Power cannot be turned on and off.

"There may be the odd visionary bureaucrat or politician who figures out that what India needs is their getting out of the way. But, the system as whole is geared to, and, more importantly, strongly disposed to holding back and throttling India because its operating philosophy is distrust and cynicism," wrote Prof V Anantha Nageswaran. Th most egregious example of this "distrust and cynicism" was the sudden demonetization of high value banknotes with 4 hours notice on 8 November 2016, which sought to characterize every Indian as a tax evader. Since the poor, especially daily wage earners, deal mainly in cash they suffered the most. When not much 'black money' was found the story was changed to one of advantages of a cashless society. The volume of currency in circulation has increased from 16.4 trillion in 2016 to Rs 27.7 trillion, according to the Reserve Bank of India. "The operating principle in view is that the government does not trust citizens to do the right thing, forcing citizens to reciprocate that faith with their own creativity. Some give up. Some emigrate. Some co-opt the system. Many struggle throughout their live to deal with the government machinery." This gives total power to politicians and civil servants as a cowed people struggling to survive remain subservient to authorities. "There are macro studies by Francis Fukuyama which show that the countries that have high levels of trust, grow better," said Prof Kaushik Basu. "India is going through an erosion of trust in recent times. I just hope we have the sense to come together." "India has the highest bribery rate in Asia and the most number of people who use personal connections to access public services, according to a new report by corruption watchdog Transparency International." "It mens that entrepreneurial skills have to be applied to the task of acquiring political power first, in some form, so that this can be leveraged to venture into business." When a 19 year old Dalit woman was gang-raped, the police tried to hush it up by delaying filing charges, conveying her to Safdarjung Hospital, instead of to AIIMS where she had been referred, and forcibly burning the body in the middle of the night without permission of the grieving family. A journalist on his way to meet the family of the victim was arrested and is being denied access to lawyer or to his family. "What makes a powerful government so insecure that it must build a wall of policemen to barricade from public view -- and cut off access to -- a village in which a tramatised Dalit family grieves the death of a 19-year-old daughter brutalised by upper caste men?" asked an editorial in The Indian Express. In recent months 68 year old Gautam Navlakha was denied spectacles and 83 year old Jesuit priest Father Stan Swamy, who suffers from tremors of hands due to Parkinson's disease, was denied drinking straws, in prison, reported BBC. Neither of the men has been convicted of any crime in a court of law and so must be presumed to be innocent until proven guilty. Not in India. The worst example of unlimited power of the state was the forcible imposition of the biometric identity card Aadhaar, which has photographs, prints of all 10 fingers and iris scans. It was started as a means to identify those in need of financial help from the state. It was made compulsory for bank accounts and now is mandatory for filing income tax returns, wrote Usha Ramanathan, making it a perfect tool for surveillance. Andy Mukherjee is heartbroken because he cannot see any progress in India. We have stopped hoping long ago.