Is this how it is supposed to be?

We are living in an era where appreciation is scarce and criticism is vast. Every action you do is judged by others and then we are evaluated accordingly. Imagine you have been assigned a job to do within a particular span of time and you complete it on time and submit it. In this case, you have completed your work assigned duly but you would hardly be praised for your work. But on the other hand, if you fail to submit the work on time, you are ought to be criticized, 

judged and pointed at. We are so much into this process of criticizing others that we fail to realize how it feels to be criticized every now and then. 

Taking into consideration the current happenings in our country, we can conclude that our nation will be radically transformed in the coming years. Since the past our newspapers were filled with news about “CORRUPTION”, “BLACK MONEY”, “FAKE CURRENCY” and so on. In order to free our country from the evil clutches of ‘Corruption’ our Hon. Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi had made a shocking announcement which shook the entire nation or rather the entire world for that matter-The policy of  Demonetization which targeted people with unaccounted cash . A ban was put on all ₹500 and ₹1000 notes and these notes were declared to be obsolete from 8^th November 2016. This was an unexpected shock for all the citizens of our country. This was being planned since last few months to curb corruption and black money and put a check on illegal money which is in flow. ₹2000 and ₹500 notes were declared to be introduced with all new look in the coming few days that wouldn’t affect the day to day functioning of the country much. To ease out this process many rules had been laid and suggested by our PM. One point that was repeatedly emphasized throughout this announcement was that “Your money will be yours. No need to panic. We will try our best to ease out this process.” Awareness had been created by our IT Department to define all the wealth by 30^th September 2016 and after paying stipulated amount of tax, black money should be converted to white money. But in spite of this announcement only a few people went forward to convert their black money to white and most of them ignored it. At that very time, our PM had told the masses that it would be better to justify all the wealth within the stipulated time span or the consequences of not defining our wealth would be harsh.

In order to eradicate corruption from the roots, this change was introduced. However, just because this is a revolutionary change many people couldn’t accept this. It came in as a shock for them and thus they started focusing only on the hardships and negative side of this change. People had to stand in large queues to get their money exchanged. Most of the ATMs were running out of money owing to the huge demand for money. People started complaining about this process. Within an hour of this announcement more than lakhs of jokes, memes were being circulated among the social networking sites. People started panicking about their hard-earned money being of no use now. People started criticizing this move . Everyone had their own way of criticizing this process. They tried to link this process with many other actions that had taken in the past few months which was kind of irrelevant.

Do we realize that few months ago after reading news about corruption ‘WE’ blamed our country, our government ; we in fact concluded that our country would never change because of the corrupt leaders and corrupt people. Now that a drastic step has been taken, we are criticizing the government for the hardships we are facing. We fail to understand that every change is difficult at first. This is something that would bring in “Acche Din” for our country really soon. We never understand the entire working process and want things to work smoothly at every point. We are now complaining about the large queues and crowd outside the banks, but are we someone who never stood in queues before? Didn’t we wait in queues to collect our report cards and when it was our turn to collect it, the office itself was closed for lunch or some other reasons. At that time, we didn’t complain so much just because it was ‘Our report card’ , the result of our hard work ,but now what? We can’t stand in queues to get our cash converted or deposited just because this is something sudden and we aren’t having black money with us. This is what the mind-set of almost everyone is but we need to realize that such people who are dealing in black are one amongst us. We stood in queues to get admission in the best colleges. At that time we didn’t see what the weather was, we were ready to wait, we had patience to deal with the crowd, we never complained about the process, we were ready to fill in 6-7 pages of admission forms, we submitted all our original documents as required but now we don’t want to fill form to deposit our cash, we are irritated to show the required documents to get our cash exchanged or deposited. Why are we portraying such kind of behavior? The only difference between both the situations is that the first is for self and the other is for our country. We are ready to wait outside the theaters or malls or hotels just to satisfy our needs and at that time we don’t complain and try to be patient. And why are we doing this now? We are trying to curb corruption and this is the first drastic step we are taking towards it. Every coin has both positives and negatives, but it depends on what we are focusing on. The more we focus on negatives, the more we would end up complaining about this process. The irony of the entire process is that everyone is being treated equally. We can see a daily wage labourer standing in the queue to get his money exchanged and in the same queue we can find a rich businessman waiting for his token number to be called so that his money gets exchanged. This itself proves how unbiased this process is. The limit or withdrawal and exchange are set common for all no matter who you are or how much you earn. We live in a generation where we find the poor people standing in ration shops to buy what they want while the rich people prefer buying from malls or big shops. But this process is where everyone has to come together irrespective of their income, education, caste or any other aspect. 

