“A developed India by 2020, or even earlier, is not a dream. It need not be a mere vision in the minds of many Indians. It is a mission we can all take up – and succeed.” ~ A P J Abdul Kalam

The advent of the 21^st century has brought with itself lots of hopes, challenges and goals ahead only to prove momentous for each of the Indian in us. The humongous progress that we have witnessed over the era, from being the freedom fighters to making a mark in the highly competitive and unpredictable world, only motivates us towards our goal of racing ahead via all-round development. Be it the Planning Commission or our beloved Mr. A P J Abdul Kalam Sir, who envisioned the road path to a developed nation, the responsibilities apply equally to all. Laid down in early 2000, to tackle the grave issues of education, employment, healthcare, technology, social evils and rights, here we are 15 years from then. So where do we stand now?

The rich diverse India can be primarily split into two – the urban and the rural [majority], which constitutes the greatest divide ever. The rural is where our roots lie. It’s the inherent India from where the actual development begins from. And, no other weapon is superior to what an effective education can do. The ease in access to education and technological progress in this Internet era have resulted in a rise in male literacy rate from 68% to 82.14% and female literacy rate from 44% to 65.46%, though our Vision 2020 goals target them at around 95%. The overall count, however, is 65.6% as against our target of achieving 100%. We have achieved 93.34% towards net primary school enrollment in 2011 as against 77% in 2000. With little more efforts, increase in literacy levels and initiatives like the RTE Act, we can achieve a complete figure.

The employment rate, as such, has plummeted from 7.3% to around 3.7% [2013] – way ahead of our envisioned goal of 6.8%. The concern is the increasing rate year-on-year that needs to be checked. The increase in quality of medical services has seen an increase in life expectancy by 2 years, yet we lag by 3 more years. Although we can state there has been a gradual dip in the infant mortality rates from 64.9 per 1000 live births in 2000 to 43.8 in 2012, we still have a long way to go to achieve 22.5 by 2020. We still have around 2.3Cr children suffering from mal-nutrition. In addition, though we managed to bring down the poverty from a 26% figure in 2000 to around 24.7 [as of 2011], we still comprise 20.6 % of the world’s poor.

To add, we still face our biggest challenge – to double our GDP to around 9% by 2020. Problems – inflation and weakening rupee have had a major toll. The vision calls for the duty of each of us.

65% of us constitute the youth – the largest in the world. We have immense potential to change the world around us. From the time of independence, we have been going through this phase of metamorphosis. The Vision 2020 served more of an impetus to our better and secured future. The responsibility to rise above the odds and provide our inputs to make India emerge as the likes of the United States and China lies within us. All we need is collective and comprehensive efforts, which when nothing can stop us. As our Babu aptly puts into words..

“Be the change you wish to see in the world!”

P S – This article is a contribution towards a blogging contest at our corporate.