The Hindu Business Line : Sweet sixty

In less than 24 hours, we will be celebrating one more Independence Day. This time around, it is special. India is completing 60 years of Independence. While extending complements for its achievements and complaining about the slow pace of progress, one must not forget some fundamentals regarding this young country and the much younger economy combined with the growing numbers of youth with booming aspirations.

Sixty years is not a great age for a nation, especially for one that is carved out of hundreds of princely states and dozens of language groups, with the zeal to maintain identities and apparently different cultures, if one goes by separate festivals and rituals, for instance.

Despite the grand talk of unity in diversity, diversity is what is always in the forefront threatening amity and fuelling animosity. The young nation sees no end to situations routinely described as law and order problems, resulting from one or other diversity and one perceived inequality or the other. We need to understand the troubles and tribulations of the young nation and move forward as fast as possible away from the fetters of yesterday.

Despite the hesitant economic reforms of the early 1980s, the reforms that made real difference began in the early 1990s. If the term ‘economy’ is applied to free economies and not the controlled and state-managed ones (with information monopoly by state and its agents), India as a free economy is at the prime of youth at sweet 16. On yardsticks such as rate of economic growth, exports, foreign direct investment inflows, foreign exchange reserves, the 16-year-old has done extremely well, given the freedom it enjoys in terms of politics, expression and dissent (including the variants that include some amount of verbal and physical violence). We have a fairly high share of youth in the total population. They have rising aspirations, propelled by the demonstration effect of the media and the new rich. Globalisation is pushing the aspirations further up.

While celebrating 60, we need to ponder over problems and issues we have conveniently pushed under the rug. These include reforming the political and civil service system with emphasis on delivery and results instead of speeches and expenditures; highest level of equality in the schooling infrastructure, both physical and human, to ensure that children and youth of the poor families achieve educational outcomes comparable to the rich; real empowerment of women; and the growing perception about corruption, which is increasingly accepted as a way of life.

(The author is Visiting Faculty, Sri Sathya Sai University, Prasanthi Nilayam. He can be reached at bhanoji@gmail.com)

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