3G and variations of it first got rolled out in Japan back in 2001. 3G essentially allows you to shift data faster over the mobile phone network thereby opening up many new services and possibilities (such as video telephony and high speed data services for downloading information and surfing the web). WiMax is similar to home wireless technology. Where-as home wifi only reaches out a few hundred feet, WiMax has a much wider range many across kilimeter. It also offers speeds that are far greather than 3G. To WiMax in to reality, just image that you can be anywhere in the city of Mumbai, lets say, and flip open your laptop and get on to the web instantly regardless of where you stand. Work from the park, the local Cafe Coffe Day, from home or at the airport terminal. WiMax allows this and that too at high speed.

The advantage of 3G to mobile phone operators is that there are a lot of phone models in the market aleady which already support 3G out-of-the-box. With further investment in installing 3G transmission towers the basic infrastructure for 3G in India can be rapidly rolled out. WiMax, on the other hand, could take a little longer to become widespread. The equipment necessary to receive WiMax signals isn’t readily available in India yet and transmissions in the WiMax spectrum is some-what limited to date. In India, Tata Communications has been experiementing with a WiMax trial and Bangalore and hopes to expand this across Mumbai and Delhi once spectrum has been allocated.

What really interests me is that WiMax has the potential to reach remote rural populations in India where existing mobile coverage is patchy or non-existant. This would open up the possibility of bridging the digital divide and binging the advantages of access to the Internet to whole new communities. History has shown that Internet access in rural areas of India has been mostly a good thing with a great examples being the e-Choupal project, which enables farmes to get price of grain and seed direct from market instead of going through the middle man via internet terminal in their villages and farms. Access to the internet in rural areas also spreads the influence of better and wider education to all of India’s population, helping to unlock the latant tallent of a youthful and eager work force. Ultimately, however, as technologies like WiMax and 3G reach the masses, it will enable India to innovate and invent in ways it hasn’t done so before. Entepreneurs up and down the country as well as would-be entrepreneurs will suddenly have a new medium to release their ideas through. When I look at the divide between the uptake of broadband internet and mobile telephony in India, the choice today is clear. More Indian’s today own and use a mobile phone and the number of mobile subscribers dwarfs the number of broadband intenet subscribers. Everyone from your ricksha-wala to duba-wala, city slicker to gardener, cleaner to call centre worker now owns a mobile phone and the uptake is unstopable.

Although market saturation of mobile phone ownership is some years off in India, like its global counterparts, Indian telco’s will eventually start to feel the pinch and one way to sustain and increase revenue is to expand sevice offerings. 3G and WiMax will enable Indian telco’s to offer their subscriber base a multitude of new services including premium video content, video to video chat between hand-sets (and cross network), selling software to mobile phone business users and innovating in the burgeoning mobile phone games industry. Like it’s console games counterpart, mobile gaming is booming in International makets and there’s no reason why this shouldn’t be the case in India once the networks enable people to download large files to their phones. Culturally, Indian’s differ in many ways to the world at large and one of those differences is the high value placed on education. Nintendo already realises this and its DS games console, coupled with the plethora of recent educational titles that you play on the Nintendo DS is taking off like hot-cakes. This is a natural appeal and fit with the Indian psychi and mind-set. Finally, 3G will allow Indian users to upload photos and videos from their phones to the web and partipicate in the mobile social networking space beyond the confines of SMS and becomes what is coined as citizen journalists. Indian teleco’s will probably offer a selection of data packages to subscibers, although like the west, most teleco’s will no-doubt standardise data tarrifs on flat rate “eat as much as you like” structures to reduce confusion and streamline billing.

There are countless ways the Indian telco’s and consumers will benefit from 3G and WiMax and I cannot wait for this market to blossom in India. With over 71 countries now offering 3G to its consumers, it’s time for India to join the 3G club and perhaps suplant it altogether with WiMax.

