“Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high;
Where knowledge is free;
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls;
Where words come out from the depth of truth;
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection;
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way in the dreary desert sand of dead habit;
Where the mind is led forward by thee into ever widening thought and action....
into that heaven of freedom, my father, let my country awake.”
- Rabindranath Tagore.
As India gets into it's 60th year of independence, the country seems to be basking in the attention it is getting in the world press. It's no longer a country of snake charmers and the elephants; Where we stand today is on a promising path to glory.
A look at the 60 years shows the success of democracy, the worlds largest democracy has stayed well and prospered; except for the few weeks of emergency, thanks to Indira Gandhi and her ego.
The last 20 years has seen more progress than we have in the first 40 years. But let's look at some of the intiatives that took us to where we stand today.
The Greeen Revolution during the 60's focussed om increasing the productivity of the farm sector. Being an agrarian economy, it is important for us to improve the productivity and the quality of the food grains. The era concentrated at increasing the productivity, there were a lot of subsidies given on the fertilizers and on hybrid grain seeds. These helped us improve our output and took care of our food deficit. A lot of these subsidies have still stayed on over the decades.
The Industrialization era led by Nehru's vision focused on the core industries. The govt invested in steel, iron and coal plants which provided a lot of employment as well as helped us in improving the infrastructure of the country. As part of this, ports were created and shipping saw a huge growth.
Malnutrition was another big problem on the growing nation. The govt health agencies took the help of the media to advertise this. I remember the ad's 'Dudh dudh.. piyo glass full' as well as 'Sunday ho ya Monday.. roz khao ande' so that the children had more protien rich food. Dr Verghese Kurien who started Amul was a pioneer in this revolution where he created a co-operative society and made a organized society out of the predominently small farm owners. Amul since then has grown leap and bounds.
The telecom revolution was another huge bridge that gapped the divide between the Urban and Rural communication. The telephone exhanges where formed on small EPABX systems and they linked it down to the ubiquotous local STD/PCO booths.Sam Pitroda's vision got us connected much faster than the prior di-da-di-da telegrams. The second wave of this was the mobile revolution where the mobile service providers have been expanding thier network and the bandwidth.
While all these efforts earlier were concentrated in improving the domestic industries, the vision that brought us into the competetive world was the opening up of our economy in 91. Dr Manmohan Singh's vision fully supported by the late Narsimha Rao govt. launched us into the global arena. Our economy till then followed the commie pattern of state owned enterprise. The opening up of economy promoted the private enterprise. It promoted and rewarded entrepreneurship; increased our exports and brought us on to level fields of global competition.
The Technology revolution which was envisioned by visionaries like Dr Homi baba, Prof Yash Pal, Dr Abdul kalam and Dr Kasturi Ranganathan was what aided the revolution in all other areas. Dr Baba's conceptualization of atomic energy for peaceful purposes and the satellite designed under Prof Yash pal aided the telecon revolution.
The opening up of the economy brought us into the upcoming technology which was the software revolution. Though we got out there as cheap coders for y2K issue, we have since grown up the value chain and are today providing software solution. TCS, Infosys, Wipro and the likes are competing hand to hand with the global vendors. The whoz who of techonoly companies like IBM, HP, Capgemini, Accenture and the others have opened up shops in India and have been growing thier headcount by the day. This industry has gorwn from $0 to a $30 billion industry today and has provided jobs to the millions of youth.
Gone are those days when we used to gather to watch the news on DD at 8:30 followed by serials like yeh jo hai zindagi and Nukkad. Today, you have the choice of over a 100 channels most of them serving niche areas. This has given a big boost to journalism, film making, acting and other associated industires.
While these things have bought us to where we are today; the future looks very bright for the Gen X. We seem to have the largest youth in the world. The education system has been churning out resources educated in niche areas. We have seen a lot of entrepreunial spirit in upcoming industries where we are competing head on head with the developed countries. This includes IT, Biotech, R&D, etc...
What we need at this is for the govt. to provide the kind of frame work that would facilitate further growth in economy. This includes:
Better policies to help entrepreneurship, promote business and ease the export/import process.
A stable govt. that works for a common cause for the growth of the country than thier own agendas.
Better law & Order that would give a sense of security to the citizens of India.
Better healthcare for the general public. The govt. hospitals that are set-up for the lower middle class and lower does not have good hygiene or basic facilities. This needs to be improvised.
Better insurance or social security for the people of India
Promote new areas that has a lot of potential. THis includes sports, tourism etc... India has good potential for tourism, it needs to be harnessed better. Sports is still treated as hobby than a career choice. For a country with over a billion people, we do not have enough representation in the olympics or the Asian meet. While we have the one off like Rana, Sania and Anand.. there's a lot more potential for these areas.
The infrastructure needs to be improvised that would include road, train, air, ports, telephone infrastructure...
Technocrats and beaurocrats who can take us thr'the next phase of revolutions.
Less of stupid politicians with a dozen criminal cases against them who only care about making money.
You can check out the 2020 vision that Kalam has laid out for India. I have it on my earlier blog on Kalam.
In a nutshell, things have not been better for us to play on a level playing ground. It's out for our generation to get out there and rule the world. India rocks :)
vande mātaram
sujalāṃ suphalāṃ malayajaśītalām
sasya śyāmalāṃ mātaram
śubhra jyotsnā pulakita yāminīm
phulla kusumita drumadalaśobhinīm
suhāsinīṃ sumadhura bhāṣiṇīm
sukhadāṃ varadāṃ mātaram
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