Recently, ‘Meri Delhi Club’ members had an opportunity to visit our neighbouring country China. It often happens that when we visit a country, we generally compare its culture, standard of living, infrastructure development, life style etc with our own nation. Strictly speaking, China is far ahead of us in terms of industrial production and infrastructural development. The main obstacle in or progress is our burgeoning population though still lower than China. However, China, in order to curb its population growth has framed tough laws. Analysts believe that our population will surpass China by the year 2035, and this would be really horrible for us. Let me remind you that India had initiated its family welfare programme about four decades ago. However, the result is far from being satisfactory.

As far as laws are concerned, China is far superior in framing them and implementing them sincerely. Infringement of rule of law is greatly despised there. Just for example, China has adopted a policy of one-child norm and encourages people to abide by this law. With the Govt taking care of education, health and employment, people also have no grudges against this law. Moreover, Govt there also imposes tax on parents who have more than one child. Thus, by framing strict laws Govt there has been able to control its rising population growth. However, in India people seldom think about the impact of population surge. Though constrained financially, people here bear more children in absence of stricter laws. Unfortunately, Indians are more known for flouting norms set by the Govt, having little regard to the law of land. And the results are disastrous as could be seen in the rising crime graph. Today, one can find these elements spread every where from society to parliament. Closely following their foot steps, the young generation too see them as ideals owing to their high profile life.

In China people love to work. In fact, their capacity to work is far higher than us. Obviously, this also reflects in China’s production figure. Compare this with our country. Here, people who work in govt establishments are never found keen on bettering their performance. Rather they have become burden for the Govt as efficiency here is a far cry! Here people in govt jobs are more interested in their rights rather than their duties. The new labour laws framed for private sector organisations has led to increase in unionism and the subsequent pressure technique employed by unions has been impeding the growth of private sector. Though, post liberalization phase has seen marginal decline in fetters like trade unionism, strike and lock outs. However, the tendency still persists which is well evident in recent strike by Maruti workers in Haryana.

If we see our natural resources we would find that we are in no way behind China. However, effective utilization of our resources – natural or manpower is yet to be seen. All this has hampered our progress. For instance, though Metro project in Delhi was proposed around 10 years ago, however its implementation took a hell lot of time. Similarly, implementation of National Highway Project took almost 20 years since it was conceived. While China boasts of high speed trains which can travel at a speed of 450 km per hour, our trains here even don’t run on time what to talk of speed! Though we’ve been able to built a large number of flyovers and subways, but traffic here still moves in a snail’s pace. The morning and evening hour rush just dissipates your energy. In contrast, despite huge number of flyovers and subways as seen in Shanghai, life is never in convenient there.

In a nut shell, if we see the past record of 25-30 years, we would find that our democratic system is itself responsible for the slow speed of our progress. Here, politicians are more interested in their vote banks rather than working for the growth of our nation. The growing number of corruption cases and mud-slinging has cast an ominous spell so much so that even the Lokpal Bill seems in jeopardy.

The question is, when we are more interested in protecting the corrupts then how can we think of beating China in the race of economic development and over all growth and prosperity of the country.

Rajesh Gupta

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