Swades: Indian Stock Market Hits 10000

For sometime in the recent past, I've been trying to invest some money in the stock markets and Iam now greatly stunned by the upward movement of stocks in India. I still remember it seeing around 2000-3000 in 1999 and a 3-4 fold improvement in the last 7 years is astounding. India is experiencing a period of great economic revolution. The consumer confidence is very high, there is optimism all around, and the world is trying to flirt with this new girl. No wonder, the market reflect this boom.

I always believe that India has a great future. Indians on an average are not lesser in intelligence to any other race, but still Indian per-capita income is around $500/year about 50 times (!!!) less than those of the developed countries. When economies were controlled just by material power, this was understandable. But, now the world is moving towards a Brainy stage, where people's intelligence is the premium. Thus, we have the chance to take our per-capita income by atleast 50 times, provided we finish our basic socio-economic lessons first. If the per-capita income grows by 50 times to $25000+(not an unreasonable thing when u look at it person-to-person incomes) we could have an unbelievably sized Indian economy of around $25trillion(60% of world GDP in 2006 prices!!!). No economist could dream of such a big figure, but it is not impossible given the fact that it is very easy for a person of normal intelligence to earn $25000/year in Europe or America and there are always the rich moguls. Moreover, the cascading effect of such an economic revolution along with the fact that India is tropical country with strong historical heritage could change the whole world. It is definitely not impossible!!!

But, before imagining about the spectacular future, we need to set right the basic elements... 400 million illiterates have to be educated, 370 million people have to be lifted from chronic poverty and hunger. 500 million people need to be given basic necessities of water, power and sanitation. Our 1000+ monuments of historic heritage (most of them over 1000 years old) have to be rescued and restored. Our agriculture has to be lifted from the current average productivity of less than a tonne/hectare for food grains.

Thus, we are under-utilizing our potential and utilizing our remaining potential could take just a matter of years if we could significantly dent in the illiterate and poor sections of the society. By just making a person to read and write a language, each one of us could help in removing 400 million illiterates and we could almost double our GDP, because education often increases opportunities and incomes by atleast a factor of 2. Simple things could do wonders for our country and world economy.

WE have done more complex things, like producing a supercomputer, geo-stationary satellites, thermonuclear bombs and high-tech machines. Now, itz our turn to do simpler things like making people read and write, have minimum food and water and this could stun the whole world!!!