Shweta, Nishita, Aarushi, Aishwarya, Pulina. My confidence in our future as a country come from these youngsters. A Bharatanatyam dancer and 99.82 percentiler, another from the Pataudi rural belt joint family of 21 members where no one went to a college (she has 96 percentile), another – a poet, yet another girl from a modest background from Rajasthan….. All in search of progress, excellence, dreamy eyed! Nothing stops them! Nothing can!
I always find family as the single most important strength and nation builder – of India or our society – the family, the unlettered mother, the less-spoken-about father, the uneducated brother who is supporting his younger sister strongly against the negative social forces. All are singularly focused on enabling the next generation. The repetitiveness with which I see this up-close is a testimony to the power of education in India. How, culturally, valued it is!
These girls (well, many of them) are traversing a vast distance from the lower middle or the bottom of the pyramid to the top of it through their own efforts and by leveraging education. The powerhouse that this society is going to emerge in the next decade or two will be entirely due to the efforts of the mothers, fathers, brothers and sisters.
Give me democracy, give me education and give me the Indian family – we can build the VishwaGuru status for India! And remember, I am deeply conscious of the imperfections in each of these! But these are still the best! U take away any one and we will travel backwards.
Needless to say, I am counting on leadership, policy making, reducing corruption etc., as outcomes of the core causal factors (in my view)! Well! For now, applaud these girls who are on their way to the top schools. Save this post and look up after 20 years. You will have heard and see about them already. I am saying it for having seen the last 20’years from this previleged seat !
All the best, Shweta, Nishita, Aarushi, Aishwarya and Pulina. IIMs would be previleged to have you on campus. If they don’t pick you – go by what Sehwag said when asked about how did he feel when he was not chosen for the Indian Cricket team – “Whose loss was it ?”, he asked in how raw Haryanvi Ishtyle! 🙂
Satya
