As nation clocks 55 years, identity challenges are uppermost

Each living species and individual has to find living space among others, and what a species or an individual demands in that space and ensures that it is available often sets it in conflict with other claimants to kindred space. Some conflicts are outward in character and ignite wars, while others are inward, noticed in persistent poverty.

Since independence we have explained our poverty mostly from external factors, and in recent years some of our experts started taking account of the fact that many nations with whom we were at par at independence are now advanced beyond any of our dreams.

Most of the Far East was modestly endowed with physical capital and human infrastructure at independence and at times looked far worse than our own situation. For many years the city of Calcutta in India was known as “the cholera capital of the world,” in which case we actually felt better, a bit advanced.

Times changed and increasingly we have been falling more and more backwards while more countries moved a ladder or two, within the region and beyond.

At times we have just kept pace with countries whose circumstances were far worse than anything we have experienced, or neighbours who don’t have the resources to compare with us have done much better, often by using our very resources, as they provide a better market for our farmers on the border regions or islands, small or artisan miners in many regions, etc. At the end of the day it falls into their GDP.

One feature about which most of us genuinely feel proud to think about is the fact that we have enjoyed virtually undisturbed peace since independence, in contrast with the spasmodic sort of national unity that one finds in a number of countries.

Yet in a psychological sense this longevity of the same political party in power, and times some of those individuals were there since the 1960s – or left office in the past five to ten years – may also be a handicap. It is hard for values, standards to be altered without having a different team in political office, revisiting options, choices, etc.

Alteration or its vivid possibility is the lifeblood of democracy and the idea of change, which means we lack the means for real change, as we don’t debate it since it hasn’t become an imperative at any moment, but rather briefly in the mid-1980s.

After we had changed enough to be accepted for loans, the issue ended, and hardly anyone can think of those measures again, while the challenges mount.

Definitely the longevity of the ruling party in power isn’t something any of us are actively regretting, but as noticed in the fifth phase government, the same party came to the conclusion that “business as usual” could no longer suffice.

Many in its ranks aren’t totally fired up by the changes that are being wrought around us, and perhaps they have a point if they think the changes are a bit familiar, or tested earlier and did not work.

If we are being fired up by a few wrong ideas because there are changes we do not wish to conduct as they will affect our image, it is just a matter of time before we have to do something about those totems. Hopefully, when the time comes to shift our totems and taboos, we shall still do so peacefully.