There is an old age home in Andheri East area in Mumbai. As a kid and an adolescent I lived in small towns. This old age home seemed awkward to me. I always thought to visit this place but until now I have not. In my childhood I have seen joint families, many people around. That one big family used to be social security. There were problems in that system e.g. no privacy, compromises etc. One of my friends – Dhaval Thakar – has one son, he keeps on saying there should be at least two kids to each family. He quotes many reasons such as, in old age when his son gets married and by chance his daughter-in-law also is single child, both his son and D-i-L will have burden of 4 dependents and then their kids. The old age home I cross often, becomes a reality when I think about what Dhaval says, but I somehow cannot digest that concept. I feel we as a culture are dynamically changing (specially in India) and not necessarily for good. All this is happening without any other safety net ready for next 15-20 or say 50 years.
I completely buy-in his point. However, now a days even educating a single child is very expensive. Furthermore, in present day economy we do not offer any social security in India. On the contrary there are questions on survival of citizen. So, these things make me question the way we are growing. [Tweet “We sacrifice our present in assumption of comfortable future. Future we know- never comes!”] In the name of GDP and growth and vibrant economy we are making everything expensive.
[Tweet “Yoga is a commercial success in the US, in India we laugh at Baba Ramdev.”] [Tweet “Alternate medicine of Kerala became talk for Neymar’s WorldCup2014 injury we overlook it.”] The Western culture was actually a lost culture and in East we are losing our cultural heritage.
I say lost cultures are the European and American… and culture lost is (kind of) Indian culture. Indian’s have been following many things blindly what happens in the developed nations. But have we ever noticed – there are broken families, there are psychological problems there is prosperity but not mental peace they may be overfed but undernourished!
Image source – http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bd/Bronze_Shiva_as_lord_of_the_dance_CAC.JPG
5 Comments
rummuser · August 9, 2014 at 4:12 pm
Indians are not mindlessly aping the West. The Indian, who lives in rural and semi urban areas and in the slums and chawls of cities is still very traditional and values his roots. The so called convent educated English touting citywallah however confuses being modern with Western and apes. S/he is what I call a half baked personality, neither modern nor Western but a great pretender. On the other hand, you have the emigre who has studied in India using the subsidised-by-the-poor education system as a launching pad and is willing to send money to his/her parents but will not take them in and look after them in their hours of need. It is a complex subject and a blog post cannot do justice to it.
KRD Pravin · August 9, 2014 at 7:45 pm
A question “On the other hand, you have the emigre…” You as in me?
Yes, “a” blog post can not do justice to it…
rummuser · August 9, 2014 at 9:19 pm
You as a generic figure of speech. If you insist you can replace it with we.
hamara india (@hamara_india) · August 9, 2014 at 8:45 pm
Another reason to have two kids is probably because of increasing Muslim population in India. They call themselves minority, soon Hindu will become minority if we continue having single kid & Muslims having 4-5 to turn India as muslim nation.
With Hindus attitude of single kid will make India Hindu-less in next 50 years or so.
Think about it.
KRD Pravin · August 10, 2014 at 10:49 pm
I appreciate your zeal. I watched this video in 2010 when I was in Singapore. Thought to share with you.
Though the video we watched was a part of economics and demographics related understanding – how demographics change many things for business…