india in the next decade

India has made a paradigm shift from just a decade ago; it now has the confidence along with the world of its sure progress in the days ahead.
Its vast economic potential has always been hampered by the slow pace of governance and administrative hiccoughs .These are bound to change in the future with acts like the right to information and similar policies of transparencies
History has shown that India went through golden ages when the rest of the world lived in prehistoric savagery .The Indus valley civilization five millenniums ago ,Maurya ,Chola and Gupta dynasties two millenniums before ,Our rich heritage in science ,art ,literature ,religion ,was beyond compare .With China India could take pride of place as one of the worlds greatest and oldest civilization .we missed the bus in the past few centuries when foreign invasions and internecine warfare between our rulers made us weak. Democracy heralded our country to great expectations only to be belied by weak political leaderships with myopic vision who split the country by caste, and religion and weakened it, this continues today.
What is it that makes us think the wheel is turning and India will attain its glory in the coming decade?
The demographic ratio of a country is a surefire index of its future; it depicts the independent population of a country that is the percentage of its subjects who is its workforce, the age group between 25 to 60.
In India in 2004 out of a population of a 1080 million this was about 672 million with the balance being dependent .In developing countries the ratio is in favor of the dependents .The average age of the population of our country being a young twenty nine with countries like Japan having this number as forty eight.
Foreign investments are rising at phenomenal rates in spite of poor infrastructure and stagnancy in political decisions.
Companies like IBM.Motorola, Microsoft, and Hewlett Packard have not hesitated to be part of the Indian basket.
India could do well in pharmaceuticals, education, medicine, Information technology, and service industry to name a few.
Its vast resources could be a potential for great development by agriculture
As Bimal Jalan the former governor of the Reserve Bank of India in his book “The Future of India .’,feels it is the politics ,economics ,and governance of our country, their interface and combined effects on the functioning of our democracy that will determine its future .
He feels the present euphoria will last only if there is political will to seize the new opportunities that arise.
A future close enough to be seen can be in our grasp when there is more accountability with a strengthened judiciary, effective ways to curb corruption and enhance fiscal viability
Labor laws are overtly protective today unlike in countries like China this should be shifted to a more collaborative and participatory module
Sashi Tharoor the former U.N. official ,author and India watcher feels India needs seven attributes for its progress into the decade ahead ,they are to maintain its pluralism ,its richness of variety and equal opportunities to its integrated mosaic subjects, its democracy which has to be strengthened ,it has to tackle its poverty ,control its population and change its demographic profile ,strengthen federalism and its economic reforms and employment .
Its expatriate force could contribute to a great extent as the present overseas remittances amount to more than 21 billion dollars.
Pankaj dubey a media and development consultant based in Delhi feels that the best things going for a bright future for India today is its youth,its latent entrepreneurship, which had always been watered down by restrictive policies is now opening up to a newer and more freer ambience ,the world today values intellectual capital more than any other physical resource which is an advantage for India ,rapidly rising literacy rate specially among the youth and finally the explosion of information technology capabilities where the country is emerging as a world leader
The future ahead for our country is bright but behind the rosy facade we should realize that for every skyscraper a slum hides behind it ,for every booming Indian city a naxalite village explodes in anger ,for every child who goes abroad to study there will be ten who cannot even study an alphabet.
Ballooning population ,crippling poverty, failing agriculture, growing militancy have to negotiated within the norms of free state .India has never taken recourse to tinpot solutions but stood steadfast in its democratic principles against all these odds .
Tarun tejpal of Tehelka .com feels that in India a country, as complex and desperate, as old and modern riven by many contestations the only dogma for its future lies in that of Mohandas Gandhi and its unrelenting belief in humanism...
Lasting change does not come overnight it is a process staying afloat on dialogue and empathy.
India in the coming decade will soar ahead ,of this there is no doubt but to what height and how it would land on its progress would depend on the combination of all these factors listed and to make the dreams become true there is need to work for it and believe in it .