India's 60th Independence Day

Tomorrow is India's 60th birthday. This morning Padma and I a long conversation about how far the nation has come since booting the British out of the country. Economic gurus are heralding that India will be one of the world's next economic super-powers and the country still produces far more English language poetry than any other nation on earth. There are still huge challenges facing the country: chief among them equity for the hundreds of millions of people who live in abject poverty and caste oppression. However in for such a short span of time India has sloughed off much of its colonial baggage to become a world player. And in a colorful, if unfair, example of colonial chickens coming home to roost, The TATA group, an Indian company out bid every other major player in a successful take over of the one of the largest steel companys in the world--the Anglo-Dutch Corus Group in a $4.3 billion deal.

In other unfair comparisons I would like to point out that India's Gross Domestic Product is $4.165 trillion: more than twice England's $1.96 trillion.

Happy Birthday India.