My mind goes back to the need of listening to our conscience, before it is too late. We all have this deep within us, the love of our fellow human beings. Too often, we let this voice get silenced amidst mob fury, or bouts of ego.
A message from SHUX from SpaceX earlier this month that ‘Bharat still looks better than the whole world’ should set the tone this independence-day. Bharat looked “Saare Jahan se Accha” forty-one years ago too. Maintaining its relative distinction is no mean achievement in a world full of geo-political intrigues and cunning adversaries.
Lest we become victims of complacency, there must be an ongoing and honest introspection as challenges will continuously test the resilience of any resolute nation, with diversity such as ours, rich but complex.
It will be not be unfair to admit that events of last few months have filled the space around us with a certain pessimism, despair and unease at subconscious level.
The blood of innocents on the meadows of Pahalgam and the tragic end to dreams of hundreds on the ill-fated Air India flight have amplified that sense of despair and helplessness.
Flipping open the morning newspaper begins with a silent prayer; hoping not to read about tragic deaths in air and on ground, hapless men dying while cleaning sewage, bridges collapsing without a warning and worse – murders in cold blood that remind us of a tattered social fabric. Conversations in morning walks have turned to fragility of life and falling standards of social values and governance.
As we are reassured of becoming the third largest economy in the world, let’s hope that the millions who live without the basic needs of life also feel this transition and the pulse of being a global power. Over the years, regardless of whichever government is in power, the gap between the rich and the poor has never narrowed.
Developments around the world are no less troubling as Mother Earth seems to descend into further chaos, of unprecedented levels, with no holds barred show of military strength, ferocity, cunning and unscrupulous deal making. A transactional order, as opposed to rules based, seems to take over, devoid of any concern to moral values.
Pictures of distraught mothers cradling tender bodies draped in white cloth collected from a bombed shelter or a food aid center do not stir the conscience of those sitting on global high tables. Even as global citizens mourn such loss of lives with least concern. Indeed, the world watches!
To make some nations great again, wars must not be allowed to end. Blood must continue to be shed and thirst for retaliation prompted. What only if all the money spent in wars had been spent on battling hunger? Instead of economies living on sales of defense equipment, these were instead based upon growing more food! But now with rapid drones deployed, a new arms testing in full swing, that day is not too far, who knows this could be in the near future, when globally people would be living under iron domes, as the homes of the future!
“How shall love’s honey breath hold out against the wreckful siege of batt’ring days”, so said Shakespeare.
VK Verma is former Indian Railway service, commercial director, Air India and president, Badminton Association of India
