I am from a state where there is at least one child from every home who studies in Texas, California, Kansas, Virginia, Newyork and so on.. Believe me, there is a temple at around 40KM from Hyderabad which is called visa temple. People go there with their passports so that their visa interview is successful. Not only in my State, many people dream of studying in US, working in US, living in US. People keep talking about I20s, H1s, B1s all the time. My intention is not to sound condescending at all. There was a time when I gave my GMAT and Toefl and had almost packed my bags before I dropped the plans. Studying or working in US has become on of the major goals of many people across the world. Its not wrong at all considering the promise of prosperity, freedom and novelty in the US. Thus starts the American dream for many.
After all, US is a great nation. America was the first nation to bring the concept of freedom to this Earth. The great American revolution gave rise to a 'free nation' resulting in a series of social, political, and intellectual transformations in early American society and government, collectively referred to as the American Enlightenment. They bravely rejected the age old British ideas and ideologies and were the first people is embrace 'liberalism'. They made a moral decision that slavery was wrong and a nation cannot be half free. America were the first to implement right to vote and right to employment for women. They defeated totalitarianism and won a war in the Pacific and the Atlantic simultaneously. They cured some fearsome diseases like Polio. They pioneered the industrial revolution. The merits are absolutely flawless, making the US an inspiration for many developing nations.
But there are a few issues which were stuck in my mind for the last few weeks. The first is the the recent recession. I remember reading that the cause of recession were the vast number of housing loans and the causes of the recession were so complex and nobody had absolutely any idea. But the recent movie "Inside job" (A must watch if you haven't) clearly shows that everybody knew sensed recession as early as late 2006. Many bigshots like the heads of all major banks, heads of federal agencies of US like the head of the federal reserve, federal bank and many more were involved. The painful part was that sheer greed of a few people in US caused a catastrphy throughout the world. Millions of people were literally thrown out of their homes. Europe spearheaded in implementing regulations on many financial instruments and though the US itself was one of the worstly affected countries, it did not implement any regulations on the financial derivatives markets, which was the main cause of the recession. We do not even know if US has taken any measures for to stop another financial melt down. Does it make US greater that any other country of the world?
The other troubling issue is the environmental issues. Many of us think Indian cities are dirty compared to the clean and polished streets of the US. But US is not so clean after all. The per-capita carbon emission in the US is around 18 compared to 5.6 of the entire developed world. India's is around 1.2 making India a lot cleaner than the US. The auto emission standards of the US are still around Euro 2 when the entire Europe is following Euro 5. Luckily when the states of US like California started taking the initiative and implemented high efficiency standards for the US, the automakers like Ford, GM and Chrysler sued the state that they cannot sell their vehicles in those states. These so called mighty auto makers haven't recognized the fact that these inefficient vehicle manufacturing have made them impotent to sell their cars in many European nations, which was the main reason for their bankruptcy protection in 2008. In a country where there are over 750 cars to every 1000 people, shouldn't there by high efficiency standards? Moreover, US and Australia are the only two developed nations which haven't complied with the Kyoto protocol, which is aimed at fighting climate change.
The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Are they really to end the tyranny and to end the terrorism? The tragic 9/11 attacks on the WTC and the Pentagon, are they really by terrorists. These were some of the many questions raised by the conspiracy theories. After watching so many movies and also some facts about what the US is capable of, the answer to most of these conspiracy theories seems possible. May be US needed constant supply of oil at very cheap rates for the next 50 - 100 years or may be they wanted to maintain the supremacy on the world. We never know.
Uncle Sam, are you listening?
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