In India custom and culture the politician and the godmen are all powerful. Since last two decades or so we increasingly find their influence grow considerably in the society. Both are interested in first acquiring power and then amassing wealth. In between they also indulge in carnal pleasures as a side benefit of their growing clout. They are sure that they can get away because of their power and wealth.

The politician starts his career with the avowed aim of serving the society. The godmen also starts their journey by promising salvation to their would be followers. Both may be genuine at the beginning but a good number of them lose their mission half way. Power, fame and money act as roadblocks in their mission if at all they had it in the first place.

It has been universally observed that both class of such persons become immensely rich and acquire huge properties in the process of their becoming powerful. By hindsight it can be concluded that it was amassing wealth which was the aim, but was camouflaged under the garb of service to humanity. 

The political class has been at the receiving end from quite some time now. However the godmen are feared by the common persons because of them being associated with supernatural powers. But what is interesting is that even when politicians are disgraced they are neither apologetic nor are willing to resign from their posts. They have now become so brazen that public humiliation also does not shame them. Similarly the godmen also are not ready to accept that they have been caught literally with their pants down. They divert attention by saying that attack on them is an attack on their religion.

In both cases gullible followers take cudgels on their behalf and take to the streets in the mistaken belief that their bosses are righteous and are being unfairly targeted. It is a tribute to their blind belief that they are willing to undertake any amount of hardship on behalf of their masters. Of course there will be a good percent of paid supporters also on the roads.

The fact that increasingly families have become nuclear and migration to urban areas has created large population of anonymous persons, is what is making many persons to turn to politicians and godmen in large numbers for local support and their psychological needs. In their need to connect and lessen the burden of loneliness the followers are ready to overlook the shortcomings in their politicians and godmen. For, if they do so they themselves will feel hurt and rejected. It is this that gives an opportunity to the unscrupulous politicians and godmen to exploit them in their favour.

The politician plays on the fear of local environment and the godmen plays on the need to belong and in the process the uprooted and hapless person is hooked. The more he is hooked the more he is exploited in a subtle manner by both. A time comes when the person is not able to disassociate himself even if he wants to. He is so entangled that separation now seems to be a defeatist idea. The person does not want to tell himself that he has placed his faith in a wrong entity.

In recent days we have seen politicians mired in corruption cases whose sole purpose is to amass wealth at the public's cost. upon exposure they desperately want to cling to their posts because the cash cow will desert them. That they are humiliated is not their concern. Loss of the opportunity to continue to milk the public finances is all that tey are worried about. They too have their misguided supporters. 

Similarly the godmen after gaining the trust of their followers start misusing this trust and may also exploit sexually or otherwise many of their followers. for fear of public shame they do not come forward and continue to be further exploited and suffer in silence. This benefits the godmen and emboldens them to continue ith their nefarious activities unhindered. In fact their are well meaning followers who refuse to believe such stories as they find it hard to believe that the godman can stoop so low. Attack on him is in fact considered by many an attack on religion. 

It is therefore time that such wrongdoing politicians and godmen are continually exposed and the law deals with them as it would do with ordinary citizens. There should be no delay and justice should be delivered promptly. This will give the ordinary citizens the chance to evaluate whether they should be more smart in future. 

Introduction:

There, is one proverb in English which is about “shadow and the substations”. While searching for primary objectives of life, humans tend to leave important matters and run behind minor objectives. In this way, primary objectives are ignored. By putting the primary objective in the back burner and running towards the shadow of objectives is not going to reach you anywhere. For ages, these conflicts affect the humans. According to one Odia proverb, for humans, branches of mango trees are more important than worshipping and chanting of hymns. The contradictions of life are existing since times of “Ramayana” and “Mahabharata”. Here, are four such examples of shadow following of objectives and running hard to reach never ending mirage.

Education:

People perceive a good infrastructure is the symbol of good quality education. Now the definition of education institutions is redefined. It is about exquisite glass filled rooms, park at the front of education al premises, air-conditioned rooms, digital projection, digital pen, and computer and Wi-Fi Internet. All these are minor or secondary objective for education. The principal objectives of schooling are hiring of excellent quality teaching staffs, superb formulation of curriculum, satisfactory quality of books, teaching process, and imparting practical learning. They are giving commercial advertisements about infrastructure and facilities inside educational institutions. They are ignoring the primary objectives to hire competent quality teaching employees and a highly skilled course curriculum. In the past, famous writers and scientists were created reading under sun and moonlight. There were instances of scholars reading under traffic lights in their school days. Noble laureate C.V. Raman’s laboratory was a simple laboratory. It would feel now as pre-historic science laboratory.

