India at 60 in a Changing World: next 20 years

This post is a little late, it should have been up by the 15th. The event was one hosted by LSE which marked the launch of LSE's India observatory. The speakers were:
OP Bhatt - Chairman of the State Bank of India
Mervyn King - Governor of the Bank of England
Kamal Nath - Minister for commerce and industry for the Indian government
YV Reddy - Governor of the Reserve Bank of India
Nicholas Stern - IG Patel Chair in Government and Economics and director of the India Observatory at LSE.

The event was an enjoyable one and unlike what I feared, there was a good mix of praise and concern when the speakers echoed their sentiments. I shall list some notable comments by Kamal Nath and OP Bhatt.

Kamal Nath:
"India's perception of itself is changing, not the world's alone."
"...India has more people living on $1 a day(300 million) than those in all the Least Developed Countries put together. "
"Indian agriculture is about subsistence and not about commerce."

OP Bhatt:
"Infrastructure is a concern and if not addresed will choke growth.......India will need $600 billion in the next five years for infrastructure development. "
"The scale and size of Indian banking is a concern.......market capitalization is very low."

In terms of the speeches OP Bhatt's was the most engrossing, he spoke more about the problems facing the country, and even as he did so, there was the unmistakeable spirit behind his words that none of these problems were indomitable. He dwelled on all the key sectors(education, public health, infrastructure, finance, labour) which have a direct/indirect bearing on the country's future. Reflecting his awareness that he was addressing a global audience, he brought his speech to an end with a sanskrit phrase - "Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam" (the world is one family) and stressed on the world's need to realise it soon. That alone made my day.

The future looks bright.

Being an Indian

I find myself in a time and place where almost everyday I am meeting someone new, someone from a different culture, someone who looks at the world in different ways than I do. Most often when I explain where I am from, I am mostly met with the response that I am in one of the most exciting places today. And yes, that is quite true. India is definitely an exciting place to be today, there is a lot happening in the country. Every industrial sector is writing new stories, be it IT, retail, media or telecom, to name a few. Educated Indian minds express themselves and their opinions quite eloquently over personal blogs. There are many questions being posed in the public space, over education, government, labour and there are quite a few intellectuals who nurture public debate over informed articles in the print media.
We are looking at a period when the reins of the future are slowly being handed over to a younger generation, a generation that is very ambitious, a generation that is increasingly questioning it's identity in a world that is more connected today than it ever has been. The whiff of change is ever present, but lest one gets carried away with optimism, there are serious problems (social and political) that are ever present too. It is upto this new, young, hot-blooded generation to find more imaginitive solutions to the issues that face the country. When independence was won in 1947, democracy in India was viewed by the west as an experiment whose chances of success were bleak. But 60 years later, democracy survives in this great nation, not once has it slipped into military rule. History will continue to be written here and it's implications will have a lot of meaning for the rest of the world. I shall bring this post to an end with an inspiring video commemorating 60 years of Indian independence.

John Berger

I met him for the first time today. The event was the completion of a new book he'd written, 'Letters from A to X' , parts of which he read out to a small audience. After the reading session the microphone was passed around the audience and questions were entertained, starting from his book and finally centring around the Palestine issue. At the end of the event I was fortunate to have a very brief conversation with him. This is the advice he gave to younger generations wishing to take up the cause of the oppressed-

• Listen
• The struggle is unending, and those wishing to enter the struggle must realise it.