Change always comes at a price

Image Courtesy: Hindustan Times

 When I was a kid, my mother once reduced my ‘play time’ because I didn’t score well in my exams. I protested, rebelled but to no use. Knowing that I had no other option, I played a little less and studied more. And in the next exam I scored well. Had I kept protesting, I think I would have done worse. I have always had a lot of belief in my parents like every other kid has and I understood that if I have put that belief in them, I have to give their decision a chance. It may sound a little unreasonable at times, but I have to give it a chance.

Now the above example may not exactly match to the current scenario, where people are not taking the ‘bitter medicine’ of 14.2% hike in the railway ticket prices in a good way, but I had no better example of putting across what I want to say. When people voted Narendra Modi as the PM, they put their belief in what he said, ‘Achhe din aane wale hain!’ I wonder sometimes, did they think that good days will come over night? Obviously, measure will be taken for it, measures which people may not like, but in the end are necessary. The problem with our country is that we start over reacting and never wait for the result. We are a protest obsessed country.

Let me tell you about the current Indian Railway scenario. These are not the statistics; these are the things which a common man like me discusses when he talks about Indian Railways. 

• I’m scared to eat in trains because many times, the food seems unhygienic.

• I’m tired of having waiting tickets all my life. Clearly, there are more passengers and fewer trains.

• The sanitation at our stations and in the trains sucks big time. There are some trains in which you have to constantly keep a hand on your nose to avoid smelling something bad.

• There are some trains which don’t even have a pantry.

• If somebody dear to me dies in a city far away from mine, and I can’t afford an air ticket, how am I supposed to get a confirmed train ticket in one day. Fine, there’s always the jugaad, but it would too burn a hole in my pocket!

These are just a few of the hundreds of complaints that common people have. Clearly, the Indian railways aren’t in a good shape, on the paper they might be, but in reality they aren’t. What I understand as a logical person is – The last ten years, the people of India gave Congress a chance to do something about this. And they may claim that they have done a lot, but the common man begs to differ. We are still struggling to have a safe journey and are skeptical to travel in Indian railways but we have too.

The NDA government has come to power after 10 years, 10 years which Congress didn’t utilize properly. If they would have, there wouldn’t have been the need for this hike. Bad governance has severe repercussions and unfortunately the repercussions of Congress’ bad Governance and abuse of power and money (remember the several corruption scandals?) will have to be faced by the new government. In this case, it is the hike that they have decided to make. When people praise honorable Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the virtual world, anti-Modiists declare a war saying that it’s soon to judge him. When people elect somebody via democracy, it means that they are putting that belief in the leader whom they elected. Now what I’m trying to say is simple, if we have voted for the NDA government, let’s have a little faith in them as well, that being a person who voted is our responsibility. I agree that people who haven’t voted for NDA government of the BJP in general may feel the pinch even more, but even those people have to understand that there representative didn’t win the election, somebody else has come to power and the as Indians more than a party they should be supporting the general cause of making India better in every way. Change comes at a price and we as a country should be ready to pay for it!