Now this may seem a little premature but live mobile phone video streaming from your mobile is here, and available now. Granted, in India there still isn’t a high speed 3G or 3.5G network to easily faciliate live mobile video streaming, but it’s coming and that’s probably when live video streaming from your mobile will start to take its first baby steps in the Indian market space. Both the infrastructure and the software to make it possible are two very important things for the further development and adoption of new technology on the mobile platform and I’ve recently started playing with it here in the UK. Here’s my take and what’s happening and why you early adopters in India should be keeping a keen eye on developments.

Firstly, I really do hope a viable 3G network is established in India by the end of December 2008 but I’m not holding my breath for any major surprises as there’s a lot of red tape to cut through and a lot of spectrum to sell before the transmission masts start going up. My ultimate hope is to be able to live stream from the Jagriti Yatra train so that the world can view out journey as it happens in glorious, all be it slightly grainy video.

So, you’re all wondering by now what the heck I’m talking about. This is how it works. You have a mobile phone which has a camera on it. It’s something most of us have today. Most mobiles can also record video and a lot of you have probably recorded videos on your mobiles already and probably uploaded them on to Orkut, Facebook, Myspace or Youtube. This is the conventional, normal way of doing things. Enter live streaming. This enables you to record a video on your mobile and in real-time transmit it up to the web, either directly to a mass content delivery service like Youtube or to a specialist web site. As this is going on, others anywhere in the world with a fast enough broadband connection can watch your video stream, live. There’s usually a notable amount of delay. Depending on your mobile phones network speed you can get delays of a few seconds, all the way up to a couple of minutes. I’ve experiemented with live streaming from my home wifi network which results in very little network lag.

I’m currently aware of two items of software that’ll allow you to live stream from your mobile. Firstly, there’s QIK . They’re still in alpha test phase so you’ll have to queue up to get an account. For those who don’t know, alpha test phase means that the author of the software has released a very early version of the software and it getting limited number of people to trial it and report back bugs and other problems with the software so that the author can improve things in the software and add new features. To use QIK, you have to go to their web site and sign up. An SMS gets sent to your mobile to verify your mobile phone number and then you wait, usually about 24 to 48 hours to get a link to download the software over the air dirctly to your mobile.  I’m using a Nokie N82 and N95 which both un the S60 operating system on which QIK appears to run smoothly. It may also work on Sony Ericcson phones as well as others, but I’ve not tested this out yet.

Here’s an example of a movie I recorded directly on my Nokia N95 this morning on my way to work:

My first impressions of QIK were good, especially when streaming from the wifi hot spot at home and in my office. Outside in the street when I was on a 3G connection the lag was about two to three minutes. If you’re moving on a bus or in a car the lag dramatically increases. I’ve network seen lag (the time it takes the video to go from your mobile to internet) of up to ten minutes on a few occasions. When I’m within 3.5G coverage the lag is around 20-30 seconds which is quite acceptable, given the nascent stage of this technology. As you live-stream, the video goes up to the QIK web site. Anyone on the QIK home page will see a thumbnail of your video with a “Live” strip across it. If you click on it you’ll start to view whoever it is that’s streaming live at that moment in time. Once you stop recording video it gets archived in your online QIK account where you can tag it and describe it so that others can find your video. The other nice feature is a “private” option which means you can stream up the QIK web site but no one else will be able to watch. This might be useful if you’re just recording something to for others to watch later on. One of the biggest annoyances of QIK is that there’s no way to search for anything on their web site which actually makes it hard to find your own video on the web site unless log in in to your account first. That’s quite annoying when you’re trying to send somebody, who’s not signed up to QIK, a link to your live stream. I’ve still not worked out an easy way to do this. Come on QIK! Sort it out!

The other option to live stream video from your mobile is Flixwagon which is also in early alpha test phase. I’ve yet to get my account confirmed on Flixwagon but one cool feature I’ve noticed on their web site is the ability to live stream directly up to Youtube and also search for video stored in their database. These two features are both missing from QIK. I’m still waiting for my Flixwagon account to be set up so I’ve not got any comments yet about the quality of the service in general. I’ll let you all know how I get on with Flixwagon at a later date.

