Vikas Lamba
MBA 1st Sem.
They sang and danced well into the night as the curtain came down on the 12 day Commonwealth Games that ended with an unprecedented medal haul and Number Two position for India in the medals tally. With more than double medals as compared to the previous games in Melbourne, it was a special time for mother India.
Seeing the aggressive face of the media during and just before the games were about to start, I was wondering will we able to host the games standard set by the Beijing Olympics. Although corruption is one the serious illness of which India is diseased with, pointing it out was the right choice but was it the right time. What sort of image it had reflected of India to the rest of the world..."A country claiming to become a superpower can not even host a game efficiently"...Ah...it's awesome!! Isn't it? Media, which is considered as the fourth pillar of Indian democracy acted in an irresponsible manner. Just before the games had started the channels and newspapers were crowded with news and photographs of a horribly stained washbasin and filthy bed inside the newly constructed games village, a one-hour full show of how a snake entered into the games arena. Utterly shameful! Those photographs were even published in some international newspapers and I did not have the pluck to think what reactions they must have evoked. I wonder , if media has so much time and resources to work on such futile issues, why does it shy away from highlighting issues which are troubling areas like Melghat region of Madhya Pradesh that accounts for the highest number of severely undernourished children, all those barefoot small kids who begs for food in the scorching heat? Alas! Alas!
Often I hear people commenting "This government is no good; nothing but a bunch of incompetent, rapacious people who care for us when all they're really interested in our votes!" We have complaints almost about everything from the city that can become clean to the pitiable conditions of roads. But are we Blemish-free? We enjoy the chocolates, ice-cream's and flung the wrapper in air with a hope that holy God would come and collect it. The ubiquitous filth on Indian roads would surely reduce if only we didn't strew them with wrappers, peels, edible items and a plethora of things that should only be the contents of a trashcan.
From preserving our precious monuments to abiding by the traffic rules, we can make a lot of things better than what they are now. We should not stare at the foreign tourists and should help them in all possible manners. Foreign tourists who come to India not only bring revenues. They are our esteemed guests who carry a picture of India when they return home-an image that could be blighted y awful experiences of a green beautiful county and courteous people.
After the games are end now, the media should now come forward with a responsible behavior. It is the right time to uncover all those who were in faults and implementing strict laws to give them the dose they deserve. This will surely set an example for others in future. Having emerged as a sporting nation and the excellent performance by our sportsmen, the country should now strive to retain these high spirits. We should now focus on building an infrastructure at the grassroots levels along with playgrounds in all schools so that we can attract the enormous talent present in India. A more cumbersome task is to preserve the assets that have been created. The thing to remember is that this country belongs to us and we should always try to add something to its glory rather than to defame it.
No single government can bring about a lasting reformation that will radically change the current state of affairs. The will to change rests with us.