There is a much hue and cry these days about where India will be by 2020. Though not much of constructive work is taking place to reach top ten economies of the world by the magical year of 2020 there is large-scale optimism about reaching that somehow.

India as a society just started thinking individually, finding its "originality of thought" after two generations of independent India.

The first two generations of independent India were still struggling under the influence of the foreign rule and like most of the Asian societies the mental colonisation achieved by British could not be eradicated in the minds of people fully. People still thought like clerks waiting to follow someone's thought process.

The Right:

The economic progress in India for example started on a very bright note with Panditji choosing a new economic system not proved its mettle in the world by then.

The originality of thought and Nehruvian foreign policy somewhat inspired the first and second generation independent Indians to some extent. Post Nehruvian political scenario was not very encouraging.

None of the Prime Ministers post-Nehru were true representatives of the masses. They have not emerged from cadres to represent the common man of the country.

Shastry was a common man but he was not the icon of Congress party when he was made the Prime Minister. His was a sad story ending in anti climax ending his able administrative capabilities blossom fully and give the fruits to the Country.

Indira Gandhi was made the Prime Minister as a consensus candidate more than the icon of the Congress party then. The politics of greed, divisive tactics originated with leaders lacking leadership skills and vision.

Indira Gandhi to some extent started becoming the icon though the Congress party suffered the first split during her regime indicating that she is not the best leader in the history.

The achievements whatever can be claimed as Indiraji's vision were wiped out because of internal emergency, a black mark on the independent India's democratic practices.

The coalitions were mere experiments with consensus candidates leading the country. Morarji was not a national icon by then and never became later as well nor was Charan Singh.

Rajiv Gandhi's entry into politics was more to capture the sympathy vote and it was achieved with total perfection. Rajiv, however, tried displaying some original thinking like his grandfather but could not sustain the wrong foreign policy leading to his own killing.

V P Singh, I K Gujral, Chandrasekhar, Deve Gowda could never become admirable leaders leave alone the icon status.

P V Narasimha Rao was chosen as the leader as a consensus candidate and was not an icon of the party or its philosophy. The crisis in front of his Government led to some bold actions, which resulted into a hope that India may emerge into top economies of the world.

Atalji was an icon but not a people's man like Advani. It was the adventure of Advani on his 'Rath' (Chariot) that gave the life to BJP by creating huge vote banks of majority communities and Vajpayee was considered as a consensus candidate. The current Government need not come to discussion at all.

The intention of above paragraph is not to criticise the country and the citizens but just to describe the evolution we achieved in past fifty years as a society.

We left original thinking and started making experiments following Western models of development. The social and cultural differences between the West and India led to failure of many systems and we are not really roaring.

With more and more doors opened for Western investors, Indians are merely becoming clerks in the hands of the investors. People working for multinationals get huge salaries, cars and many but lack any authority to make decisions, to climb up the corporate ladders from India. They are the working classes in the eyes of the investor.

When I touch the working class in the multinationals I see the same colonised minds that were limited by many barriers.

This time the colonisation is in the minds of the working class Indians if not at the political level. Handling the outsourced business is becoming a trend with outsourcing managers behaving like site supervisors taking the responsibility delegated rather than involving in strategies required for overall organisational growth.

Western societies were pushing the lifestyle through the media especially films and television and all international brands are available in the local market hampering the local goods severely.

The colonised mind of buyers, this time, is looking at buying those brands to the local products. In cities, we are finding more pizzerias and burger joints than places selling rotis, idlis and dosas.

The riches we are making through the colonised work are going back into their own doles through spending on international brands.

What we, in India, are getting is mere experience of using expensive international branded products and creating more and more economic divide among citizens.

The Left:

Left movements in India were not very young. They had a history prior to independence. But they blossomed well after independence.

During the early days we had an original left thinker in M N Roy who could develop his own thought process in the lines of socialist principles proposed by Marx and Engels.

But post-Roy thinkers were merely admiring the theories of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Mao rather than developing their own thought process. There was not a single piece of writing or speech of the Left leaders without the mention of some Western or Chinese 'Left' intellectual.

So-called stars of Left wing in India were merely following the set thought process and were busy organising the cadres.

The other original thought process born at Naxalbari took an ugly shape because of the flaw in the original thought itself. The division proposed by the Left-thinking could never get the majority support in India and Left could never prove that they can be a force to recon with.

The wrong decisions of sharing the coalition partnership in the name of stopping another party brought down the support for Left in the country.

Most of the star leaders of Left wing in India merely followed the set pattern of thinking. They were not making identifiable noise against the colonisation of Indian mind.

Their objections were largely related to economic issues rather than social issues. This led to multiple divisions of the communist party in India, which is now trying to emerge as a single force this time as a political organ rather than an idealistic intellectual group.

The Center:

In the middle of the colonised or influenced Right and Left thinking is the common man…a poor Indian. This man is thinking to make his children great by pushing them into engineering colleges, computer science trainings, and medical studies to make money, to travel abroad and live his/her life in the style that cannot be thought of by him as a common man.

The common man is not aware that by pushing the children towards vocational studies and colonised environments they are hampering the future of the country.

Today the kids know more of Valentines Day than Durga Puja or Diwali.

They are representing freedom in terms of what they eat, wear, think and read but unfortunately the freedom of thinking is missing. The westernised freedom and westernised solutions are leading our thinking.

I am seeing more and more elected representatives and public servants visiting developed countries to follow the model of development from providing amenities to citizens to beautification of cities.

How difficult it is to perceive that public require better transport on busy roads or single window facilities to make their utility payments without visiting any developed country?

If we start creating the attitude of analysing the problem and finding original solutions for the creative inheritance we got from our great past it should not be very difficult to become original.

When I am seeing Indian cities today they are more like the Latin American cities of late seventies and early eighties. We saw what happened to them in 10 to 15 years timeframe.

We may head towards such downfall as well. Even if we do not fall down, we definitely might degenerate as a society if we do not teach original thinking to our children.

The new liberalism and economic reforms should lead us into original thinking and action rather than more and more dependent scenarios where we just end up being workers and the crème, profits and intellectual property goes out of India.

Venkat Manthripragada

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