“This is indeed India; the land of dreams and romance, of fabulous wealth and fabulous poverty, of splendor and rags, of palaces and hovels, of famine and pestilence, of genii and giants and Aladdin lamps, of tigers and elephants, the cobra and the jungle, the country of a thousand nations and a hundred tongues, of a thousand religions and two million gods, cradle of the human race, birthplace of human speech, mother of history, grandmother of legend, great-grandmother of tradition, whose yesterdays bear date with the mouldering antiquities of the rest of the nations—the one sole country under the sun that is endowed with an imperishable interest for alien prince and alien peasant, for lettered and ignorant, wise and fool, rich and poor, bond and free, the one land that all men desire to see, and having seen once, by even a glimpse, would not give that glimpse for the shows of all the rest of the globe combined.”—Mark Twain, Following the Equator, 1897

As I
reflect on an email I received just today from an EMBA24 classmate which said “To see so many people struggling to get by without food,
water, sanitation...but yet be so genuinely happy...makes you realize what is
important in life.”, I am proud of the discovery we have made as a class
together.

India
has been independent for only 65 years, hence when one assesses this young
country, one has to be generous and base the assessments on an evolving trend.
To understand the complexities of India at Independence, look at European Union
and multiply the diversity of the EU by 1000 and divide the resources by 1000
and you approximately get the semblance of the India in 1947. When the British
left India, the life expectancy for an average Adult was 32 and there were a few
centers of higher education. Over 25 million Indians had died in the preceding
100 years of foreign rule owing to famine and mismanagement of resources.

While there's a lot more to
achieve and millions of Indians to uplift, looking at the rate at which India has
progressed in the last 65 years, I have no doubt that the trend is positive and
the remaining human developmental indicators will continue to improve.
--Olyvia Rakshit
1 comment:
Its nice post on Executive MBA. keep it up.
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