RE: IS India shining -kalyan

Is India shining?

My answer is YES. One should compare the various parameters with respect to
what India was about 10 years back.

Do we need to sleep or pause in the pursuit of making it more developed? No,
we are yet to reach even an equilibrium stage. There is very long way to go.
Lot of corrections will happen on the way to India�s goals.

Here is my take on why India is shining:

1) Literacy rate of 70% is unbelievable achievement. We were at 35-40% in
the 80s. This is definitely going to have trigger effect in the future.

2) We have come out of the dilemma of capitalism vs. socialism. We are
progressively moving towards capitalism. This will trigger entrepreneurship
and in turn converts the ideas into wealth. The wealth generated leads to
more jobs. We are entering into a cycle of wealth creation. In other words,
we moved from garibi hatao to Amir bano stage.

3) The digital age has reduced the distances. Information is available to
remotest location in India. The information age is set to start many grass
root movements and it is a natural process. Added to that if infrastructures
like roads, electricity and transportation are added, and then sky is the
limit for the rural entrepreneur. The positive news is infrastructure
development is pursued aggressively by the government.

4) Finally yet importantly, India�s political process is more vibrant than
in the past. It learned to live with coalition dharma in spite of some
disadvantages. Real democracy is to stay.

However, there is an old saying that not all that glitters is GOLD. To
convert the shining India to GOLD in the next 15 years, India has to do many
things. These are clearly written in the India 2020 vision written by Abdul
Kalam. I recommend everyone to read the book.

The things that need to be done for golden future are( all my views ):

1) Modernize Agriculture. Agriculture cannot be enslaved to poor farmer.
Capitalism should creep into agriculture so that more investment can happen
in this area. We should be able to produce a lot of food with less water and
in less land.

2) Aggressively pursue modernization of India�s defense. We need more
stealth ships, multi role aircrafts and tons and tons of missiles. India did
this mistake in its previous golden era. External forces came to India just
to loot its wealth. As we increasing becoming wealth, we need to spend at
least 3 percent of GDP on defense. This is the lessons learnt form our
history.

3) The above two points are nothing but Lal Bahdur Sashtri�s slogan �Jai
jawan Jai kisan�.

4) Pursue massive infrastructural changes in all aspects of core sectors
like Electricity, transportation and ports. This will trigger manufacturing
which will offset the layoffs that can happen in agricultural modernization.
In other words, this reduces the dependence on agriculture.

Here is the fantastic article:
http://www.indiaempowered.com/full_story.php?content_id=76249&spf=true

I strongly recommend the members to read the above article written by none
other than Abdul Kalam.

-Ramana

----