In modern time, many educational institutions prefer to spend a huge sum on building and managing science laboratory. In this manner, the primary objective of education is completely ignored. A safe education institution is all about making and creating a worthy and congenial teaching atmosphere. In earlier times, inside medical colleges, teachers showed their fingers as the replacement of test tube baby demonstration. In this manner, they taught medical science to students. A good teacher should not depend upon the laboratory all the time, to make pupils to understand, his point of view. A skillful teacher can, go further, and illuminate on the subject with him, lucid description and intellectual power.  Now, we are living in the age of advertisement, examination and function. Most of scholastic institutions are stressing on smooth admission processes, a single day election, fixed duration of the cultural program, and proper conduct of the examination and declaration of result. Then, how to preserve question paper in a secure locker and how to stop examination malpractices are becoming prime objective for us.

Most of their time wasted in conducting such and such programs. In this process, we are forgetting the foremost attributes related to scholastic institutions. The main objectives of any educational institutions should be, such as:

• How to create a practical educational system?
• How to appoint highly skilled teachers?
• How to develop a curriculum, which is to be based on national and international courses?
• How to develop skills and creativity among pupils?
• How to impart practical education to pupils, in lieu of creating smarter professionals?
• How to create a simple yet intellectual courseware so that, students can understand it all by them? How to create a cooperative educational environment inside educational institution?

At present times, all these weighty element of education is completely neglected. We are following the shadows of the educational environment by implementing token gestures such as infrastructure, elections, campaigning and cultural programs. As a consequence, tuition oriented elder brother and sister is unable to teach their younger sibling. They are advising them, to reach out to tuitions for doubt clearances. Due to missing of primary objectives, wide scale failure of originality in education and teaching is prevalent among students. We are travelling inside shadow roads.

Science:

Science generates room for originality. Awaited to science, man has become industrious. In this century, industry powered man is showcasing his ultimate efficiency, and sheer zeal to become number one in these cut throat competitive environment. In order to stay ahead of the race, the man is forgetting himself, and slowly turning into iron man. Machines have no feelings such as love, compassion and kindness. Human, the creator of machines is slowly turning into a man, without any such feelings. These are not the primary goal of science. The structure of broad united family is rarely found. Small and nuclear families are cropping up here and there. Owing to this, there is the sizable loss of basic human values. Humans are social and rational animals. Slowly, they are becoming anti-social and irrational animals with a machine mind, above his shoulder.

Few years back family means amalgamation of parents, sibling and grandparents. Slowly, their sons and daughters get married and their family gets expansion. Head of family tries hard to sustain livelihood. Due to rise in inflation and prices of essential commodities the financial health of a family becomes a matter of grave concern. Persons inside of a united family, want to be liberated themselves from these serious fiscal constraints. They want to create their own identity by joining services, and earning handsomely. Younger people in the family, after getting into self-employment mode, they tend to prefer to stay alone, in order to enjoy fiscal liberty and burden. They prefer to stay in the nucleus family and avoid uniting family. Some other reasons for creation of the nuclear family are:

• Inflation
• Rise of population
• Price rise of essential commodities 
• Wide spread poverty 
• Increase of education 
• Advent of modern society
•  Innovation in science and technology
•  Industrialization 
• Change of environment
• Professional commitments

Children stay outside native city. They create nucleus family. It is limited to parents and children. On the united family, one brother stay outside of indigenous town owing to education and service, on the other hand further brother, stays inside native village and resort to age old family work. This creates stiff economic disparities among siblings. Difference of education and money makes a great divide among siblings. This creates confusion among siblings. Ultimately, this makes nucleus family. With the incursion of modern life style and education, some siblings have exposure to modern life styles and the latest technologies. This generates digital divide among siblings. Owing to professional commitments, some siblings have to start, far distant from their native places. They used to reach out to their native villages once or twice a year. This generates meaningful division of thoughts among themselves. This has huge behavioral impacts on brothers. This has resulted in a decrease of affections and attachments among relatives. This creates a division among them. It shows more on their offspring, who used to live within nucleus families. The sheer involvement among all the family members begins to shake.

