TOI's Lead India

Owing to the public demand, I am back !!
Just kidding! Was busy for some time and then the office blocked blogs!!

The tenacity of Indian IT engineers to unblock Orkut or Gmail is not very well known in US till now I guess ! Someday, this too will become famous and well admired all over the world just like the Mumbai Dabbawalahs!

Anyway, the only news hogging all the space is 'Vikram Pandit' becoming the CEO of the Citigroup. As the jingoists we Indians are, this is of course expected! School teachers remembering 'extremely shy and brilliant student' and doodhwalah proud of supplying doodh to the CEO !!! Vikram Pandit's achievement is extremely laudable and inspiring. But before our chests explode with pride, it would do us very good if we sit back mfor a minute and think what makes us so proud.

The 'Boy from Nagpur who still (?!) is a devotee of Gajananji' has not even completed in his schooling from India. While it does not take away anything froom his credit, we should stop shouting that 'An Indian now heads Citigroup'. If an namesake Indian succeeding elsewhere is the only measure of achievement, we as a nation are indeed pathetic.

If we have a close look at many famous Indians, a pattern does emerge.Most of them have gone abroad for Bachelor's or atleast Masters'. The culture and ethics imparted by those universities have a greater stake in determining the individuals these are, rather than the primary school education here. It might sting, nevertheless we are a bunch of mediocre individuals happy with whatever 'people of my country' achieve abroad. We will identfiy ourselves with them even if there might not be an iota of similarity between what life has offered him and us.We are happy to pledge our allegiance to anybody who says 'I am proud of the Indian heritage and my roots are deeply Indian'.

This is where TOI is doing a commendable job by starting 'Lead India'. No one knows how much of the initial intentions the campaign would achieve by its end, but at least an attempt would have been made to bring about a change; to instill interest in administration in common man; to shake off the apathy and the indifference we have developed towards all the injustice and inefficiency us. Some of the candidates picked up by TOI really inspire.. There is a guy who chucked his TCS job to join an NGO ..there is an ex-CEO who retired early to give back something to the society and you tend to pin your hopes on such people despite the cynicist you have become. They are the real heroes we should be proud of, men who should be celebrated. Not because they are altruistic.Because they are the ones who have been through everything India represents.

We have seen Nayak. We have seen Indian. But we shrug our shoulders as soon as we are out of the hall.For reel heroes dont inspire. A living hero does. I am praying taht TOI is successful in what it plans to achieve, even though the primary aim of TOI is publicity !!!