One thing to keep in mind about both these services and any other like it is that they’re VERY data intensive. Unless you’re on an unlimited data plan, you’re going to rack up a HUGE phone bill. This is luckily something that’s already very sorted in India. You’ve already got a good selection of flat fee, “eat as much as you like” data tariffs. Don’t let this totally put you at ease as most network carries will impose a fair usage policy on your account and give you a number of warnings when you exceed your limits before they’ll get nasty and probably cut you off. Basically, go easy and don’t over do the streaming. In future, the networks will probably increase the data limits but it’ll be a long while befoe you see totally unlimted data capacity.

Live streaming opens up a whole raft of “interesting” questions and concerns. I’m sure you can all think of the REALLY bad things one could do with live mobile streaming but I’m a technologist and I’m not here to preach caution or put the fear of god in to you about the all the BAD things this technology could entail. There are a lot of positive things about live mobile streaming. One one swoop it shrinks the work right down in size and makes us all citizen video journalists. Capture amazing moments in history such as a sports event, show the world around your city, record family occassions such as weddings so that others who couldn’t make it can be part of the special day and use it in many business applications. The list of positive things one could do with live video streaming from your mobile is endless.  As I mentioned at the top of this blog entry, I’m really hoping that the Indian 3G network is up and running by the end of this year. If that happens, expect a lot of live video streaming from the Jagriti Yatra train and from the various places we’ll be visiting at each stop. This is totally cool technology.

I wanted to write about the onset of mobile social networking as I believe it will have a huge impact on the Indian mobile user base. It’s a well known fact that in India there are now more mobile subscribers then land line subscribers and the uptake of mobile phones is sky rocketing on a monthly basis. The pervasive nature of the mobile is far greater than the Internet which still has not reached the large majority of the India population. Even within the middle classes in India, the Internet is a luxury and for those who do have "broadband" services in India, the speed and reliability is not a patch on international services in Europe, USA and parts of south east Asia you’ll find faster, more reliable braodband services and less confusing tariff structures and options. However, where India does have a very robust user base, with good service support is in the mobile phone market. Nokia is by far the dominant hand set manufacturer in the Indian. GSM rules the roost, so most people are still on what’s known as 2G (80% of userbase). There is a growing number of subscribers signing up to the CDMA packages which are on offer as they provide a faster experience on the mobile,. This technology is commonly referred to as 2.5G but this is primarily being used by business users right now in India - especially by those with laptop data cards from the likes of Reliance, Vodafone and Tata Indicomm. The advent of third generation (3G) networks in India has yet to arrive although there has been recent consensus in the Indian parliament on how to carve up the 3G spectrum (as recently as March 2008) although there is hot debate on right now about whether or foreign mobile networks should be allowed to buy up 3G spectrum licenses in the Indian market place. The next few months will prove very interesting for all those who are watching the developments with 3G in India.

How can we, as a social entrepreneurship venture, utilise the mobile social network given that it penetrates the Indian population to such a great (and growing) degree? More specifically, I am really interested to know how we, as an organisaiton, can exploit the mobile services in India to build a mobile community that will glu together our ever growing network of supporters and build a truly awsome mobile social network. Allow me to highlight a number of interesting technologies which almost anyone in India with a modern mobile phone can take advantage of right now.

If you are in India, in possession of a mobile phone and reading this blog entry, then there is one pre-requisite you must know about. Everything I’m about to write about requires that you have a data plan for your mobile. Most Indian mobile networks offer this at a flat fee rate. If you don’t have a data plan then contact your mobile providers customer services and ask them what your options are. You should tell them that you want to access the internet from your mobile. It also helps if you have a modern mobile phone. If you have a Nokia, Sony Ericson, LG, Moto or Blackberry that’s less than 2 years old (as of March 2008) then you’ll probably be able to utlise everything I’m about to tell you about.