There are families where literacy rate among ladies is higher than male. With due course of time, they want to compensate income of their family by going through jobs. This is making surplus money with a better and improved life style. After getting financial freedom both male and female are trying to stay unmarried and enjoy their life. They tend to forget the basic values and ethos of an age older marriage institution. Individualism crops up in their mind and they want to stay alone, in order to avoid bondages of marriage. They engage in live in and open relationships. Most of the times, these relationships are ending with solo parent phenomena. All these factors are affecting emotionally and psychologically to the child. Child grows in a home environment. By forgetting the foremost objectives of marriage as an institution, many young professionals are following the mirage of short term live in or open or contractual relationships. They will pay a heavy price in the later stages of their life.

Degrading marriage institutions:

With sufficient educational qualification men and women are getting higher paying premium jobs. With the advent of economic reform, multinational companies are allowed to open their industry here. This is generating huge employment opportunities for professionally qualified educated individuals. They are paying a high salary. Immature people are enjoying financial freedom ever than before. They are spending lavishly. With the advent of broad band and wireless mobile internet, they are always connected with various social-networking websites. They are interested in promoting virtual (Internet) relationships. They hate the actual relationship age old elementary principle of relationship is marriage. They dislike all these communal institutions. They are thinking that marriage is meant to make bondage and curtail liberties. Even if they marry, they send their children to boarding school. Their children are devoid of basic parental guidance and affections. They are staying at boarding school from five to age 20 years. Scheduled to this, cultural and religious ethos is completely missing in them. Their parents are running after ancillary part of relationships, which are affecting their descendant aplenty. If they have chosen the straightforward objective, of marriage, then they should have seen the prudent results through their offspring. Instead, they are running behind the shadows. It is a mirage. Ultimately, they are going to realize this, then there is no time left for them to recuperate.

Health:

The contemporary definition of a hospital is a vast architecture with multi-storied buildings, colorful glasses and a delightful garden in the front. Curative facilities are becoming secondary and ancillary objectives. Every treatment procedures starting from viral fevers have to go under specified requisition diagnosis processes. A patient has to wait for one or two full days, to receive the report of diagnosis. For simple treatment, the patient is referred to diagnosis such as ultrasound, x-rays and other conventional diagnostic procedures. Machines are detecting your diseases. Here, pragmatic knowledge of doctors is not a necessary. Everything is depending upon machines and their results. Unlike in the past, there are some doctors, who use their creative knowledge in detecting diseases within seconds. In the past, there were some doctors, by mere smelling of mouth of patients, they can detect appendices diseases.

Politics:

The main objective to enter into politics is to be part of nation building, good administration, and conservation of natural and mineral resources and creation of a civilized environment, through the creation of a congenial environment. In contemporary politics, most politicians are forgetting the basic tenets of effective politics. They are following easy secondary populist measures. Most of them are indulging into vote bank politics. Administrations are in a competitive process to announce numerous freebies and gifts. Giveaways to voters are including bicycle, television sets, sari, ornaments, laptops, etc. Now, voters will receive direct cash in their bank account from government. Due to all these freebies, there is degradation of human resource, citizens’ responsibility and self-respect.

On the other hand, it is making citizens more dependent on government. People should not receive money without work. It is going to reduce his respect. It is going to change his outlook towards money, due to the advent of easy money.  He is going to forget the labor behind the production of distinct rice. He is going to forget what it is behind to earn money. He will forget the happiness of earnings. He will be lazy. He will forget the basic intrinsic value, attached with a single penny. With due course of time, he is going to lose respect from his own children. All these freebies are making him lazy psychologically and physically. Thus, he will lose control of tolerance and anger. The human resource of India is going downwards. A stealth scenario will prevail all over. If this continues for a longer time, it is going to affect productivity of the nation. It is going to halt severely nation building. It is starting to show in our basic attitudes. When there is ample scale news about Chinese incursions inside the northern border, most citizens are showing frozen hands to these momentous news. On the other hand, most politicians are running behind shadows of politics, as they are implementing minimal objectives of politics. Instead, politics is needed to actively involve in building smart citizens. While giving away freebies to citizens, they are actively destroying productive potential of citizens.

