If only I had a $1 billion of my own…

My vision for India might go unfulfilled because I am never going to have $1 billion of my own! This does not stop me from outlining my hopes and aspirations for India. If I had a billion dollars, I would have taken out $610 million out of that and created one million dollar corpus fund in each district of India. This $1 million corpus fund would have been invested in the local economy of each district and could have earned a very substantial income every year. From the income, I would have bought enough land to build a large warehouse to protect the crops of that district, provided transport to the growers and in time, provided processing facilities for the local horticulture. Does it sound far-fetched? Not to me! My grandfather, Lala Jaswantrai Churamani, did something similar in 1943. He owned Jaswant Sugar Mills and a paper-straw board mill in Meerut District. One fine day in 1943, he sold-off everything and formed a charitable trust and created two million rupees corpus funds, one in Meerut district, Uttar Pradesh and the other in Hissar, Haryana District. He had five sons, all are dead now but the corpus fund survived. These funds built two charitable maternity hospitals, one in each district. These ‘Maternity Hospitals’ served the poor women of those two districts very well for at least 50 years or more.

What I am tying to say is that there is no private sector connection between the 610 districts of India. The only connection is a central bureaucracy that pretends to unify the Union of India in some form of a democratic nation. People of North India have no clue about their fellow citizens of South India and vice versa! Similarly, how many Indians from Eastern parts have visited the environs of Western India? This is a dangerous situation for a liberal democracy like India. I would like to see a ‘Reliance Petrol Station’ and a ‘Reliance Fresh’ grocery store in every single district of India. My dream is to see an NDTV bureau or an ‘Apollo Hospital’ in all 610 districts of India. If only we could have a Barista Coffee Shop or some ‘Indian Drugstore’ in every state and every district, India would be a different place and a secured democracy. Coming back to my very own billion dollar empire, I would appoint a part-time blogger with a reliable ‘Mobile Phone’ in all 610 districts. There job would be to take pictures every single day and upload them a couple of times a day with a report of things happening in their district. We must know what is happening any where and everywhere in India in real-time so that our national enemies are scared of being detected and brought to books at the drop of a hat. Just THINK about my vision!

Delhi Metro must reach Meerut by 2020…

Meerut City and Meerut District, both are too close to Delhi for comfort. Besides having a terrible history of 1857, Meerut could be a great asset to Delhi and New Delhi. Delhi Metro is a rapid transit system in the Indian National Capital Territory of Delhi which does not include Meerut. Earlier, the whole area, 100 kms radius around Delhi, was supposed to be a ‘National Capital Region’. Or was I misinformed?

Meerut City is 72 kms north-east of New Delhi. It has a population of 1.2 million people. According to Pradeep Thakur of TNN, “Meerut contributed a handsome Rs 10,089 crore to the national kitty in 2007-08, leaving fancier cities like Jaipur, Bhopal, Kochi and Bhubaneshwar in its wake. It did even better than the state capital, Lucknow”. This could be a great opportunity to develop ‘Delhi-Meerut Corridor’ but also a grave challenge because of a disproportionately high Muslim population.

The Muslims of Meerut are highly skilled people and, till a few decades back, had very articulate leadership also. I am talking about the days of  Major General Shahnawaz Khan, MP (Member of Parliament) from Meerut. Ever since Chaudhary Charan Singh became the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh in 1967, the relations between Hindus and Muslims in Meerut have been tense, to put it mildly.