Why India's Infrastructure is Crumbling?

The infrastructure in India is crumbling in almost all megacities. We have adopted the chalta hai (feeling helpless) attitude towards this and waiting for a bigger disaster to happen. The look and feel of most major cities in India is now filth and dirt. Is this called development?

Roads – 5 kms take 90 mins to travel; roads are like surface of moon and poor quality is now an acceptable norm. Even newly built fancy highways and bridges (Atal-setu) are of poor quality and cracking. With 30mins of rains in any megacity in India, roads are totally blocked. There are countries where rain is much more than India but have not seen such poor infrastructure of roads.

Water & Air – getting clean air to breathe and clean water to drink is a dream now. No big city or any city in North India is worth living without Asthma or bronchitis. Not everyone can invest in air purifiers (and that too is not a solution)

Food - the food we eat is risky and chemicals infested. Inspite being a agriculture country, we get such sub-standard quality food. 

Rail – overcrowding and delays are regular and hygiene is extremely poor. Even the new Vande Bharat trains have so many issues of quality. Railway stations in Metros are so difficult to reach. One of the worst example is : New Delhi Railway Station

Air travel – most airports are stretched and overcrowded; all flights are delayed and airlines are struggling (inspite of booming business with almost 95% + occupancy). Its a pain to travel now.

Medical – government hospitals are crowded and do not have basic facilities and hygiene and private hospitals and doctors are minting money

Education – still primitive form of education – focusing on marks is being promoted in garb of transformed education and there is no focus on building skills and vocational abilities. Still there is supply-demand gaps and places like Kota are flourishing and young kids dying due to pressure.

Is Government responsible for all this? For Infra yes – but for many others its the basic civic sense of people is the key driver. People are largely driven by self, fear, greed and materialistic things. Efforts to build community and go beyond self is rare. By saying India will be a trillion dollar economy will not help anyone and it will just create a hype but the struggle of basics of living remains.

Inspite of doing our duty as citizens and paying all taxes, we are still struggling for a basic simple life. 

There is no initiative about managing or planning POPULATION GROWTH of the highest populated country and infra will further crumble if planned and sustained initiatives are not taken. There will be chaos and fights for basic necessities such as clean water and clean food.
 

In real sense we do not control anything!

 

Saw this quote somewhere - “It makes no sense to worry about things you have no control over because there's nothing you can do about them, and why worry about things you do control?”

Over the years the focus of life has been to manage things which were in our control as we do not control others.

We don’t control other people, the weather, the economy or politics. We don’t even control our own bodies. We get issues, get sick, get old, and there’s little we can do. Except worry and think about it constantly. We drive ourselves nuts!

Then someone shared that we can control only our thoughts and ourself. It was insightful and I tried my level best to believe in this and practice it.

I made a point that whatever may be I will never hurt anyone intentionally or even un-intentionally and no hatred for anyone at all. I tried to remain positive in my thoughts and started practicing and initially it was helpful.

However last few years I realised that in real sense we do not control anything; not even our thoughts or actions. Inspite of being positive and always caring for others, the world was taking advantage of me and there was nothing I could control.

So there was a sense of helplessness and despair.

The power of almighty or destiny is much beyond all of us and we are doing good things as defined by destiny but all the wrongs are our own karma and we can not blame almighty for the same.

The feelings, thoughts, actions are just part of a larger self and the larger world. So we are just a drop in a large ocean and one day this drop will cease to exist. The only thing we can do is to go with the flow and do our karma ; living every moment as its last.

The plans made; the success, the money, the things and the people around us are as temporary as we are. They will keep on doing their karma (at times hurting you) and you will just do some of yours.

The living to Death is just a moment ( a millisecond) and thats the unknown to every human (we have made all scientific progress but this is beyond us). The purpose of life on this earth keeps on changing and its all dependent on circumstances and situations.

I have seen so many people changing and many times shocking. Probably my expectations from them were wrong and they were always internally something else and were projecting an image...I feel happy that I was able to keep only one thing with me - the sense of not hurting anyone and helping people whenever I can..

Honestly, I don't think in this life I will get clarity about self or people around us as last few years have been very enlightening – both in positive and negative sense and probably the people around us will keep on doing their karma and life will give more positive moments in time to come...whatever time is left in this life !