Conclusion:

For how many days, one is going to follow shadows and remains as shadow citizens. In the modern day world, which is highly mechanized, following large scale scientific inventions, humans are living in a materialistic world inclusive of simulated realities. They are bending back from genuine relationships. Age-old philosophical ethics are left behind. It is time to ponder our past in the present time, to relieve pressure from the future.

I grew up in a small town, after India's independence. whose kings were known to take care of their civic facilities. One of the features of this town was its wide roads which were of good quality. It used to rain very heavily during monsoon but I do not remember the roads becoming water logged. The roads had manholes at equidistant in the center of the road and were covered with round manhole covers. What is important when I look back, was that they were at perfect level with the road. Practically all roads had paved pavements on both sides, where one could walk without fear of any sudden raised or depressed levels as is so common these days.

I left my home town for my college studies to a big city. Apart from the areas which were known as the old city or the walled city there was the new city which was coming all around. That is when the differences started coming out. Later on in life I had opportunities to stay and travel in various big and small towns and cities of India. I also had the opportunity of visiting a number of foreign countries in Europe, South East Asia and America. I have now settled in a city with a population of around 15 lakhs and is the third largest in my State.

I have uniformly observed and also confirmed with locals in many places that their is hardly any water logging during the heavy downpours during monsoon season in the older parts of our cities and towns. A famous example is that you will hardly hear that the their is water logging in the Colaba, Fort  or Churchgate area in Mumbai. These are the oldest parts of Mumbai and are very close to the sea. Similar is the case with areas of old Delhi. or Chennai or even Kolkatta which has the Ganga flowing across it. Take the oldest city of Varanasi, there also no water logging in old city areas. If at all these areas suffer from water logging, it is the backlash of some modern day negative intervention.

In cities like New York, London, Paris, Zurich where it not only rains for more periods than in India they also face heavy snow. Yet one does not face water logging unless it is exceptional rains or heavy snow once in a few years. Even Asian cities like Seoul, Beijing, Shanghai, Bangkok, Hong Kong, Taipei or Singapore do not suffer from water logging. It has become a uniquely Indian phenomenon and of a few countries which are economically down the scale. It is water logging that is one of the main causes of potholes developing on the shoddy roads.

From many decades now building a road in our cities and towns simply means laying a road. No accompanying pavements or parallel drainage channels are provided. It seems this aspect has totally been discarded by our town planners. It is by now, often seen many a times that roads are laid a few days before the onset of monsoon. They get washed away or develop pot holes and need to be repaired after the monsoons. The contractors are having it both ways. The quality of the roads is so shoddy that every two or three years a new carpet is laid on the existing road, thereby raising its elevation. This results is water entering many houses and shops and colonies adjacent to these roads as their plinth levels are now lower than the roads. I know of a main road in my city which in last thirty years has been repeatedly laid upon and has risen in elevation by about two feet and during every rain water gushes all over at great velocity and volume endangering the commuters even if they are in vehicles.

Worse is the development of small to large pot holes of varying depths all over vast stretches of the roads in almost all the towns and cities of India. We have developed a model where people are uniformly provided with bad infrastructure across the country. This is what we have achieved after managing our affairs since 1947. Neither can we lay a good road nor can we maintain one. 

Insensitivity towards people has now become the hall mark of our civic authorities. Projects are not seen as providing excellent facilities to the citizens but are mostly seen as how much can be illegally diverted to fill one's pockets and make a mockery of say a road. Same civic authorities consisting of same politicians and bureaucrats and contractors year after year repeatedly continue doing shoddy civic projects. However most of them allegedly become richer year after year. Vested interests see to it that this state of affairs continues.

It is not that good roads do not exist in our country. The roads built by the Border Roads Organization in hills and valleys at heights and depths are of a very high quality. The national highways are also of good quality. It is the municipalities that are not able to build good roads. Because in the mission of building roads is their self enriching vision. To hell with the public.

