As the dollar breaches the 70 mark
against rupee this 71st Independence day, one wonders when we will have
independence from dollar?
Independence day celebration has been a
great moment for us every year. I still remember my struggle in my hey days, to
fetch the laddoo that's being distributed in my native town after the
independence day parade celebration. It was not like I could not afford to buy
that laddoo from a nearby shop, but the thrill and pride of fetching
that laddoo among the crowd, the jostling among thousand hands
stretching just to get that one laddoo was like fetching my share of
independence. Myself and those thousands definitely felt that pride—an illusion
that none of us really understand.
Independence from whom? Independence
from one foreign government! Are we independent now? Or put it in another
words: Are we self-dependent? And finally the question: Are we free?
Tough questions for average persons even
to ask, leave alone getting answers. Are celebrations like Independence day are
systematic frameworks, so that citizens don't ask such difficult questions and
shut their mouth with a laddoo?
About one old freedom fighter of my town,
when my daughter asked why that guy is called a freedom fighter and not an independence
fighter, I didn't have an answer. There's no such compound word called
"Independence fighter". There are freedom fighters but nobody is
called an "Independence fighter"! Strange... isn't it?
Freedom vs Independence. Age old
debate...
Nobody defined freedom better than Ayn
Rand which is like "Freedom, in a political context, means freedom from
government coercion. It does not mean freedom from the landlord, or freedom
from the employer, or freedom from the laws of nature which do not provide men
with automatic prosperity. It means freedom from the coercive power of the
state—and nothing else".
State. Government. Artifacts to curb
freedom or supply freedom? Amit Varma in his 5th Aug 2018 Article in Times of
India(https://goo.gl/5cWNvq)
argued: "India’s biggest religion is not Hinduism but the Religion of
Government. We in India seem to think of the government as the solution to all
our problems. We behave as if the State is a benevolent entity with unlimited
resources of its own with which it should fulfill all our wishes: ban what we
don’t like, build what we want built, spend on what we think are good causes.
Statues, loan waivers, awards for sportspeople, ministries for cow protection,
and so on. In all this, we ignore one essential truth: Every act of government
is an act of violence".
Well, Banks collected a whopping Rs
5,000 crore from customers for non-maintenance of minimum balance in their
accounts in 2017-18. Indian Railways earns Rs 1,407 crore via reserved ticket
cancellation in 2017. Tactics that we the government employs to coerce our own
people!
Government: Of the people, by the
people, for the people.
Freedom from Governance? Freedom from Lagaan? Independence from
dollar costing ₹70?
Happy 71st Independence day folks!!!
