“The ultimate victory in competition is derived from the inner satisfaction of knowing that you have done your best and that you have gotten the most out of what you had to give.”, although, unambiguously, a judicious set of words by Howard Cosell, still fails to withstand the vagaries of the contemporary world. In my opinion, simply doing one’s own best and offering the maximum within one’s limits is not (leave the adjective ‘ultimate’) at all a stipulation of winning anymore. There’s not much need of looking into the phenomena of other countries when such a situation prowls lucidly in India itself.
India is the largest democracy in the world. All its citizens have been entitled with sovereignty in whatever they speak, aspire or preach. Hence, patronizing the democratic ideals, there prevail various sops and schemes to provide leverage to the impoverished and poverty-ridden sects of society. This has been done with a view to compensate their downtrodden state and bring them at par with the other prosperous sects of the Indian society. But, in reality, erroneous implementation of such schemes and policies has led to an over-compensation in many ways.
Now, try guessing that who has become the ultimate victim of this over-compensation…Is your conjecture the poor? Well, in that case you are more wrong than being right! This is because hitherto, it’s rather the more poised, educated and prosperous sect of the society which has become the first culprit of fallacious policies and the existing scenario on the whole. Yes! I’m talking about the “middle-class” human of the Indian society and especially the middle-class teenager who is on the culmination of his childhood and about to make an entry in his youth.
Talking about the faulty policies, it’s quite inevitable to not to mention the vital role of the highly contentious word “reservation” in the creation of such a floundering environment for the ever-struggling Indian teenager. But! but! but! Now it has become imperative for me to throw light on the fact that it’s not only the government and its policies which are responsible for the currently existing ferocious competition among the Indian youth. Actually, it’s also a ramification of some naturally existing, mutually correlated systems such as the adverse effects of rampantly increasing population on the quantum of competition to grab a piece of bread nowadays.
The problem is not the competition. In fact, a healthy competition is a necessary ingredient for the consensual development of all the participants in a race. But as it is prevalent that anything in excess spoils the balance, the very same can be applied to the phenomenon of competition. Competition in India has almost become an incessant phenomenon with little or no mercy.
The childhood of a quintessential Indian is still as fascinating as it used to be. But, once the stage of childhood reaches its climax, then there’s simply no escaping from the vicious circle of competition and intense struggle to grovel an inch ahead of others.
Examples supporting the above prospect are copious. For instance, erstwhile there used to be only a mild competition for cracking the university entrance examinations. Once after carving his way into a decent college, the student didn’t care about the next level of his studies till the very end of his current endeavor (whether 3, 4 or 5 years). But then came a time when the college students started baking themselves for entrance examinations of PG level right from the first or second year of their college. But the test of one’s endurance doesn’t end here. With respect to today’s scenario, this is rather only the genesis of struggle and competition for an aspirant. This is because today a person, even after getting a job, has to continuously compete for his position in his company and look for either the promotion within the company or for changingit which we nowadays call as ‘switching’.
So, as a conclusion firstly, I would like to justify my negation of Howard’s Cosell’s notation by conveying that whatever be the trend in the past but as far as the present time is concerned, being able to give your own best doesn’t help most of the times because what really matters is what is the comparison of your best with the bests of your compatriots. Additionally, there’s a competition within oneself to beat one’s own best every other day because it’s all about relativity and not individual standards.
