The Death of Democracy

The Samajwadi Party (SP), headed by Mulayam Singh Yadav released its manifesto over the weekend. Nothing unusual as this is the election season and all potential candidates are making promises to the ‘aam’ janta to secure their vote. But the provisions, rather promises in the SP’s manifesto make for a shocking read. SP wants to curb and in some instances remove the usage of computers. They also want to abolish English – Medium Schools. Their argument, these actions would create a level playing field for all and generate jobs.
I can’t really speak for the whole country but I am sure that the urban population is probably outraged or at least gravely concerned.
Take a look at the statistics of the English language alone:
· Over 700 million people, speak English, as a foreign language
· More than half of the world's technical and scientific periodicals are in English
· English is the medium for 80% of the information stored in the world's computers
Speaking fluent English is one of the major competitive edges that India possesses over China, in the service industry. Moreover a well educated workforce makes India an attractive prospect for foreign business investments.
As far as the use of computers are concerned, perhaps the people at SP should be given a tour of the may InfoTech campuses across the country! The Information Technology (IT) industry in India is one of the fastest growing industries with valuable brand equity in the global markets. The IT industry in India comprises of software industry and information technology enabled services (ITES), which also includes business process outsourcing (BPO) industry. India is considered as a pioneer in software development and a favorite destination for IT-enabled services. The IT sector is perhaps one of the major components of our nation’s revenue machinery. Even outside the IT sector computers have enabled to streamline many business processes. The biggest example of course is the government’s own Indian Railways. Banning the use of computers wherever manual work is possible is nothing short of placing the country back into the Stone Age!
The party has also proclaimed an end to mechanized farming and high corporate salaries. I might be able to make peace with the latter, but the same argument stands for mechanized farming as it does for the use of computers. Considering that India is still an agrarian economy, the use of technology would greatly aid the nation’s agricultural productivity and output.
It seems that the party has taken its party symbol (a bicycle) a little too literally and is now intending to bring us all to the good old days of the pre-independence era!