your mood but the view for poorest of this nation must change now and instead of
waiting for things to reach them as usual we must find ways to take our efforts
directly to people. The eyes of most downtrodden citizen should be filled with hope not despair. People must see and feel that their government is trying,
doesn't matter if it fails while trying.
