When one happens to visit developed countries, I am sure any person with consciousness will immediately feel the horrible living conditions prevail in India. Recently, I happened to visit Singapore after a long lapse of fifteen years. The country has made advances in all the areas than what I saw fifteen years before for better.

Mainly the environment, the traffic, the discipline and the affluence are awesome. The roads, railway stations, buses and trains look as if they have been cleaned just then. The pedestrians can walk very safely on the road without any blocks or fear of passing vehicles hitting them. There are no pavement occupants who made walking difficult. The buses and trains arrive and depart almost exactly on time. The ambience never stinks. The city is alive even late night.

We call India is still developing; yes, we have made our population to a whopping 121 million. That apart can we see any discipline or clean atmosphere anywhere around the country? The trains are nasty, the buses are rickety, the traffic on roads are chaotic and the crowd is simply unbearable at every place and our man power is utilized only to add extra man power to the already overpopulated nation.

Public discipline is something absolutely alien in this country. We enjoy the maximum freedom in the whole world. Every one has to the right to speak and do whatever they want without any shame. We pollute the atmosphere, make our public places dirty, drive rashly, deface any place we like, spit wherever possible, and behave indecently without any qualms.

The major reason for this attitude of Indians is the lack of punishment for any adverse, indecent and criminal act. We plead even for mass murderers and should be excused from death sentence because we belong to the nation of ‘ahimsa’. Is it practical? How long we can live in this fool’s paradise?

We have reached a stage that any amount of ugliness whether it is politics or public or personal life does not affect anyone. We have accepted corruption and indiscipline as part of our lives.

I am sure even after another century, India will never change or I should rephrase that we, the public and politicians will never allow it to change because we like unbridled freedom.