Reflections

This is the second part of the post I had published last week. Here we hear about : India – the view from outside Harsh is a consumer research & design consultant. An easy-going guy who strongly sees himself as a man of today's times. The job allows him an unique opportunity to observe people across countries & social strata. This touch with real people & his wife keeps him grounded in life. What keeps him going are traveling & cricket. India. The best thing about this word is that it means something to virtually everyone in the world! Not all populations are so blessed. The blessing has often also been a curse in the past & has led to some fairly violent episodes in history. The present of the last 20-years has shown the inherent promise & power of this blessing. However, we now stand at a cusp – what the future holds for this blessing will be shaped by the next 2 generations. So, here are my thoughts on India as a young man, who doesn’t live in...

I always wonder what exactly young Indians think about India and its future. We are the generation that benefited from the reforms of 1991; however our mindset and thinking was entirely from the seventies and eighties. We instinctively stiffen if there is even a mild criticism of India from a foreign source, we are instinctively left of centre and deeply suspicious of the United States, we are all for women’s freedom and participation in the workforce, but have to struggle to suppress our disapproval of women wearing western dress. We feel that the youngsters today have lack of patriotism (as we see it) and voluntarism which was very much a part of our lives as students and young men. In order to find out, I asked my former student and now friend (if there can be friendship across this large age difference) Yachana Prakash ( I use her maiden name)to find me some young and articulate people who think about our India and ask them what they feel about it. The following are contribution...