New Year Edit for FC, Jan 1, 2010: WHAT IF?

Every new era, every revolution in the history of the world begins with a single thought — “What if…?” Developments that we take as commonplace in our everyday lives were far-fetched visions sometime in the past. It’s the implausible ideas of the present that would turn into life-changing revolutions in the future. But what if instead of waiting for some distant, earth-shaking idea, we just push ahead with the small ones that we do have and try to live up to the targets that we set for ourselves? What if, instead of finding excuses for incomplete tasks and unattained targets, we just go ahead and meet them head on? There is a lot of talk about India becoming the next super power. But rather than making tall claims, doesn’t it make sense that we live up to our own deadlines first? For a country that has a history of setting targets and then coming up with explanations for not being able to meet them, delivering the goods on time ought to make a big difference to performance in the long run. Infrastructure development has been one of the core concerns for the government in the recent past. However, there are huge gaps in the targets set and the targets met in various sectors. In power generation, we would be adding only 78 per cent of the 14.5 gigawatt target for the present financial year. This much was admitted even by Union power minister Sushil Kumar Shinde. The government is also likely to miss its infrastructure-spending target for the 11th five-year plan, ending March 2012, by about $100 billion. An important case in point is our preparation for the Commonwealth Games. The snail’s pace at which work was progressing before we realised failure was staring in the face is evidence enough of our inherent tendency to procrastinate. So, what if we shrugged off this tendency and supplemented our claims with actual action? What if we did actually build 7,000 km of road every year? What if we did generate 1,000 mw of additional solar power by 2013? What if the Indian populace received the education, healthcare, drinking water and sanitation promised to it? All this would catapult us to much greater heights of development, not just in terms of GDP, but more holistically, in terms of the quality of life. We could hold up our heads and say that we match up to our expectations. That we are indeed serious about the promises we make. But even more importantly, what if we stopped considering all these to be just the responsibility of the government? What if we looked deeper for what we, as individuals, can do to help the government achieve these targets? What if we overcame our instincts to earn that sly-buck, which ends up in things being done the sub-standard or the illegal way? What if we gave up the urge to throw wrappers out of the windows of our expensive cars on to our roads? What if we kept checks on the amount of water and power that we use in our homes and offices? What if all of us collectively gave up the idea of ‘what difference will I alone make’? Much like the government that sets targets and apologetically falls short of them, every year we make new resolutions and promptly forget them. So maybe we should think about what if we gave ourselves a chance to honour our commitments and be able to say ‘we did it.’