First up is Twitter. If any of you have been using Facebook you’ll know what I mean when I say that Twitter is simply the status field of Facebook. You can Twitters away from your computer or even your mobile phone. If you have a Blackberry you can get a great bit of software (free) called Twitterberry which allows you to tweet on the move. Twitter, put another way, allows you to post short 140 character messages to an open or closed group (or groups) of friends and acquaintances. Should you wish to keep your messages within a closed group of friends you can do so, or alternaively you might feel that your dialy life is so immense that the whole twitter community needs to know about it. The option is yours and your privacy is in your own hands. Lets say you get to go to an amazing conference, fully paid up by your employer, but your colleagues and your friend outside your company are so lucky and don’t get to go. Well get them all on your Twitter list and you can send them all regular, brief updates from your conference and make them feel a part of the event. It might sound frivolous but once you get on to Twitter it can become highly addictive!

Next up is Trutap. This is a very young company. They’ve been in business for under a year (as of March 2008) and recently secured some more funding to expand their business. They have a user base in over 100 terriories world wide and have a strong and growing user base in India already. The idea behind Trutap is to unite a number of existing technologies in to one application. Many of you reading this may already have your own blog, a lot of you will have camera phones on which you takes photos and vidoes and post them up to your blogs. Others may like to chat on Instant Messenger platforms such as Yahoo Chat, MSN Live Chat, AOL Instant Messenger and Google Talk. Trutap unifies all their seperated plaforms in one Java application which you can download for free to your mobile. On your mobile just go to http://m.trutap.com to get an over the air download of the application.  Once you’re signed up you can form groups of friends and message them en-mass without incurring the cost of SMS’ing them all individually. You can chat to them all on their own respective favourite IM that they’re logged in to because in Trutap you’re logged in to all of them all at once. Your IMs will go from your mobile to their laptop screens and back to your mobile. You can even use Trutap to write your blog, take photos and post them all up to your blog.  Trutap is in the process of upgrading their current software and when the new version is out you’ll be able to do a whole lot more. You can already download a Facebook application that suppors Trutap and show your IMs and messages from Trutap in your Facebook page. Keep an eye on them as they’re a hot start up with a lot of growth ahead of them.

Finally, there’s a combination which packs a punch. A lot of you may have heard of the photo sharing community called Flickr. It’s popular with the prosumer and professional photography crowd and is arguably one of the best photo sharing web sites in existance today, although there are many alternatives which offer a similar experience. Those of you who own Nokia N-Series mobiles may not know that your phone has the ability to directly upload photos you take on it to Flickr. So if you have a Flickr account check out the Flcikr upload option on your handset. The built in uploader is rather basic so you what you might want to consider is using a free download Java application called Shozu. It is a nifty piece of software which makes the process of taking and loading photos to Flickr (and other places on the web) a hole lot easier and more fun. Using Shozu you can post your pictures up, view the comments people have left on your photos, reply to those comments, tag, title and describe your photos and even manipulate your images.  The other great feature of Shozu is that you can subscribe to feeds which allows your phone to download photos and video in the background and automatically with no user intervention. I ususually have my phone do this over night so that in the morning I have a collection of short news bulletin videos and tech news updates ready to watch or listen to on the train in to work. It’s a really great sevrice and I do encourage you to check it out.

What all this mobile social network enables us as an organisation and you as participants to do is form social networks online and on your mobiles. It allows for the exchange of ideas, photos, videos, opinions and a host of other things. It is what’s known as user generated content. Just image if you’re one of the selected Yatri’s or a registered participant and you’re on the Jagriti Yatra train with all this mobile technology at your fingers tips. You can Twitter about what you’re currently doing and let every one know that you’ve just shaken hands with the CEO of a huge company. You could snap photos on your mobile during the Yatra at every stop, of all the people you are meeting and immediately post it up to Flickr so that everyone can see what you’re going through during the Yatra. How about doing a short video interview on your mobile phone with your travelling buddies and talking about the excitment and discoveries you’ve made and then  posting them up immediately to your blog so that TV, radio and newspaper journalists can get an almost real time picture of what’s going on? How about Trutapping with all your buddies whilst you’re on the train? You don’t need a laptop anymore to send instant messages to your friends on Google talk, Yahoo or MSN. The mobile opens all these doors to you and much more.

