We can see this aspiration across class and caste--in the slum schools that call themselves 'Cambridge' and 'Oxford'; in the surging growth of India's cities as people pour in looking for jobs; in the fact that India's new heroes are business leaders like Narayana Murthy and small-town stars like the cricketer Mahendra Singh Dhoni.
New India is united not just by a respect for achievement and yearning for a better life, but also by an unprecedented belief that such a life is possible, regardless of one's social and economic status.
Open to our possibilities
We cannot forget the circumstances under which India abandoned the socialist model. Our government adopted reforms in the early 1990s only under duress and in the midst of crisis: P V Narasimha Rao, prime minister at the time, had said, 'Decisions are easy when no options are left.'
Even when socialism had proved ineffective, the political class was reluctant to abandon what had come to be seen as the legacy of India's founders and part of independent India's bold counter to colonialism.
Image: Chief mentor and the non-executive chairman of Infosys Technologies, N R Narayana Murthy. | Photograph: Dibyangshu Sarkar/AFP/Getty Images
Also read: Seven days that shook the financial world
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