The GDP [Gross Domestic Product] figures flogged by the government ad-nauseam provide no consolation to the common man battling to make both ends meet. All the same, it is so wonderful to live in a dream world, and our politicians and bureaucrats deserve accolades for keeping us enthralled with their magic figures and the ubiquitous promises, which are repeated ad infinitum albeit without fulfillment. And yet the gullible population of this would be super power keeps falling for these dream promises again and again. It is about time we carried out a reality check on our potential super power status.

According to a new Multi-dimensional Poverty Index [MPI] , developed by the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative with UNDP support, eight Indian states viz Chhatisgarh, Jharkhand, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Orissa, West Bengal and Rajasthan together account for more poor people than the 26 poorest African nations combined. These findings are contained in the 2010 UNDP Human Development report which is to be published in October this year.

We have schools which exist only in government records or schools where there are only one or two teachers for a hundred or more students or schools which have no building. We have RTE [Right to Education] in our statute book but as in the case of many other feel good articles in our constitution , do not have the will or the means to enforce this one also.

Education being in the concurrent list in the constitution, Centre and the States by compulsion pull in different directions to prove it so. So , while the Centre abolishes the Board exams for class tenth and is in the process of doing the same in respect of class 12th also, the J&K government introduces Board exams for class three! While the Centre has abolished the Board exams to take off pressure on the grown up students , J&K has chosen to put the toddlers under pressure to fix up accountability of the teachers ! – toddlers be damned.

According to an international survey , Indian bureaucracy is the most lethargic , corrupt , unresponsive and is highly bound by red tapism. It is no wonder that our decision making process takes the cake in all respects. The wheels of our almighty bureaucracy turn and churn in majestic elephantine speed and the ‘sarkar’ avoids taking decisions and responsibility as a rule.

Our decision making process is quite complementary to our performance in implementing the decisions that do get taken or the plans approved. Nothing gets completed in the prescribed time frame leading to cost escalations on the one hand and delay in providing the planned benefits to the intended beneficiaries on the other.

The Comptroller and Auditor General [CAG] report regarding functioning of Commonwealth Games Organizing Committee submitted to the government in 2009 , had warned one year back that preparations for Commonwealth games were way off target.

The Project was awarded to India in the year 2003 and it took the Organizing Committee two complete years to submit its budget to the government in Nov 2005. Another seventeen months were to elapse before the budget was approved by the government in Apr 2007.

The project and risk management experts were appointed in Mar 2008 and the games master plan was finalized as late as Nov 2008. It was in Nov 2008 only that the master plan was finally sent for approval of Commonwealth Games Federation. In other words , five years were spent on no more than mere paperwork. It is no wonder that we are still struggling to keep up to the deadline , even while the games are almost about to begin.

According to reports , Rohtang tunnel was conceived during the Prime Minister ship of Indira Gandhi in 1983 and the project was approved in 1987 when Rajiv Gandhi was the Prime Minister. Approach roads to the tunnel were made in 2002 – fifteen years after the approval - during the tenure of Atal Bihari Vajpayee as Prime Minister. The construction of the tunnel was finally started in the year 2010 – twenty seven years after the approval! If the planning stage has taken 27 years , going by our past experience , it is anybody’s guess as to how long would it take to implement this plan.

Katra-Udhampur railway line , a distance of nearly thirty kilometers has been in the making for nearly a decade now and the completion is nowhere in sight for at least another couple of years. Compared against this, according to newspaper reports , the British started construction of 97 Kilometers Kalka Simla railway line , which has numerous tunnels and technologically marvelous bridges , in the year 1901 and completed the whole project in 1903. And this feat was achieved by them a century ago , when technology was not as advanced as it is now.

We have huge stocks of food grains, some of these in our godowns providing feast to the rodents and a major portion outside the godowns in the open , where exposed to the vagaries of the weather , the grains are rotting , even while the unfortunate poor are dying of hunger.

According to an estimate , around 10 lakh tons of food grains have been spoilt in the past ten years. Experts opine that this huge stock could have been sufficient for one crore people for one whole year. And this is an ongoing saga with no redeeming measures in sight.

The best thing about politicians and bureaucrats is that hardly any one of them is ever held accountable for any mishap , loss of life or the monetary losses suffered by the country due to their casual and cavalier attitude. None of them ever gets punished. On the contrary , they keep rising in their respective fields.

No wonder that China has cruised past Japan to become the world’s second largest economy even though economic reforms in both India and China started around the same time in the nineteen nineties. What is more alarming is that in 1990 , the Indian economy was reportedly eighty percent of the size of China’s , whereas now it is only twenty five percent.

Do we have it in us to become a super power in the world ? We are a soft state , have a decision making system which is nothing but paralytic and our monolithic bureaucracy - a virtual sarkar by itself - is not accountable at all to anybody. Unless urgent course correction is initiated we might lose our way to becoming a super power.