Reflections of Passions

The afternoon of September 5, 2014 witnessed a landmark event: the Prime Minister's address to students across the country. The innovative experiment was largely seen as a success considering it was the first time a Prime Minister had taken a proactive step to engage with students and the masses through spontaneous speech which emphasised on the role and importance of teachers and their role in strengthening the nation as much as the exercise was aimed to engage with citizens to enroll themselves in the democratic discourse. Children and youth are a valuable asset as the workforce is determined by the talent and knowledge pool of a country. In 1930, shortly after the celebrated Dandi March, Mahatma Gandhi had said that youth are leaders of tomorrow and it is the young who have to be the salt of the nation. If salt loses its flavour, where shall it be salted? An exercise like the Teachers' Day address will go a long way in making students an important part of the nation build...

The concept of "100 Days" was initiated in the United States of America when its President Delano Roosevelt borrowed the term "100 Days" from Napoleonic history to describe the workings of the 73rd US Congress which sat for 100 days from March 9, 1933 to June 17, 1933. Thus, the term came first to be used in a radio address on July 24 that same year. At this juncture, please note that 100 days does not refer to the then US President's tenure but the session of the Congress.  Since then, 100 days has become an indicator of performance for all US Presidents and is now also being applied to an Indian Prime Minister. A period of 100 days in power is too short for anybody: more so, the Prime Minister of a country especially when Narendra Modi has sought five years to show some results in critical areas like power and the Ganga Clean Up project and ten years, in some areas like infrastructure. While I strongly believe that 100 days is too less a time for announcing...