New India

I read about New India. The description of how a twenty-five year old graduate woman, tapping away at a computer is prototypical of this New India.

And a perfect analogy seems to come to mind. This morning, I climbed up four stories of my college building and back down desperately searching for our new computer lab. Exasperated, I made a call to a friend, who directed me to it.

To say I was impressed is an understatement. You have to remember that I study in a ‘work-in-progress’ college, where railings mark the edge of the building that has yet to be fixed with its glass exterior. Bricks are strewn about outside the ‘entrance’ of the building. And that only marks the beginning of the construction around me.

So, therefore, when I walked into a professional looking lab, inclusive of black monitors with red and grey office chairs (yes, the ones with wheels!), I was thoroughly surprised.

As I read Jeffery Sachs’ The End of Poverty, and as he introduced New India to me, I realized I was living this transition. I am living through an important time in history, as India embarks upon the journey to the world of Superpowers. Whether it will reach there can be debatable. Yet this is a time when India is shedding its old image and embracing the new. And the transformation of my computer lab is in fact only a small example.

The winds of change are indeed sweeping across the nation.