Chak de, India

Ten years ago, when India celebrated its 50th year of Independence, few would have thought that over the next decade it would become the new swinger on the block, the girl who is being wooed by every boy in town, including the Big Man on campus. The story of that Cinderella-like transformation has been told often enough and by all sorts of people. But we still don't know for certain what has caused it. One thing is for sure, though: as we mark the 60th year of Independence, there is more to be proud of than ashamed. Of course there are 270 million people below the poverty line. Of course many things don't work, including many wings of the government. Public health is a problem. Publicly provided education is a scandal. Income inequalities are increasing. The list of failures is long. As the poet Kabir said, "Bura jo dekhan mai chala, mujhe se bura no koi." (When I started looking for flaws, I was the worst of all.)

But it would be wrong not to note the greatest positive of all: there is hope on a scale that is probably matched only by what was there in 1947. Now, as then, there is a can-do spirit in the country. Now, as then, the shackles of the past seem to have given way to finally allow us to make the elusive "tryst with destiny". If in 1947 India woke to a new freedom from its colonial masters, it is waking today to freedom from the socialist dogma of the Congress party. The state has acknowledged but not admitted defeat and knows that it will not be the engine of growth, merely the signalman. The destructive diversion that started in 1969 is finally ending. It will take a few years yet for things to come back fully on track. But the direction is right though the speed could be quicker. By 2017, India should be full-steam ahead. It will be characterised then by the norm for democracies: investment and growth will come from the private sector and equity will be the responsibility of the government, whether distributive or via the creation of public goods.

In a large measure this has happened because people who were 20 years old in 1947 and started to wield power and influence when they turned 40 in the 1960s, are all 80 today. Except in politics, where a few are still active, all have been out of action for at least a decade, if not more. Thus, except in politics, where human capital seems not to depreciate quickly enough, those who are running things now are all in the 50s and early 60s. In a few years they too would have made way for people who would have become young men and women in the world of the 1980s, people whose primary memory is one of a very different India. More than anything else, psychologists tell us, it is our primary memory that determines our motivations. India is therefore poised for its own Great Leap Forward for this reason as well. As always, politics remains the exception: the main Communist party has younger men at the helm who don't fit the theory.

Many compare India and China, and while it is true that China has done much better in some respects, it has fared poorly in others. Perhaps the most important of these failures is that it has left the hard bit""democracy, and of learning how to reconcile different interests""for later. India has done it up front and is well ahead of China in this regard. Now the relatively easy bits remain.