RE: Vamsi:knowing what we say

["Kulshreshta, Bhuwan" <Bhuwan.Kulshreshta@usa.xerox.com>]

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[Topics under debate]: GOOD GOVERNANCE
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Girish,

You are absolutely right. There is no reason at all for higher education
to
be subsidised. A few decades ago this may have been necessary ( although
I
doubt even that) but today there is no reason for this at all. And NO
the
money so saved should NOT be spent on setting up new telephone lines,
the
government should have no business to be spending taxpayers money on
doing
things that the citizens could be doing by themselves. The money should
be
spend on basic and primary education and primary healthcare etc. Those
are
areas that need the government to be involved. That, by the way is also
the
only way to remove forever, this issue that you mentioned in your
earlier
mail, of having to deal with a large number of poor and illiterate
people.

Also, please do not make it sound as if the Indians who studied in India
on
taxpayer subsidised  educational institutions and then went away and
settled
abroad have somehow done something wrong and have to be guilty. Every
human
being wishes to have a good standard of life for himself and his
children,
everyone seeks opportunity to prosper, that is being human and is NO
CRIME.
If the nation cannot provide this environment then the people cannot be
expected to stop having human compulsions. A nation need not be as good
as
the best in the world or be very rich etc. etc. to retain its people but
it
must have a basic environment that promotes innovation, encourages
intelligence and creativity and overall promotes opportunities for all
who
are able and willing to work to be prosperous and people would stay. It
is
our socialistic thinking, government control of everything economic,
complete disregard for meritocracy and our belief that profits and being

rich is somehow bad that has pushed a lot of the citizens to seek other
countries and has  denied India the opportunity to attract them back.
The
state of affairs with DOT and VSNL is a classic case in point. Also
please
remember, that it is these NRIs that we turn to everytime we get into
trouble and expect them, as the sons of the country to keep bailing us
out.

Frankly Girish, if we are poor and do not have enough resources the
government should be doing fewer things, focussing their energies and
the
little money we have on specific areas instead of trying to do
everything
and end up not doing anything adequately. Its lunatic for the government
to
be involved in things like utilities, banking, telecom, television
manufacturing, insurance, construction.... I mean the GOI does
everything.
For a poor government they seem to have very high ambitions. Strangely
enough the richest governments in the world are doing lesser and lesser.
Not
only should the government not be doing these things that people can do
on
their own, they cannot even do it AS WELL as people can do it on their
own.
They should and must get out.

The worst way to solve the many big problems we have in India is to keep

reminding ourselves how big the problems are. Frankly despite the
illiteracy
etc. we as a nation have enough resources and intelligent people to fix
the
problems. We only need to decide to solve them. Which our governments
have
consistently refused to do. And till this happens we will be an
illiterate
and a poor country and citizens would keep running away to foreign
lands.

Regards,

Bhuwan





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