I am writing this after India celebrated 60th birthday as an Independent nation. No doubt, India still lacks in many areas, but we need to also appreciate our journey so far. Here I am orchestrating a positive outlook about some of our achievements which in some ways may be similar to the views already expressed or may be different too!
a) Expect less: We are still 60 years old as a independent country and still need a lot of time to put together people, process, technology and common mindset to achieve higher goals. Diverse cultures, languages and regional priorities are few of the large set of things that we need to work with. Bottom Line: Have Patience
b) Remarkable Progress:
Thanks to the public sector undertakings which generated millions of jobs and generated a rich pool of labor force. Some of the talented people from the public sector are today instrumental in running some of the successful private engineering, mechanical companies. Also, an offshoot from the main stream industry resulted in creation of the IT industry, which we know is reaching newer heights by the day. Also significant efforts in agriculture & food packaging have been made.
c) Resource Pool of Qualified People; India has generated(still) a huge resource pool of qualified engineers, doctors, scientists, skilled labor and other specialists. Look around the IT companies in the US, Europe, Australia and the oil industry in the Gulf ..They are all beaming with Indian techies and engineers. Off late the nurses from Kerala are the most sought after people in USA!. Ten years back, who imagined nursing industry had so much potential? However, some changes are inevitable in future to avoid oversupply of resources in few areas like engineering, medicine, etc. Indians need to look beyond IT, Engineering to explore areas like aviation, medical services, life sciences, etc
d) Economic Improvements: Early 90s saw the elimination of some red tape and some radical improvements in the economic front.
e)HealthCare: India has an amazing pool of qualified doctors and the medical staff to cater to the burgeoning population. In the 1970s, most of the middle class and upper middle class population was born in the government hospitals. It is just
that increased population, lack of focus in government hospitals, corruption and the higher affordability levels, which have made govt.hospitals to look like poor cousins. However, please note most of the current day famous doctors ( in the age group of 50 and above) had prior govt.hospital experience where they gained immense experience handling a variety of complex medical cases
g)Infrastructure: Believe it or not, we are not doing that bad. Any city has at least a decent network of at least one mode of public transport. Railways have been innovative enough to make profits and offer strong competition to the emerging aviation industry.
h)Retail Power: Look around any major Indian city and you will realize the increase in the number of shopping malls. Some of the malls in Bangalore have visitors of about 1,00,000 per week. A good retail performance is the indicator of many factors like income & spending levels, also generating the direct & indirect employment in the services and hospitality industry.
6 comments:
Kewl positive blog. Add to it... the latest telecom trend - cell phone influx. Nowhere in the world is owning a cellphone phone service cheaper than that in India - just 5-6 dollars a month!
India is great in making things affordable to it's consumers. Think of cable tv bill - when it started, we used to pay Rs.100, i.e., ~$2 per month for 80 channels!
Like these, most of the latest things around the world will come into consumer savvy Indian market.
Well written blog.
On the positive front, you may also want to add literacy, self sufficiency in food, communications, equal civil rights, etc.
Everything is not green, though. We still have to fight corruption, power hungry politicians, crime, inflation, snail paced justice system, etc.
Roshan & Shyam,thanks for your feedback. Yes these points are true and we still have a long way to go
Nice blog !
I felt to add my two cents, when I saw comments and trying to measure success of INDIA with cell phones, and consumer savvy indian markets.
That is all not real progress. Infact, can lead to our fall.
In my view, the real success should be measured by "the respect that a weakest person is getting in the society. ( I like america because a sweeper is respected by a CEO, not becuase they manufacture nice IFONEs )". The success should be measured by "how resource circulation in the society is going between have's and haven'ts".
I am thinking we are forgetting the real progress made in centuries by our ancesstors. With out catching on to the spirit of india, we can not progress ( real progress ).
These are the times to understand spirit of India.
Believe me or not the root cause of all the problems lies with in the people. Most of the solutions ( if not all) are there in our heritage, and we need to dig them out. People are corrupt because they are thinking that is the way of living better quality life. Country is lead by fools, because intellectuals are so timid to face the challenges of leading. Weak people venture into to crime becuase they people are ignored or not respected by haves.
inner statisfaction from the soul ( being not materialistic, this is quality of western civilisation ), holding on to the responsibility for our acts ( as krishna directed arjuna to fight it out rather running away), seeing god in each and every individual ( however weak that person is. This helps resource circulation b/w have's and haven'ts ) are some of the solutions we could inherit from our heritage.
"Truth, purity and unselfishness - wherever present, there is no power below or above the SUN to crush the possessor thereof, Equipped with these, one individual is able to face the whole universe in opposition".
We proved it in our freedom struggle. Explore Truth !! True happiness for our coming generations. That is the job given to us by God.
Some of the inspiring Vivekanada quotes,
"But mark you, if you give up that spirituality leaving aside to go after the materialising civilisation of the west, the result will be that in few generations you will become an extinct race, becuase the backbone of the nation will be broken, the foundation upon which the national edifice has been built will be undermined and the rsult will be annihilation all round."
"In spite of the sparkle and glitter of western civilisation, in spite of all its marvvellous manifestation of power, standing upon the platform, I tell them to their face that it is all vain. It is vanity of vanities. Gold alone lives; the soul alone lives; spirituality alone lives. Hold on to that".
"The indian nation can not be killed - Deathless it stands and it will stand so as long as that spirit shall remain as the background and so long as her people do not give up thier spirituality".
"Close your lips and let your hearts open. Work out the salvation of this land and of the whole world, each of you thinking that the entire burden is on your shoulders. Carry the light and life of Vedanta to every door and rouse up divinity that is hidden within every soul. Then whatever may be the measure of your success, you will have the satisfaction that you have lived, worked and died for a greate cause."
Sorry for a long comment !! On a long weekend found time to add this much !
( Thank god, my wife called me so have to stop here ) :)
Thanks Janki - It was wonderful reading thru your comments. As I read it multiple times, the points appeal more to an individual than the entire nation.These appear more like spiritual or a philosophical thoughts and as we've seen some excellent gurus in the past took these to common people. As I mentioned earlier, these appeal only to a small section of the society. A successful nation has to first find a stable economic platform for which there needs to be all round development of the infrastructure.
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