Independence day musings!

India attained its independence from the British rule on the 15th of August, 1947. Its a day of celebration, but also reflection- a celebration of all our achievements- as the world's largest democracy, as a rapidly developing country with a huge educated workforce, as a potentially big market for tons of products and services, as a country that has a huge potential for being a veritable superpower in the years to come.

It is also a time of reflection- of why we haven't improved our infrastructure, why don't we have enough good roads and food and water and electricity for people, why one heavy rain can drown the commercial capital of the country, why we still have about 450 million people who are totally illiterate, why even the 'best minds' cannot take us faster on a road of development, why we cannot weed out corruption but take it almost as a part and parcel of public life, why despite all the urban expansion and so called rise of the middle class, aspects of fundamentalist religious thinking continue to bog us down as we hope to go forward in the 21st century.

These are tricky issues- some political, some social and some economic.

But there are some things that need to be urgently dealt with and they are essentially two-
a) Improve infrastructure: There is absolutely no excuse for roads to be so bad, electricity supply to be so inconsistent and water to be a constantly scare source in urban areas. We cannot hope for investment or development to take place if this doesnt happen, and soon.
2) Wider educational base: The educational system is still quite narrow- very few kids come under the purview of what can be termed acceptable education. Much more attentions needs to be given to education as opposed to our defence. Our malaise is illiteracy, not Pakistan or the dispute about Kashmir. Education is the only source of sustainable development and we need to commit to that.

I do like our democracy but it has come with certain costs- a potential tiger has been turned into a lumbering elephant and thats the pace of development we will take; China, as a result of market socialism, has moved much faster and with a more committed sense of purpose.

As we approach sixty years of freedom, I think we have leveraged on the British legacies- an english education, democratic institutions, formal justice systems- well enough within a larger framework to create a fairly robust nation, that survives despite all the chaos that seems to pervade it. I am not very jingoistic about either our past or our future prospects, but it does seem that the latter is more promising than the former has been and that is always a healthy sign!