Is India Shining?

Is India shining?

I am writing this not against any religion. It is purely looked into from economic point of view.

We had a funny situation in our country during this week. From12^thApril2008 to 20^thApril 2008 consisting 9 days, major institutions like Banks, Government offices, many public sector units including Stock exchanges worked only for three days.

This is because 12^th and 13^th being Saturday and Sunday, 14^th Monday was Dr. Ambedkar’s birthday and hence it was a holiday. We worked only 15^th, 16^th ,17^th and 18^th was declared holiday due to Mahavir Jayanthi and 19^th and 20^th are again Saturday and Sunday.. Those experts in our Governments who talk about man days, have ever calculated how many man days we are losing on account of these liberal holidays?

I visited at random about 10 bank branches, which may have average 10 employees and wanted to find out how many Muslims working in those branches. To my surprise there were none. (It may be a sweet news for persons like Mr. Sahabuddin, who are fighting that Muslims should be provided reservations in all institutions)

According to Indian Government the total percentage of Muslim in India is in between 11% to 12%. There are many who claim that it is 13 to 14% Out of these, what will be the percentage of Muslims working in the public Institutions? According to a recently published report to government, called the Sachar Report, Muslims are heavily under-represented in different government and social areas. Among other facts, it found that in the state of West Bengal, where Muslims make up 27% of the population, their employment in the government sector was below 3%.

The total number of Christians in India as per Census in 2001 is 24,080,016 or 2.34% of the population. The Jain population in India according to 2001 census is 4,225,053 out of the total population of India 1,028,610,328.

Imagine! Giving the margin of increase in their population even as high as10%, you can easily arrive at their population as on date. Is that worth declaring holidays on the basis of religion?

I am not telling that these minorities in our country should not celebrate their festival. Considering their strength in each office, they can be given paid holidays. Why 85% of Hindus should be asked to sit before their idiot boxes or go to cinema theaters or sleep at home on those days on which they have nothing to do?

It is high time we started raising our voices in this man hour loosing issue. Even holidays like Krishna Jayanthi or Sivarathri which is not being celebrated by all Hindus are declared holidays. What are the Hindus doing on these days, that they cannot work?

Most of the holidays declared as holidays are being celebrated only for few hours of the day. Who is going to bell the cat? This problem of excessive holidays should be looked into as loss of man days/power, than religious sentiments.