Happy Reflections (My Dear Peer Group)

We are in a rather happy situation, isn’t it? After all we are the citizens of a powerful country growing at a rate of close to 10% annually – well there is a bit of a difference between 8% and 10% when it comes to GDP growth rates, but since these are happy reflections I have taken the liberty – with a very realistic chance that it will overcome economic backwardness and associated vulnerabilities. Those of us (everyone in my peer group), who are financially secure have the great opportunity to play a meaningful role in shaping our society and helping it overcome its gravest problems. But this particular post is not regarding the opportunity, it is regarding things from our past, things that we need to be thankful for.

Value System: We all started fairly poor – did not have an “economically” privileged childhood. What we had instead was a blessed childhood with our elders, teachers and parents emphasizing on the need to be hard-working, humble, polite and principled. Consequently, we all understand the importance of material possessions but these do not dictate the choices we make.

Glorious Traditions: We never had any doubts regarding our glorious traditions – be it religious tolerance, non violence, or overcoming unjust systems such as colonialism and “emergency”. 

Learning Society: Proud that we are of our traditions, we embrace progressive systems. We chose to be constituted as a secular democracy in 1950, we started liberalizing in the early 90s, we have satellites facilitating mobile telephony (we still do not have public toilets in sufficient numbers). We have not turned a blind eye to the corrupting influences of economic incentives and are using technology to improve transparency in public as well as corporate governance.

Tenacity: We have all overcome odds to be what we are today. Be it the higher education system that tried to tell us we were just not good enough or the prospect of unemployment because there weren’t enough government jobs, we didn’t let these things deter us. In fact these have only made us stronger as we brush shoulders with the best the world has to offer.

Look at it from this perspective - Is there anything that can stop us?