India is a soft state

Which is a soft State? A State which does not have a clear policy and strong will in dealing with internal and external matters such as reaction to external aggression, foreign policy, crisis handling, internal law and order, economic policy, etc is a soft state.

Look at our response to external aggression. Bangladesh rifles kill Indian BSF soldiers in cold blood. The Pakistanis continue to interfere in Kashmir in the garb of Mujahidean. When our very own next door neighbor Pakistan continues to threaten us no end with terrorism we still want glitzy newspaper pictures of handshakes, embraces and dialogues. Every time we say we want POK back we don’t get up and do something about it. How can we forget the joy ride on a bus from Amritsar to Lahore and of course the “Samjhauta Express” to try and build friendship? When our aggressive neighbor Pakistan entered our territory in Kargil, in spite of having the moral right to retaliate, we chose not to step into enemy’s territory. The world may have outwardly applauded but they secretly sniggered.

Anybody who thinks we gave a free ride to 3 of the world’s most distinguished criminals all the way from Amritsar to Kandahar on an Indian airlines plane would know we are a soft state. Why else do we give in to some of the preposterous demands of the US who thinks she is God’s gift to the world?

Is there some reason why after all these years we are not able to put a man most distinguished in his field behind bars? And lesser known ones like Veerappan and Chota Shakeel can party fearlessly without any hassles.

Take our economic policy for instance, bad debts of the Indian public sector banks stand at a tall 56,000 crore rupees thanks to an absence of strict debt recovery mechanism. It is almost 13% of the total advances of the Indian banks. It is only now that the govt has promulgated an ordinance to enable speedy recovery of bad debts.

It is basically a matter of attitude. Our attitude does not reflect a national resolve to pay the price required to fight anything. That’s our problem. We are not ready to pay the price required to fight terrorism. We are not ready to pay the price required to fight poverty and illiteracy. We are like the mayor of Santa Vithoria who got very upset at people saying he wasn’t doing his job properly, he went to his wife and said, “I have had enough, I’ll pick up a gun and shoot myself in the head”. His wife promptly replied “Why your head when your brain is somewhere else?”