We’ve too many armchair experts expounding their views, reviews and reports. I am sorry – I had the same grouse with ‘Imagining India’ too. You can ask any grocery store shopkeeper/pan dabbawaala/govt. employee/grandfather …almost anyone who has some free time and they can tell you 1001 ways to improve India.

Personally, I would prefer someone who has already done atleast an iota to improve India at grassroots level and then come back to tell about their experiences and how they can improve India. Till then, it is just talking the talk.

India in recent years have suffered to to the very force that allows us to express our thoughts – democracy. Mishandling and misconstruing the tenets of democracy has meant misuse of many of our resources – both natural and manpower.

An absolute crook can be elected by engineering the electorate, and he can, through his manipulations – lead to many of the problems you stated above. I can mention migration in this regard. Hope you get my point. Also how NREGS schemes are mishandled, the treasuries of the rural banks are misapproportioned by these people. Thus the benefit never gets to the grass-roots, the process never becomes participative.