I envision an India where we design and build high quality original products of artistic and creative vision. I want to see bold ideas, original stories and lived experiences rendered and communicated masterfully through various forms of media. The creative burgeoning of this nation is not going to happen without the individual citizens of this nation having two things at once - rich life experiences and the ability to communicate them. We live in a land of two nations. One is those who can dream for more and then we have the those who dream to have just enough. However rich a life experience someone has, if they do not have the means to be able to connect to the world with it, its knowledge may never reach the others.

I want to live in a society that hungers for more than just enough. More importantly, I want to live in a society built by those who have made it commonplace to dream big. This is the part of our nation’s history that we will have the first wave of innovators, stars that have captured the fascination of the world through their beautiful creations. I want to live in that society of self-made creators. For them to inspire the next generation to dream bigger, reach farther and conquer the world through inspiration.

The impediments we have today for that world are that everyone has to pass through a couple of decades of valiant indoctrination, upheld by the ones who are too unable to look up and realize the larger context of life. We all have to pass through this random suiggly line on the floor to prove that we’re competent. “Who drew it? Why is it that way? What is the point of it?” These are questions that are neither asked often enough, nor are they answered satisfactorily, if ever.

The India that I envision is not going to happen through having our kids’ time committed to hours upon hours of attending to the mundane and the mediocre. Packing on a multi-kilo backpack and spending hours being seated and talked at, reading, writing, thinking without a vision. The worst thing about all this is that as they are motivated by fear to perform the mundane and the mediocre, they end up never having the time and focus to experiencing the more meaningful aspects of life. The existence in the grandiose. To have the time to look up and witness the limitlessness of the sky, to breathe the air of the land with awareness and live their life focusing on enriching their subjective experience of life. Still, reading, writing, thinking but with the focus on enriching the subjective experience of life. To do all that they do for the sake of fulfilling the instructions of someone else, committed for the sake of enriching their life experience. To give them the ownership of their success. To let them think and operate independently, for a vision that they value deeply on their own.

A change in our approach to education that places the weight on the enrichment of subjective experience of life, will be the one that will liberate the minds of the common folks to think and dream bigger. It is the aspirational necessity of every human being. We are happiest when we live fully - to dream big and have the freedom to pursue that dream. And when human beings have rich and fulfilling lives throughout, there will be a natural desire to communicate it to the world, to express and to share the joy of life. And when so many who live fully and succeed in their subjective aspirations for life, and share their joy, there will be a natural competition to aspire for the finest ways of living, thinking, dreaming. The product of such a live and thriving ecosystem will be the world I envision.

There is something special about India that no other land has. It certainly has the filthy, the dirty, the sad and the scary. But it also has the continued history of several cycles of human civilization. This land has seen it all, over and over again. There is a richness to the land you cannot communicate. You can only reach those that will nod because they too have witnessed what you have witnessed that makes you see it the way you do.

The problem with everything I’m writing about is that it sounds like a utopian dream. Something that people dream about because they don’t have anything better to do. I’m sure some see it that way. There is a lot of cynicism in the air. Fear and cyncism can be forgiven. Not everyone has lived the experience of being able to dream without inhibitions. But it’s going take the successful lives those who can dream (in large numbers) to comprehensively wake these people up.

I am currently working on a new project through my Shuddhi Vidhya initiative. I am also approaching these goals through other avenues, but with Shuddhi Vidhya, we are going to build a comprehensive ecosystem to solve the problems I’ve described here. The real fruits of this labor will only bear in front of us in several decades. Which is why it is of utmost importance to plant the seeds now. I’ll be sharing more about this as and when there is more to share.