Next is what Mr Prime Minister?

I've been reading A better India, a better world by Narayana Murthy. In one of his articles written on 15 August 2007, he outlines eight outstanding achievements of India: green revolution, white revolution, space programme, telecommunications, nuclear programme, economic changes (1991), IT revolution and Independant media. I mentally arranged some of these into our nation's decadal achievements or lets say 10 year unintended & unplanned achievements! Now, I haven't researched the actual dates, so kindly ignore the precision. I am trying to get a jist of the direction of our movement. So here goes:

1. 50s & probably halfway 60s we were abysmally socialist, trying to develop resources & mega-infrastructure for water, power & transport.

2. halfway 60s & 70s was the green revolution that made us food independant (mostly we weren't self sufficient till after Indira Gandhi's time, but the revolution was happening fast around this time & problems of logistics were higher than problems of actual production)

3. 70s & 80s was the white revolution that made us a self-sufficient milk country, even one of the largest exporters. It was also the advent of telecommunications & large scale space technology

4. 90s was ofcourse the financial revolution, delivering us from socialism to capitalism....

Mr Murthy stresses that each of these needed a visionary: Be it Mr Swaminathan Iyer or Verghese Kurien or Mr Sam Pitroda... a single individuals or a group of individuals have struggled to lead the programmes. Well, we all know there are teams of people struggling to work on schedule behind each leader / visionary, but the vision is necessary for development. Now, to go on....

5. (this is beyond Mr Murthy's words) i believe 2000s is about infrastructure rather than IT. Yes, IT is there, but its a global changemaker, not just limited to India. & it wouldnt have happened if we had not put satellites into space or spruced up our antiquated communications. The 2000s is a continuing legacy of improving urban & rural infrastructure - urban development programmes under JNNURM, rural development & gram sadak yojnas, the cellphone which is the single largest impact on Indian economy - larger than all of Sam Pitroda's infrastructure since it has empowered every subziwallah & rickshaw wallah to better deliver his / her services.

But this is all ongoing & has been set into a cycle. Not a single political party has outlined the vision for the next 10 years. Now I have hardly any qualifications to direct anywhere, but if I were to choose, I would choose sustainability over anything else...

The global environment is dying (although for no fault of our own.. even today the US is the largest polluter, even though China uses a full 50% of global resources today, the US is still in denial) and we are bearing the burden of the western development. We should regulate ourselves before we are down on our knees begging for the last drop of oil.. So who should be our role model: Suzlon wind power, the public transport system promoters, solar power engineers at TERI? well i wouldnt care who is the visionary as long as somebody does take up the axe and chop every inefficient technology out of the country.

We need development that does not cost us our precious resources, wildlife, flora, the pristine beauty of nature, our culture (i.e. our traditional technologies, items, handicrafts, etc) sustainability does not mean just energy efficiency- it also means skillset efficiency. If we can make the best pashimino shawls (one part of India), why should we manufacture stupid jeans for half the world.. well we may do that, since there's too many of us, but why put pashimino to extinction... it sells like hotcakes & we should encourage it.. It should not be ONLY the government's job to do so, we need visionaries who are futurists too - what will sell (since we are capitalists now) in future needs to be understood today & thats where our next 10 year plans will come from..

Any answers our future prime ministers??