What are we Indians made of?

Traffic jams due to human mistakes, dirty roads, numerous diseases arising from there, constant honking on a busy road... is this what we are made for?

What material are we made of that we ourselves can't place a check on ourselves and need an authority to keep a stick over our heads in terms of fines? Spitting on roads, throwing aways empty packs of suparis, gutkhas and cigarettes on the road even when the dustbin is next to us.

Man we are spoiling our nation ourselves. Why don't we understand that whatever drives we start for cleanliness and discipline we cannot achieve it till each one of us keeps a check on ourself?

Whenever I travel and am driving myself, I find it so damn odd to hear the honking on a busy road. Tell me if I am stuck because of the car next to me, would I make a FLYOVER on-the-fly and cross that. Why can not I follow my lane? Where's the patience lost? Why do we not check our behaviour every time we misbehave?

We do adopt some good fashionable measures from the "western" side of the world, but have we ever thought of adopting their discipline, their behaviour. Look at their conduct and adopt it. Suppose we tried to put some material (say a paper napkin) in a dustbin and it falls out of it. How many of us have a courage like them to pick it up and place it inside dustbin? I am sure the number is less than 1 per cent.

But they do. And that's what makes them better than us. They LOVE their country and keep it clean and are disciplined. We jump red lights, they even stop on green ones to let people cross the road (if someone happens to be crossing the road by mistake).

See the difference. More than half of us do not even know the meaning of 'zebra crossing' that was taught to us way back in our third standard. I have seen many people laughing at me if I keep something in my packet waiting for a dustbin. Laughing when I throw a paper napkin in the bin after picking it from floor. But that does not affect me at all!

Indians, we cannot just be proud on Lata Mangeshkars and Sachin Tendulkars, Sania Mirzas and Kalpana Chawlas, it's high time that we stand and respect ourselves, our country and be proud on ourselves — that we can do only if each one of us contributes to making a cleaner, disciplined India.

Let's all of us pledge in improving a nation that we call GREAT... let us practically make it GREAT.

(Saurabh Khanna is an engineer from Ghaziabad, currently working with an IT organisation)