After some years, I watched today’s Republic Day parade from start to finish. It really excited me and gave me confidence about India’s great future. At end of the Republic Day Parade, I could conclude to two views about India’s strength.

India has a huge lot and varied soft power that it has hardly tapped to its potential. Each tableau, be it of DRDO, CSIR or cultural ones confirmed my confidence in the view.

I remember an intellectual once saying that ‘one Indian is better than any individual from the developed country but a group of five Indians working together is worse than the worst of such a group from the advanced countries’. And the parade should remove all the doubts about the group working of Indians. Can anyone after seeing the daredevil performance of the motorcyclists question about the ability of Indians for performing the best in group?

But soon after the parade I listened to the news. And two news items not only shocked me but made me feel miserable. How can the country tolerate mafia burning alive an additional collector on duty? Why does a young man attack Rajesh Talwar? Was it just the madness or loss of faith in judiciary or investing agencies? Can the agencies be satisfied after booking for the attempt of murder or look into it a little more seriously?

And a question haunts me. How can persons like Manmohan Singh and Pranab Mukherji from whom the country men expected a lot take an excuse or use their all skills in not divulging the name of those Indians who had stashed unaccounted money abroad in foreign banks?

How long they go on be blind and deaf when ‘a current study by Global Financial Integrity had estimated the present value of illicit money outflow to be $462 billion’?

Why can’t the intellectuals, economists and legal luminaries of the country force them to do that? Why can’t media leak those names as it did the conversation of Nadia?

But then I again want to return for an appeal to the millions of youth of the country to focus on knowledge, innovations and entrepreneurship. How can one deny the huge potential today for the young India working or getting ready to enter in IT, telecom, pharma or auto components sector to innovate new applications, products, and services that can reach far and near and make India great?

Why can’t the politicians, babus and judiciary contribute its best to the growth story by changing the old way of working when they very much know that India can find its place even in spite of that?

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PS:I now find many had these questions in mind. Rajdeep Sardesai writes in Hindustan Times, ‘Constitutional crisis’