A young banker turned novelist, known for his famous best seller the Shiva Trilogy (The Immortals of Meluha, The Secret of the Nagas and The Oath of the Vayuputras), a book series devoted to interpreting Lord Shiva's tale & teachings for the younger generation. After the very positive reception of Scion of Ikshvaku, the first book of the Ram Chandra Series, he is now writing second novel of the series, which aims to interpret Lord Ram's adventures & philosophies for the younger generation of Bharat
Evaluating 66 years of our national life as a republic is a complex task. No doubt, we have achieved much, but we have had many failures too. There are many countries (e.g. South Korea, China, Singapore) which were poorer than us 70 years ago. Now most of them are economically way ahead of us. At the same time, there are many countries which achieved independence at the same time as us, in comparison to whom we have done much better e.g. Pakistan, many African countries. All in all, I would say we have done well. However, obviously, we still have a long distance to go. A long way to recover our ancient historical position in the comity of nations.
Today, while the nation celebrates its 67th Republic Day, the main task before us is to eradicate poverty. If we focus completely on economic growth and removing poverty, many social problems that trouble us today will be solved by themselves. Today we are at a juncture similar to what China was in 30 years ago. They made sure that they removed all distractions and focused only on economic growth for one generation. Today, they have the resources to manage many problems. We, through our government, need to do that too. For two or three decades, we should focus on economic growth and removing poverty. Of course, cultural issues also need to be addressed and our historical liberal traditions revived. But this should be done by individuals and non-political institutions. The government should focus on economic growth and removing poverty.
As we become wealthier, and our historical self-confidence returns, you will find Bharateeya culture becoming far more respectable across the world as well. Even within Bharat, as many people have emerged from poverty (e.g. my family), you find much more self-confidence about our own culture.
Analysing the present global scenario, I am very optimistic about Bharat’s future. The global economic environment is challenging, no doubt. The world is on the brink of another economic crisis. Because of the collapse in the price of oil (and many other commodities like iron, copper etc), all the commodity-driven countries like Russia, Brazil and the entire West Asia are in a lot of economic trouble. China is also witnessing a deep slowdown as it tries to rebalance its economy from being export-driven to more domestic-driven. Amid all these, Bharat is relatively performing quite well. Ours is an entrepreneurial country. Our people have the ability to build businesses, create jobs and through that help the country. What we need is better infrastructure and better economic management.
—As told to Ganesh Krishnan R Amish
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