OUR NATIONAL CHALLENGES

Today our challenge is to bring inclusive and sustainable growth of the nation especially under the present global economic turbulence and the threat of terrorism which is the greatest impediment for growth. Certainly we need innovative ideas in every sphere of our activity to overcome the challenges faced by the nation. What we need is integrated thinking, innovative ideas, integrated action and unity of minds. Let us first see what is meant by “integrated development of the nation”. It means the development of 6,00,000 villages of the nation. It means the development of the tier-two cities. It means that the infrastructure of the metro and large cities is in tune with the requirements of the time. We have to uplift the 220 million people living below the poverty line. We need to provide quality of life to all the citizens. We need to integrate the science and technology with the development process. We need to ensure that political vision, democratic process, legislation, executive actions at all levels, judiciary, media, e-governance and citizen feedback are all focused on a single goal of development of the nation. We need to gear up doubling of food production, energy independence, interlinking of rivers and nano technology revolution. In brief we all have to work in an integrated manner for sustained development. For that, what is needed today are the out-of-the-box ideas? For generating the ideas towards realizing the vision 2020, let me give my visualization of India before the year 2020.