We must write our own fate.

Couple of years back India was one of the BRICS countries but today we are one of the ' Fragile Five ' comprised of Turkey, Indonesia, South Africa, Brazil and India. Dangers to the country are very high fiscal deficit, persistent inflation and a hung parliament in the general elections in April. To this list we would also add a massive property price bubble waiting to collapse, unknown amounts of circulating black money and a lack of manufacturing, leading to import of almost all items of daily use. " I am concerned that we have not been as successful as we need to be in generating employment in the manufacturing sector," said our most revered Prime Minister. Which is inexplicable because we have enough natural resources, large numbers of young people looking for employment and thousands of educated and talented Indians working abroad because there is no prospect of advancing at home. The British built the first railway line in 1853. In the 66 years since independence India has added 13,000 km of new railway lines while China has added 14,000 km between 2006 and 2011. For years passenger fares have not been increased even as cost of fuel has jumped. The reason is the socialist vision of our politicians who seek to protect the poor with policies that lock them into poverty for generations. Thus, a person can travel from one side of the country to the other for Rs 200 if he is prepared to fight for an unreserved seat in an overcrowded carriage in a passenger train, which will crawl to its destination in 3 days, often late by 6 hours or more. This person will be cooked in summer and frozen in winter as the carriage will not be air conditioned, will have to pinch his nose to use a filthy toilet, often without water and sleep sitting up as there will not be any space to lie down. To subsidise these passengers fares in air conditioned trains and first class have to be very high but not so high as to encourage passengers to fly instead of going by train. To maintain a difference in price between first class train fare and air fare taxes of air tickets, airport charges and taxes on fuel have been kept at exorbitant level. So poor people can only see planes fly high above them but can never hope to set foot in one. Although we have been making engines and carriages the designs have remained almost static while other countries have advanced way ahead. It is time we started to aim high, higher than the world.