India poised!!

This has been debated in the intellectual circles of our beloved nation for some time now....may it be a group of concerned industrialists discussing their long term vision of the Indian economy, or some activists calling these industrialists a bunch of greedy capitalist pigs, or a couple of young executives who work in the upcoming corporations of these industrialists talking about the 'India-story' over a cup of Barista coffee. As interesting as this debate always sounds, when you think about it in loneliness, it sends a shiver down your spine. Today in the Ahmedabad section of Times of India, I found these two stories listed so close together, and I could not help but notice the stark contradiction in the India of today, being reflected so clearly. The gory details of the second piece of news made me as much or more sad as compared to the excitement I experienced from the details of the first.

Personally, I don't see anything wrong in the fact that the Indian economy is booming, even though it is for a select segment of the society and the gap between the haves and have-nots is widening. The simple reason behind this is that in my opinion that is the only way to coming out of the 'developing nation' tag, and the downsides we are talking about will be a part of the process no matter how hard you try. In the changing face of the nation, the generation that is caught in the middle will have to give this sacrifice.

However, we should keep in mind that as a nation we will have to control some aspects of this change to avoid things from getting into a chaos. First and foremost is quality education. In order to sustain the growth and provide enough quality man power to the industrial juggernauts that can leapfrog the nation into the future, we will need to improve our educational processes and institutions on a mass scale. Second is retraining of the existing man power. The changes that have come in the past few years, and the changes that are bound to come in the coming years, will make a lot of people obsolete and put them out of their jobs or make their roadside small businesses go bankrupt. We will need to put in place systems which facilitates the retraining of these people into fields where there is opportunity for survival. Unfortunately as it stands today, I have not seen any concrete efforts made at a war footing on either of these avenues.

I am no expert on socio-economics so I cannot give my 'prediction' on what will happen given a certain sequence of events. Maybe these factors won't have any effect and the market driven economy will find a solution to these problems on its own. Maybe sooner or later the people who can make a difference will come to realize the gravity of this problem and try to rectify it. If this is to happen I can only wish that it happens sooner....before the India that is poised starts looking down in disappointment instead of looking up with a refreshing smile.