India Changing – Is It ?

My sincere apologies to all and one for being away from blogging for too long, being busy would seem far too lame an excuse, but as things stood, twenty four hours a day seemed too little a time. Saturdays and Sundays were no different either. Touring and travelling made things even worst. My Office schedule coupled with other obligations ensured that i stay away from social networking and blogging, for quite some time now.

During this period of about a month or so, i happened to meet one Spaniard. A simple Spanish guy named Robert who worked with one of my friend who has a well settled business. During our schooling days we read quite a many tales from Spain, the spanish people their attire etc in our english lessons. The stories were mostly of medieval period. This was the first time, i happened to meet a Spanish guy. After some formal introduction and hand shakes the man started narrating his experiences about India. Nobody asked him to do so, but may be to open up the discussion, the man might have picked up thread. He spoke in high terms about India. What he said was nothing new. But he did gave an outsider’s view, about how they feel about this country. He said, and i remember, that, India for a new foreigner seems very complex, very confusing place. But it is not so, it is a land of opportunity, only a person should know how to reap the benefits. The younger generation has huge potentials, we on the other side of the globe, especially in Spain are now not like before, we are going downwards, he said, expressing with his right thumb downwards. His talks were smoothly laced with body language, hand and sign language, which looked very unique. We discussed various topics, and then he went for another briefing, promising to meet up again.

While returning back, i said to myself, all the effervescent and glowing tributes the man paid to our country may be just because he wanted to impress us. I discarded the story, saying to myself that the person has not experienced the real pain the country and its deprived class of people are undergoing. Hence, i thought that there was no material in the story of growth, of optimism, with usual style of an skepticism, assured in mind that nothing will change, and everything is going down the drain.

Just a couple of days later, i happened to visit a company of a first generation entrepreneur. A farmer turned entrepreneur. This gentleman today runs a 100% export oriented unit selling his farm products to almost all parts of the globe. The man, who is not more than 45 years old was a farmer not so long ago. He was a agriculture science graduate. With penchant to do something different. He started producing farm products on cooperative basis. He involved the farmers in the neighbouring area and started contractual farming. The farmers got assured value for their farm output. The man got the raw material. He purchases corns, baby corns, processes them and exports them. Today this farmer turned entrepreneur is giving employment to around 400 women from the area.

I was forced to do rethink on my skepticism, skepticism that is forced on us, by regular doses of news and stories from print and visual media, stories of scams, of loot, of negativity. Somewhere, this had created a sense of despondency in me too and i thought that nothing would change. But the visit to this farm and the company, coupled with the experience of Robert, has somehow forced me to view the things in other perspective. May be a foreigner has got an independent view of things and his point of view is not as biased as ours.

Anyways, I guess and pray that the optimism given by Robert is correct and that my and our collective skepticism may fade away, sooner rather than later.