We’d like to hear from you about your experiences with the above mentioned mobile social networking services. Download them and play around. Check out the features and report back your findings here on this blog. Perhaps you’ve already been using a lot of this stuff and you know of other exciting services you want to share with us? Go ahead and post your suggestion here.  I look forward to reading your comment.

Kaustav Bhattacharya

I am inspired by this effort to make a difference to the society we live in. It has changed my entire perspective and lead me to staunchly believe that I as an individual can make a difference. The positivism of the team as well as their belief that each individual has the capacity to bring about change instigated me to think positively and find ways that I can contribute to this great effort. Imagine the potential of being on a 16 day train journey with 400 likeminded individuals who are fired by the same zeal and enthusiasm- I see limitless potential ahead of us.   Together, we can define the future of our nation.

Frankly speaking, I would never have gathered courage on my own to even dream of such an ambitious journey for youth to bring about positive change through a train yatra across India to meet real heroes and learn from bottom-up innovators and entrepreneurs who are changing, challenging and redefining India today. Today, I am inspired to dream big and have the wings to dream and aspire towards contributing to India’s future.

Before getting involved in Jagriti yatra, my thinking was limited much like that of the common man battling the everyday urdles of life. Like the majority of youth, I admired the Tata’s and Ambani’s from afar for their long hard journey to success. Films of a patriotic nature such as Rang De Basanti and Lagaan had a fleeting impression on me rather than inspire me to think about how I could contribute towards the building of my nation. We are so caught up in our daily schedules that we ignore the greater mission of our life – to achieve something that touches the lives of others and make a lasting impact long after we are gone rather than remain caught up in a net of day to day personal issues. Life is too short, if seen in limited focus of living from day to day.

As the population grows, an economy has to provide more jobs, more goods and services for the growing population. Copying others won’t help. People these days are so afraid of taking risks, of taking an innovative approach to beating competition because we are unwilling to give it a shot for fear of failure. One forgets the dictum that “if there is a will that is a way”. We need to acknowledge risk and yet dare to dream big. We can find answers to the challenges of today if we have self-confidence and are willing to think of innovative and creative solutions. I believe that if have confidence in our ability to innovate, no power can stop us from achieving our dreams.

 Jagriti Yatra boosts the confidence of budding young yatris to innovate, to think out of the box and dare to take calculated risks. Innovation is fundamental to being a successful entrepreneur. I think Jagriti Yatra will cultivate entrepreneurs amongst the participants by empowering them with a vision, self belief and the freedom to dream.  India needs entrepreneurs to create wealth and sustain the current level of growth. Entrepreneurs have the power to drive the future development of this country at a pace that has not been seen before.

 Learning a subject in a classroom setting has little impact. Jagriti Yatra gives us the opportunity to meet and learn in a practical manner from entrepreneurs in their “karma bhoomi”- those who have made a difference. Each Yatri will explore their own ideas, and develop their latent potential for innovation by meeting real entrepreneurs face-to-face and learning from the experience of the real heroes when they started out in their incarnation as an entrepreneur. The main aim of the journey is to get Yatri’s to think in a systematic way pertaining to all the aspects of innovation and in turn entrepreneurship.

Through this yatra I feel each participant will get to discover the entrepreneur in themselves by learning to explore their passion, dream big, innovate upon their ideas for change, explore opportunities within risks, the role of leadership and team work and the ability to think outside the box. This is a key life skill and I recommend it highly to each one of you. Come, be a part of a new generation of change makers.

Jagriti Yatra and the dynamic organizers of Navi Mumbai Olympics share a common ethos - encouraging youth to find their passion and aspire for excellence in their chosen field. Both the teams are striving hard to enable young men and women to realize their potential and use their talent to make uplift the lives of those around them- be it through the medium of sport or other means of social and economic upliftment. Jagriti Yatra was proud to be present during the course of the sports extravaganza and at the grand closing ceremony to congratulate the winners and seek some of the brightest young stars across Navi Mumbai between the age group of 18-25 to offer them the golden opportunity of being a part of this unique national adventure. Jagriti Yatra is offering ten talented men and women who won medals at the Navi Mumbai Olympics (and fall between the target age group of 18-25) a stellar opportunity to meet with India’s national heroes who are building the nation through the medium of a unique national adventure by registering to enter the selection process at www.jagritiyatra.com/registration.

