U.A.E. National day

Today is the 36th national day of UAE and I felt I owed a blogpost to the new country Iam in .

UAE is a federation of seven sheikdoms in the southeastern corner of the Arabian penisula .

The seven emirates are Abhu Dhabi ,Dubai ,Sharjah ,Umm Al quian ,Ajman ,

Ras El Khaimah ,and Fujairah .

The capital city is AbhuDhabi and is located in the emirate of the same name .

The British who had maintained thier presence here for over a century left in 1971 .

The late Sheik Zayed Bin Sultan Al Nahyan and the late Sheik Rahsid Bin saeed Al Maktoum took a descision to form a federation of the sheikdoms ,

On december 2nd 1971 the UAE flag was raised for the first time and the rest is history .

The rapid strides the country has taken in all fronts spurred by its oil and commerce engines is spellbinding .

It envisages the vision of its leaders and thier long term planning to make UAE one of the best in the world .the country enjoys one of the worlds highest standards of living ,today it is also one of the safest and peaceful places in the world .

This great achievement in such a short time has hard work and dedication behind it .

Here the rules are simple and no nonsense and are to be followed for the good of everyone .

There is no labour unrest here ,no hartals ,or bandhs but the rights of labourers too are taken care with concern ,a fine example is during summer workers are given a long lunch gap and generally one found them lying under trees outside buildings to escape the harsh sun ,this was curbed immediately and owners forced to provide AC rest rooms for them by the government ,minimum facilities and space for labour quarters were strictly enforced and employers had to provide this for thier employees .

When we compare this scenario with our country specially the states ruled by the saviuors of workers the communists one finds the benifit never peters to the worker for all his zindabad howling but only to the party bigwigs by the constant sitouts ,gheroas and other protests .

Many are the companies who have shifted to other states because of this labout unrest and comsequent loss of jobs is the result ,but alas our people have thier sympathies misplaced .

The news in TV from Kerala is full of controversies ,demonstrations and demolitions ,it is filled by verbal insinuations by leaders against each other ,where do these men have time to rule the country ?

In UAE the infrastructure is excellent ,roads are smooth ,traffic is orderly , rules are strict but fair ,the principle is work hard ,earn money and live well but abide to rules .

We too have good roads in India today in places like Tamilnadu ,Haryana ,Delhi ,etc ,but we are yet to see the results of the money pumped into it over the years ,for that matter as Rajiv Gandhi famously opined if the government spends a rupee only 10 paise peters down ,middlemen ,politicos ,racketeers plunder our wealth and have been doing it over the years ,the country has been perpetually divided by casteism and reservations have made the divisions sharper to make ready made votebanks for politcal parties .

Communal divisions have been the panacea of politics all this has taken a toll in our development ,ravaged by frequent wars and border disturbances ,spurred by terrorism fuelled by our neighbours and international weapons selling nations we have been over several obstacles in our devlopment .

A long era of socialist principles which though intially triggered our progress as Panditjis famous temples of science later on became the garb of selfish politicians for one upmanship and consequent retardation of our enterprise .

In spite of all this India purred silently and has now started roaring with the new economic engines taking its rightful place in the comity of nations.

when compared to the UAE we have immense resources ,climate ,land ,people ,skills ,history ,diversity you name it we have it ,Indians are talented and skilled in all they do ,Indian cuisine ,culture ,and philosophy has no parallels ,it is all highly developed .

Of course we dont have the oil to give us unlimited income but let us just imagine even if he had the oil would our leaders have done what has been done in a place like UAE ?

The progress we see in India today is in spite of our lacklustre leaders ( there are several exeptions to this statement of course ) ,it is the progress that is the handiwork of our brilliant business community ,look at our Ambanis ,look at Infosys the Tatas ,they are the ones who are taking our country soaring to the sky ,one can accuse them of capitalism and west mongering imperialism but have they not benifitted our country by way of employment ,giving people education and higher standards of living ,have they not created the IT revolution in our country ?

Again I often hear this refrain that the progress today has only widened the gap between the haves and have nots ,true to a certain extent but is the answer to create a land of have nots ,no ,definitely the progress will trickle down in creating jobs ,and oppurtunities for others ,this is the only way we can come up beacause years of bottling up had only fattened our politician but not our people .

Education in the UAE is given great importance ,every national is encouraged to study all he wants with the state providing all the needs ,in India there are many who get no primary education ,to the government this has been low priority

Merit is being murdered by reservations and parochialism ,regionalism pervades education like bookworms .Brilliant students are frustrated and try to get away draining the country of its cerebral reserves .

in states like Kerala students are lured into campus politics at the cost of thier future

India is a great country blessed with resorceful people but burderned by poor leaders .

we need visionaries to carry us forwards visionaries like our former president Dr Abdul Kalam