This is a revolutionary change which is focusing on the betterment of common man. Since the past few decades the rift between the rich and the poor is increasing and the rich are getting richer while the poor are getting poorer. This step would help to reduce this gap. One biggest advantage of this change is that any transaction more than ₹2 Lakhs would directly be connected with the IT Department and if this not defined in your income, actions would be taken accordingly. This process won’t affect the common man and would bring in the hidden wealth to limelight. If you have paid proper taxes on time, you would not face any issues except that the first few days you will have to get your notes exchanged.

Imagine how much hard-work we put in to plan up a trip or picnic of 10-15 people; we plan about everything that needs to be taken care of. We think of many alternatives and plan about everything beforehand so that we don’t face any difficulties during the trip. But does everything go according to the plan? Some things happen here and there but we don’t complain about it because our ultimate aim is to enjoy and visit the place. Similarly do we realize how much hard-work and planning would have been put in before making this announcement to the masses? In a country of 1.34 billion population every change requires extensive planning and it isn’t easy to introduce something very drastic. Imagine how many people would be working hard to make this process easier. We need to understand all these facts before criticizing our PM for creating hardships to the common man which is self-created. We are becoming more self-centered and thus we are resistant to change. Due to this resistance to change we are pointing out the problems we are facing to get our money exchanged. During the normal days, we never worried about our farmers or daily wages workers but now we are saying that this process has created problems to them when they themselves are happy that they aren’t affected and all the people who had been hiding the black money would now have to face the tune. They are ready to face the effects of this process instead of complaining about it. They consider standing in lines as their small contribution towards our country and for the betterment of the lives of common man. If we are going to emphasize on the problems that are being faced at present, we can’t dream of a better India in the near future. Such issues are short-lived and temporary. Our aim is a better India, a stronger economy, a corruption free country, a clean country and finally a developed country and when we are aiming high we can’t afford to focus on the short-comings of changes. We need to learn and adapt ourselves to change.

Do we understand how many extra hours the government officials are working in order to simplify this change. We need to realize that harsh actions taken lead to fruitful results always. When educated people like us who understand the reason behind such steps are criticizing instead of supporting our PM, what can we expect from others? Imagine what it would feel like when you are running in a race to win but people around you are constantly discouraging you , telling you that you won’t win, not cheering you up. Would you feel confident enough to win? Would you feel motivated? Would you like such kind of behavior? If NO then it is high time to realize that even we are one amongst those people who are discouraging and criticizing the actions of our PM. We are in a race to become a developed country, we are trying to eradicate poverty and black money from our country and in order to win this race our very own PM who is elected by us to work for our country is trying to change our country for the better is being criticized  for his actions. We have to trust and support him and co-operate with the government   for the success of this plan. Let us be responsible citizens and contribute to the betterment of our country. Let us not criticize such actions and whole-heatedly support Mr. Modi and our Government to bring in a new era- an era favorable for the common man. Let us contribute and help to achieve the targets and win this race of fighting black money. The coming few days are the days wherein we have a chance to prove that we are responsible citizens of our country and have immense trust on our PM and our government by being patient throughout this process and supporting our PM by contributing our share to help out the needy people.  Remember it is always easy to criticize but it takes too much effort to step into the shoes of others and realize how difficult it is to introduce such a bold move in a country of 1.34 billion people and work hard to lessen the problems the common man would face in this phase. A big, big salute to our PM and all the government officials who have been sacrificing their sleep and putting in hours of hard work to simplify this process just for us. Let us question ourselves –“Is this how it is supposed to be? Are we going to blame the actions taken for us? Are we going to still criticize our government? Shouldn’t we support them instead of criticizing them? Is this change easy? Isn’t this a bold move? Let us stop focusing on temporary difficulties and let us join hands to make our” BHARAT SWACHH” in every possible way.