#Opinion: India's Development Has A Lot To Do With What You Read

Many dictators have staged incidents to earn the people’s support to further their cause. The fact that even in a dictatorship, people’s support and mass opinion is a much sought after. In a democracy public opinion plays an even bigger role to bring about policy decisions that favour the people and more, so the weaker sections of the society. As a corollary, one could conclude, a lack of mass awareness and opinion on the issue that matters will lead to arbitrary and poor policies implemented inefficiently. Today, information is all over the place and all kind of information is available from multiple forums from celebrity news to current affairs. What we have to realize is what we read becomes what we know, what we know forms the basis of our opinion and aspiration, what we aspire for becomes our policy by which we are governed.

Take for example the Free Basics controversy, when more than a few people found a sinister plot in the scheme, their collective opinion and outrage could prevent a social media giant from implementing a policy at a governmental level. That’s what few people could do. Many of the problems that India faces not because we have had poor policy makers but because of the insensitivity to issues we know and lack of mass awareness on the issues which we chose not know or accidentally didn’t know.

A few example:

1.) Deforestation which is causing extinction of many species and choking the environment

2.) Why are lakhs of crores of corporate debt is waived off, but farmers continue to die due to debt? etc etc.

The good news is, it doesn’t take much to raise the bar of good governance.When millions of Indians seek to know the problems that India faces and raise their voice on various platforms, the mass awareness and opinion translates to good policies with which we could be governed. So let us make it a point to read the right things and ask the important questions. As a country we have solutions to all the problems we face, the missing piece in the puzzle is asking the right questions.

The Logical Indian appeals to their community members to spread the awareness to others on the need for increasing curiosity towards the issues that affect people especially regarding the environment, the poor and weaker sections of the society. Our collective awareness on the issues that matters has the potential to eliminate poverty and make India a developed country, where there is hope for all for a dignified life.