Jagriti Yatra invites you to join this outstanding group of bright, talented participants who show the promise of being the future leaders of the country in this panoramic rail journey as they travel around India meeting and gathering valuable pearls of knowledge from the doyens who have carved a niche for themselves in the field of business and social entrepreneurship.

Selection of participants and facilitators is underway. Don’t miss this golden opportunity to meet the “change makers and unsung heroes” and discover ways to use your talents to make a difference to the world around you. Register now at www.jagritiyatra.com/registration

It’s a great day! No really - it is! Some of you might have noticed an update on our home page and for those who haven’t, go check it out. Why? Well, we have officially released the Jagriti Yatra geet.  Our friends over at McCann Erickson India along with ad-guru Prasoon Joshi and team have created this geet for us and we think it rocks! If you like the song, please email in and let us know. Forward the URL of the web site to your friends and colleagues and let them know about the Jagriti Yatra geet.

I just wanted to let you all know that we have two new ways of registering for Jagriti Yatra. You can now take advantage of our new three part registration process which makes it a little easier on the eye when filling out the form. We also understand that filling out a long form online can be problematic so now you can download a Microsoft Word Template from the web site and fill out the form on a computer then come back later and cut/paste the content in to the online form or email the Word document back to us. Alternatively you can print out the form and fill it out by hand and post it to us. How about that for convenience? We’re not stopping just yet to make the registration process easier. We’ll soon be posting multi-lingual versions of the form so that you can get it in the most popular Indian languages. Watch this space for more updates!

Until next time….

Kaustav.

A lot of new developments have been taking place over the last few months. The biggest news I have for you all is that we have finally opened our India office in the Prabhadevi area of Mumbai and we have appointed our project director and operations director! This is great news for us as we can now direct operations from the ground in India and meet people face to face. The project is now being directed by Gitanjali Banerjee and operationally directed by Swapnil Dixit. The office opened at the end of October and is going strong.

The second important announcement I am excited to share with you all is that we recently got our first major round of sponsorship. It’s a start but there’s still a long way to go for us. However, this kick-start has given us the ability to book the train for the journey and get our operations staff paid. We’re hot on the chase for corporate sponsorship and also courting interesting with individual donors. I can’t over emphasize enough just how important it is for us to get your support for this project as it will enable hundreds of young adults in India to realise their talents and help catapult them in to the world of bottom up, grass routes entrepreneurial thinking.

Moving on, I have the pleasure in announcing that Shashank Mani, he who was responsible for the 1997 Azad Bharat Rail Yatra in India,  and the inspiration behind the Jagriti Yatra is launching his book, India - Journey Through a Healing Civilization. The book chronicals the events leading up to the 1997 Yatra and goes in to the trials and tribulations of organising such an epic journey. There is plenty of insightful information about the importance of grass roots entrepreneurship and Shashank’s own professional views on how India must progress economically and culturally in the future if it is to grow a sustainable and diverse economy and compete on the world stage. The book is published by Harper Colins and will be launched at Waterstones, Picadilly on 1st December 2007 between 2-5pm. Come along and meet the author and purchase a signed copy of this great book.

I’m quite a keen blogger and also listen to many podcasts out there on the web. A recent one which caught my attention a few weeks ago was on the SmallBozPod, a blog and podcast dedicated to small business startups and entrepreneurs. I was reminded today about the story they ran back in October this year on Asian entrepreneurship by my colleague Ben so I thought I’d share it with you all.  The podcast talks about collaboration between Indian and British business and how the Indian entrepreneurial spirit is being seen globally today. Highly recommended so go take a listen when you have a moment.

