What the Vande Bharat train says about the lopsided priorities of Indian modernity

Source: The post is based on an article “What the Vande Bharat train says about the lopsided priorities of Indian modernity” published in The Indian Express on 11^th November 2022.

Syllabus: GS 3- Growth and Development

News:  India has developed in all fields but the problem still persists which gives us the real image of India.

What are the achievements made and problems associated with them?

Railways: Vande Bharat express was launched with all modernity but it collided with cows on the track. This shows that with modern trains there should also be development amongst local governments, fencing of the tracks, etc.

Medical facilities: India is considered to be the home to medical facilities around the world but most of the primary care clinics in India don’t have enough doctors and India has amongst the worst health indicators of any country.

Unvaccinated children: India has produced the highest vaccines in the world but it is also the home to the largest number of unvaccinated children in the world.

Food stock: India is a country where foods are stored as buffer stock while tens of millions of Indian children go hungry and are stunted.

Illiteracy: India has the most prestigious engineering institutions that offer visas to serve US’s university while half its children are unable to read and write at the minimum level expected for their age.

Laws: Laws in India say that all cars must have seat-belts while basic road laws are broken in India by jumping the red light, over-speeding, etc.

Sports: India has the richest sports leagues in the world while performance is dismal at most global sporting competitions.

Digitisation: Most of the children in India do not have the digital devices or access to the internet which they needed during the school closures in the pandemic, even though India is said to be leading in the use of technology.

Slum areas: Luxurious houses and colonies in India are built alongside overflowing sewage, garbage storage areas, etc.

Rivers: Modern infrastructures are built alongside the banks of the holy rivers while the rivers themselves are not clean.

Poverty alleviation: India’s economic development is expected to lift millions out of poverty while the recent estimate of World Bank shows that the number of people living in extreme poverty had increased by 5.6 crore in 2020.

These all gives the problems existing with the development made in India. Therefore, these needs to be addressed.

What can be the way forward?

India can learn from other modern countries and priorities its development accordingly.

Some of the areas that India can focus are – improving primary health care and primary education, improving public infrastructure, comprehensive sanitation infrastructure, environmentally friendly roads and policies, etc.

These were the areas where today’s modern country has focused to reach the modernity.

Therefore, India should also focus on these things because developing modern trains, infrastructure will not serve the purpose when the base is itself weak.