For at least 4000 years, India's social and religious structures have withstood invasions, famines, religious persecutions, political upheavals, and many other cataclysms. Few other countries could claim to have a national identity with such a long history behind it. To describe India as a land of contrasts is to state the obvious. Although there are many countries which could qualify for such a description in terms of their different ethnic groups, languages, religions, geography and traditions, few can match the vast scale and diversity to be found in India.

India is a land of glorious past, a dismayed present and a future that is being looked at more with pessimism than optimism. In a nutshell, we are at the crossroads now. Which path do we take ... towards growth, prosperity and development or towards nepotism, divisiveness and turmoil.

Ours is a country that has produced heroes and success stories at such regular intervals that one would think of it as some automated process ... Mahatma Gandhi, C.V. Raman, Sunil Gavaskar, Kapil Dev, Sachin Tendulkar, Lata Mangeshkar, Sushmita Sen, Aishwarya Rai, Rabindranath Tagore, M.F. Hussain, Leander Paes, Satyajit Ray .... the list is endless.

Yet today we are looking at our future not with optimism but fear and despondency. There is a growing sense of helplessness, a feeling of impotency, that we are unable to do anything constructive in today's India. We are worried about the kind of future we are going to bring up our next generation in.

The same country that gave us Rani of Jhansi and Indira Gandhi is also the country where dowry deaths are at the highest, the country which sends Peace Keeping Forces to neighbouing countries is also the country where a Veerappan roams around like a free bird unable to be caught by the best brains in the police force.

A couple of years back we Indians used to ask ourselves  " But what can we individuals do ?  ". Unfortunately, today that has been replaced by a resigned  " Arre Baba, we cannot do anything. Chalta Hai !  ". How ironical. Is this the state of affairs which we will be proudly handing over to the next generation ?

It is time to say NO ! It is time for us to take small but committed steps towards making our country a better place to live in. We might not be able to make radical changes in how our country operates today ... but yes, we can make a change in the lives of atleast a couple of people. And if that is achieved, it is better than sitting by the wayside, wringing our hands and lamenting about the state of affairs !!

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