That wraps things up for now. I promise to post more regular updates from now on and your comments are all very welcome so please don’t shy away from filling out the comments form.

However, as North America became a successful industrial nation powered by oil, Model T cars and the threads of Amtrak that started criss-crossing its vast land mass, Boorstin warned of the dangers in blindly following existing, ‘successful’ models and the ‘momentum’ they generate. He said: ‘The sense of momentum which overwhelmed Presidents burdened ordinary citizens. ….. the future of American civilization could not fail to be determined by the mass and velocity of enterprises already in being… Fewer decisions of social policy seemed to be Whether-or-Not as more became decisions of How-Fast-and-When.’

As globalization has made the world a smaller place, a number of emerging countries like India run the risk of not asking Whether-or-Not questions. As India starts accelerating forward in its own ‘democratic experience’, we have to be careful of not heading down the How-Fast-And-When tunnel. At the start of its own journey, North America borrowed its intellectual heritage from Europe, but moulded it to the reality of North America, and we face a similar challenge at this juncture.

What we must adopt from the West is the spirit of scientific inquiry. But the age of networks, electrons, biotechnology, agri-business and relevance of intangible assets must warn us against creating mechanical institutions. As this is the beginning of our own development journey, we can use and connect with the Indian mind which has always respected knowledge and respects service.

Recent environmental awareness in the developed world is asking fundamental questions of the industrial civilizations of Europe and North America. Commentators have declared that the ‘demand for carbon-free power is about to become the most disruptive force since the Internet’, and a new world-view is being called upon to stem the damage that may already have been caused by the industrial sprint of the past 200 years. In this context, China is already well down the how-fast-and-when tunnel by building large factories, industrial plants and carbon intensive industries. India, till recently seemingly a laggard in industrialization, still has an opportunity to ask whether-or-not questions, and perhaps put a healing balm on the Industrial damage already underway.

An even more important lesson from the ‘democratic experience’ is the dynamics of democracy. The real fruits of democracy come when citizens ‘work’ their democracy, when they engage to build institutions. More than the Roosevelts and the Kennedys, it was the cattle rancher and the railroad pioneer who built USA. Modern India and its race forward will be shaped not only in  state capitals but also by the bottom up entrepreneurial innovations taking place across the nation. India’s progress will take place not only in the halls of  Parliament, but by the various mini institutions that we visited during our travels. India will be shaped by the creation of a Tilonia, by the courage of a Kiran Bedi, by the experiences of the submarine commander in Vizag and by the innovative factory manager at  Bajaj Auto.

As countries like India start to take off, they will take off on the wings of passion of its young citizens. A country starts to prosper when the people – alongside the government – start building. While we have a number of seemingly insurmountable problems, we have a future that is powered by the momentum of a growing country. Gerd Behrens drew a contrast with the attitude in more developed economies, ‘The West resembles a marriage of convenience, while other growing civilizations are passionate affairs’.  

More so for those pouring to fill the glass of India.

On the fiftieth anniversary of India’s independence, in 1997 we organised a national adventure – the Azad Bharat Rail Yatra. Two hundred young Indians participated in that Yatra and have since remained in close contact over the years. This is an extended family forged by the memories of twenty-two days of exhilarating, non-stop travel on a special train that covered 7,000 kilometers of India. We keep in touch through a web-based forum, and at heart; we simply remain attached to India. As I write this, these participants are planning another Yatra – the Jagriti Yatra with the theme of awakening entrepreneurship. 

Our aim for the Yatra was to discover the other India, an India beyond the English language. To me, this India was in the smaller towns where I had grown up as the son of an army officer; it was in my town of birth, Gorakhpur, and in Barpar, our ancestral village in the Deoria district of eastern Uttar Pradesh. During our travels we found more than one India. But the central theme that dominated the journey was India integrating with its own genius. By doing so will we build a country that is different and therefore able to compete and prosper in the new world. Only if we understand who we are and are comfortable with it, will we live lives of integrity. Participants discovered this first hand. They celebrated the integrity they saw amongst those they met during our travels.