Unexplored wealth of land and mind

The starting of the Mangla oil project which is likely to earn good revenues for Rajasthan is very welcome. Come to think of it, what lies behind the mega success is the appetite for risk, vision and human determination smoldering to succeed. Cairn Energy bought these belts from shell who thought it was not possible to get any yield from this land, so, what one saw as an opportunity the other found insignificant.

Any research, any exploration starts with an idea and vision .If it fails it teaches us lessons and if it succeeds, state puts tax on it. Discussing need, level of tax and how to improve efficacy of hard earned money of tax payer is another matter which will deviate me from main purpose of this post. Here what I am trying to suggest is the Government should play a proactive role and let the entrepreneurs, engineers and scientist do their job. Human mind cannot function to best of its ability when shackled by invisible chains in form of controls and regulations.

There is a drastic need to provide impetus to entrepreneurship and research if we want to be self dependent and self reliant. Times have changed and many of the controls and regulations have become irrelevant. We are not into the days where we need a supervisor with a whip to control the manual laborer from scrounging. These are the times to promote and give wings to young minds with dreams, to provide them with facilities for research and exploration so that they can do for India what they otherwise do for cairns, shells, Intel’s and Bell labs and then, we can be owners rather than being tax extractors. It is the wealth of our land and our minds which is deservedly ours but sadly we are content only with the topping of royalty and taxes.

Well, what goes wrong why we are content to follow? Why do we still look to west for discovery? Why don’t we promote research in real sense? Why is our education only symbolic? Why is 95% of our researchers’ content to cut and paste work of other people? Why are our guides not very particular and stringent about originality? Where are we headed by making a brigade of degree holders who will only agitate and block ways for reservations and jobs because they don’t know their subject and are not expert in their chosen area. Education system has not developed their mind because degree is handed to them on platter on name of reducing stress. Questions too many answers bleak………

Best minds capable of originality and thought, still leave us. With opening of economy they can be located in India but still they are not ours. Why? Money is important but more essential is freedom of human mind .You can’t put shackles of so many norms and procedures and expect a fertile mind to produce. The problem with the government today is it wants to put its nose in everything it sees profitable till it becomes liability. I am not advocating a total ‘laissez-faire’, because I feel our society is not ready for it and there is a promiscuous absence of national character in an average Indian.

Thought is a complex process of recognition and incorporation, which unfortunately lacks in present system of training people. This is the reason why people are prepared to imitate and follow and are content with the salary they get at the end of month for switching on and off their machines.

Please develop thought and rationality rather than being eluded by whims and unfounded beliefs. If we remove the thought then the link between a human and trained animal will also be lost .Stagnant mind then, like stagnant water will only breed reptiles prepared and content to crawl and sting.