The response of the civic authorities to a complain of the poor facilities varies. If you say you are a simple citizen, they will promise to look into the matter. If you say you are a member of the ruling party they will ask someone to look into your problem by visiting the site. If you belong to the opposition party they will say go and see the pot holes in the states ruled by your party and then complain. In all the three cases problem will rarely be rectified to one's satisfaction. One has to use influence often to get the repairing jobs done in time.

There are stretches of roads in my city where every year at the same spots water logging and pot holes develop. Every one sees them except the city fathers and the contractors. Arm chair engineers and bureaucrats allegedly connive with contractors and bills are passed for shoddy jobs which give way at first sign of distress. 

It is unfortunate but true that someone has to get killed or severely maimed to move the civic authorities to act. The tragic death of a seventeen year girl who fell into a pothole and a bus passed over her in Hyderabad brought forth allegedly a guidance from the Municipal Commissioner that citizens should drive carefully and avoid potholes when they see one and not drive into it. No word of sympathy or apology.

Many years back I remember reading a judgement where the judge passed an order dismissing a victim's plea for compensation on the ground that the person who was driving a two wheeler agreed that he saw a big pothole but at the last moment and could not stop his vehicle from going into it and suffering many injuries. That he saw the pothole before falling into it was his mistake and not that of the authorities. What can one say?

No one in power is ever punished for such lapses and negligence in supervision. The brunt is borne by the common citizen who by now feels that if he wants to drive on good roads within cities then he should migrate out of India or live next to the houses of the topmost authorities and rich persons. The common man pays his civic taxes to get insulted in return by being offered shoddy and life threatening infrastructure.

As someone in one of the TV channel discussions put it very aptly that potholes are the ATM's of vested interests. Nothing could be far from this truth. How long will we be a tolerant society. At least let the potholes should unite us into action. If not then our lives are at stake.

India achieved its independence on 15th August, 1947. India had seen a lot of bloodshed for freeing itself from the clutches of the British. But, has India really got rid of the British? Isn't India still ruled by the British influence.

Though the British have left our country, their imprints are still dazzling in such a way that mesmerizes Indian people. The main problem with the Indian people is that they think the way they are told to do. As the British looked down upon the Indians considering them inferior creatures and wore a label of "Superior creatures" to them themselves, the Indians thought the same. They love to think the same still. This clearly proves that we don't have our own ideas, thoughts, honors and all sorts of other qualities which we think we "Great Indians" possess. We come to a conclusion that we love to think ourselves inferior and hence, we should look forward to the British as our lords and ape them.

Today, it would not be wrong to say "From the ways of living to the means of entertainment in our lives, western culture dominates". Even the village and the rural countryside do not lag behind for the participation in this mad race of becoming westernized. The glamour of big cities attracts the younger generation to cinema halls. Restaurants and discotheques, bunking classes and truancy are becoming common in schools and colleges. Fed on coca-culture, pop music and disco dance, the youngsters are forgetting their traditional values completely. In their blind aping of western culture....like "Simple living and high thinking" seems old fashioned and outdated. The gap between the young and the old is widening gradually as the youth is developing a rebellious attitude towards everything.

Where will all this lead the younger generation to? Faith should be restored in our own Indian culture by organizing programs highlighting the rich cultural heritage of India. The energies of the young must be employed in constructive way so that they feel proud of being what they are really. These days, students are seen to devote their time more to westernization than to studies. As soon as a boy or a girl joins a college, there occurs a marvelous chance in  him or her. Simplicity takes wings and there comes ostentation in its place. Their gait is changed, their way of conversation assumes a different modulation and their behavior gets stricken with artificially. They strut like peacocks and fly like butterflies. This all is due to the westernization. It is the main root of all these reasons.

The growing influence of western culture is also a cause of ever-widening gulf between the parents and their child which is popularly known as a generation gap. It is the influence of western culture which is based on materialism and is completely devoid of family feelings, where the institution of joint family does not exist. Lust for modernity in the form of western dress, western music and pop dance leads our younger generation to adopt western culture and western civilization.

So, reduction of westernization is the need of the hour. We should remain acquainted with the foreign languages, western culture and the activities of the West but should not follow them blindly throwing our own culture on the streets and preserving it both inside and outside the country.