By Satish Jha
Satish Jha calls for thunderbolt honesty in confronting India’s failures. My essay was more a lament, written in the hope that cadence can cut as deeply as confrontation.
Honest Lament Voice
His generous engagement with my essay My India, My Love is welcome. The call for “unflinching honesty” does strike a chord, for honesty was the very impulse behind my piece. Diplomacy is not my calling card here. My lament was an atavistic voice within me that sought expression at the sight of a great civilization diminished daily by disorder, indignity, and illusion.
Confronting National Realities
Jha suggests I avoided naming and shaming and confronting structural rot. But I did speak plainly: of garbage-strewn platforms as a national shame, of giant statues rising while libraries crumble, of people turned to sheeple, of demographic dividend turned debt, of history misused as a score-settling vendetta rather than an honest mirror of ourselves. These are not evasions. They are critiques of the very reality he insists must be faced.
Lyrical Critique Expression
If my voice was lyrical, (if this is a compliment, I am happy. If it is not, I’ll take that, also. After all, we eat bitterness too) it was because lament often comes clothed in a flow of sharps and flats and major keys. Cadence does not blunt critique; a mirror can pulverize as deeply as a hammer. What I sought was to appeal not only to reason, but to conscience. My question—“Why do we tolerate this?”—was not rhetorical. It was a demand for self-examination.
Everyday Decency Recognition
Jha warns against romanticizing resilience. But the “unknown Indian” I described—the woman sweeping her doorstep at dawn, the father sending his daughter to school, the vendor who returns exact change—is not sentiment. These lives are not tokens; they are the soil from which any systemic change must grow. To dismiss them would be to abandon hope. To recognize them is not to excuse rot, but to insist that renewal begins in decency.
Dual Voices Necessity
We differ, perhaps, in register. He writes in the thunderbolt. I wrote in the elegy. India needs both. Thunderbolts awaken the sky; lamps light the path. Between them lies the illumination we must seek. Currently, however, we are in Plato’s cave.
About Satish Jha
Satish Jha, a distinguished figure in journalism, social entrepreneurship, and technology for development. He is truly a multidisciplinary leader—bridging the worlds of media, social entrepreneurship, technology, and policy with global insight and local impact.
Also Read:
- Celestial Ambitions, Terrestrial Realities!
- Failing the Future: By Design
- Philanthropy: Satish Jha Expands Digital Learning Ecosystem to Vidya Bharati School in Meerut I India CSR
- Ashraya chairman Satish Jha honored by Indo-American Art’s Council, New York – India CSR
(India CSR)
