I AM A HUMAN FIRST, AN INDIAN SECOND, everything else comes later

Emulating western lifestyle and culture we have lost out on our own wonderful cultures and lifestyles. India is perhaps the most diverse nation in the world, the uniqueness that our culture brings to us is unparalleled, and besides that we also have one of the world’s largest human resource pools. With close to a fifth of the world’s population at our disposal, we should be one of the leading countries in the world in every field but sadly the reality is something quite different.

We as a nation are obsessed with emulating western culture, it would be great if we tried to emulate their work culture and ethics with their lifestyles as well but we don’t. Especially in the cities in our country where the educated elite come together, all you can see if you look closely are people obsessed over western brands and trends. A perfect example of that is the brand consciousness that people in cities seem to have; in every aspect of modern day Indian city life, we are headed towards complete colonization by western practices and culture.

I AM A HUMAN FIRST, AN INDIAN SECOND, all the other sub classifications come later but it’s not like that for most of the country, yes there are few people dedicated to the nation but we need more; a lot more. People have money to waste on foreign food and foreign technology while our own suffer and this despite the fact that except for the technological aspect, everything Indian is definitely better.

We work for western companies that are built on the foundation of exploitation, this exploitation stems from our very own lack of value towards our work and our time. Most companies in the cities that come from abroad exploit the nation and the people. How and why this is allowed is a question that plagues me. We emulate their models without learning about their work ethic and culture. What happens then is that we lose out on our own work ethic and culture and are forced to work like bonded labor. How is this different from a 100 or 200 years ago? Aren’t we still slaves to the west? This is also because of the unfair ideas of competition that people seem to have. The simplest way to explain it can be by saying that if you don’t want to work for 12 hours a day and get paid for 8, there are 1000 others waiting in line to do so, but what if everyone notices that its unfair and force them to raise the pay or cut down on extra working hours without pay.

Indian food is amazing, it’s so diverse and the flavor of every region is embedded into the food, but we prefer a pizza or a burger over it. We prefer to shell out double or even three times what the cost would be, just because it’s Italian, or Mexican or something else. Why is it so? You will see an average office going person with a phone that costs more than their salary, definitely it has to be branded, and definitely it has to be not Indian. Somehow it’s not cool enough, somehow it’s not reliable enough and somehow it doesn’t have the same performance as a foreign brand. Well it doesn’t simply because we have not given it the support it needs.

Every Indian today has to strive hard for few necessities. This is a country where there are no handouts to anyone. For the educated folk, this message is interpreted in the wrong way. Ask any person working in Indian cities; they would gladly leave the country to go abroad because the nation is not good enough for them, but the REAL question here is ARE YOU GOOD ENOUGH FOR THE NATION? Brain Drain as we call it is one of the major factors for the depravity and the lack of progress of the nation. How will a nation progress when most of the people who are responsible for its progress are lost themselves? A lot of people will say that there aren’t enough opportunities in the country for educated people, but who is going to create this opportunity? It is us who have to; it’s our responsibility by birth.

All this even after 400 years and more under western rule, we still have not realized that we need to bring ourselves up together as a nation and not just progress as an individual. Individual progress is nothing if the nation is not doing well.