Need imagination, not yatra.

I read Shyam Manohar’s Marathi novel ‘Kheksat mhanane, I love you’. The title can be translated into English as “Saying ‘I love you’ snappishly”. As I finished reading, a sentence came to my mind: Lack of imagination is the root cause of corruption in India. First, I thought, this sentence was from the novel itself. So I verified. There is no such sentence in the novel.

But the novel is all about lack of imagination power, an acute disease that India is suffering from. This disease has weakened our civilization making it increasingly degenerate.

The veteran BJP leader, Lalkrishna Advani is on a yatra (journey) against corruption. His objective is to create awareness among people about corruption. This objective appears ostensible to many. They say that his main objective is political. But I want to believe in him, as there is nothing that is apolitical. At least, his campaign is not like the one of Team Anna, who are running their campaign against corruption under the disguise of the Lokpal bill, which they are misleadingly projecting a panacea to corruption.

Advani’s objective is clear. He has no specific agenda other than the power to rule. But my concern is whether there is any imagination in Advani’s campaign. And there is not. Our politicians do not use any imagination power. Overall, Indians do use less and less imagination power.

Lack of imagination power causes lack of creation of knowledge. In a society where there is lack of creation of knowledge, a person always feels helpless. A helpless person tries to rely on an external help. He always feels dependent on others. This gives rise to a scope for exploitation of each other’s helplessness. And from here begins corruption.  

India is seriously going through a crisis of scarcity of ideas. We boast about our I.T. industry and our software engineering skills. But there is hardly any product based company in the I.T. industry. No company in our I.T. industry has used imagination power to create a word-class I.T. product, which is completely Indian.

Why just I.T.field? You take any field as wide as possible-manufacturing, service, agriculture, art, cinema, literature, science, technology, poetry, medicine. An Indian has no confidence that great imagination can take place in India. Once I said to a taxi-wallah, “Do you know, an Indian who lives in Mumbai has discovered a planet that is almost similar to our earth”. He looked at me, said, “Indian?” and started laughing. Erosion of such confidence is dangerous for our civilization.

We want confidence that great imagination can take place in India. This confidence itself will work against corruption.