India Lies in You

INDIA LIES IN YOU

Mahatma Gandhi had said “India lies in its villages”. During the fight for independence India was economically backward and most of the population was in rural India. Gandhi realised that for India to progress, rural India had to grow and grow fast. India was sharply divided into the rural backward India and the emerging urban. After sixty years of independence has the divide merged? Does India still exist in its villages?

In the past sixty years India’s growth has been dynamic. Today it is regarded as one of the fastest growing nations in the world and is poised to become the second largest economy after China in the world. The book written by former President Dr. A.P.J Abdul Kalam India 20-20: A Vision for the New Millennium is being seen as a reality. The book says that India’s future lies in its youth. India has the fastest growing youth population. India has a competitive advantage over other countries in terms of education, technological advancement and innovation. The world has started looking towards India for solutions. It has truly arrived on the world scene.

But this remarkable growth has also been flawed by our failure to deal with effectively with mass poverty, illiteracy, unemployment, and various forms of religious, social and gender discrimination. After six decades of independence, we have anywhere between one-third to one-fourth of the population desperately poor and denied of the minimum conditions necessary for human existence. All these problems are interconnected. Neither the state intervention with centralised planning or market- oriented high growth in a globalised world has been able to solve the above problems.

On the other hand we have the urban India and its growth has been remarkable. With the best of education available it grew rapidly. After liberalisation and the growth of information technology sector the urban Indian youth is growing rapidly. The disparity between the rural India and the urban India has widened.

Does the growth of rural India solely lie on the Government? Is it not the responsibility of the urban youth to see that their counter parts in rural India also progress? We need to extend our vision beyond times and persons. The urban youth needs to identify with the rural youth and think not only of their individual good but of collective good of the nation.


Meera Chandrasekaran
SSIMS.