Towards a better India/Introduction

India - Towards a better India

India is a land of paradoxes and extremes. A country with the hottest of lands (around 50C in Rajasthan) and coldest of mountains (around -50C in Dras, Kashmir), the highest and lowest of terrain, the driest and wettest of surfaces, the richest and poorest of people, a nation with a hyper techno-savvy upper middle class co-existing with world's largest illiterate group. The nation has every mix of races (Negroids, Caucasian and Mongoloid strains) and every religion (has the highest Hindu population, second highest Muslim population, one of the top 10 highest populations for Christianity and Buddhism, besides being birth for Sikhism, Jainism, one of the first acceptors of Judaism, Zoroastrianism, Christianity and Baha'i).

Irrespective of the good public opinion generated by its savvy graduates both in India and overseas (particularly in US & Singapore) there are mountains of problems underneath. Though the change in world opinion towards India, in the last 10 years, was good to a great extent, it has the real danger of masking the great realities of India. Let us have a small snapshot of them.

1. India is the home to the world's highest number of illiterates (430 million, in 2000)
2. 6 children out of 100 die before they reach the age of 1 (2003, stats)
3. World's second highest AIDS population - 5.3 million (2003)
4. World's highest concentration of Polio, Tuberculosis and Typhoid