EDITORIAL: LOOKING AHEAD TO 2015
Boy, does time fly!
It only seems like yesterday that I was sitting down to write the editorial looking ahead to 2014. And now just like that, before we look away and re-focus, it seems like the year has flown by, leaving us breathless in its wake.
It’s always tough business looking into the crystal ball, but one cannot resist the temptation. With India calling the world to notice by ousting out the incumbent Congress Party and ushering a new, development-centric government headed by Narendra Modi, 2015 promises to be that year which gives people that fillip of hope (if things go well) or that death-knell of despair (if they don’t). It is in 2015 that we will see the first winds of change blow from the Prime Minister’s Office toward the rest of the country. If they bring about change, the rest of the world will take notice, and India will become the darling of many. If they carry the ‘same old’ scent of corruption and bureaucracy, we may all have to hang our head in shame.
Australia, too, is poised to be aligned to the new world order taking shape to the East of the globe, where China is leading the BRICS nations into a world potentially free of the U.S. dollar. Australia and the Eastern nations ought to be natural allies, a fact borne out by the general bonhomie that was evident during Mr Modi’s visit to Australia in November. It will be interesting to see in 2015 how far ‘the world will move eastward’.
Things are not always exciting and hopeful, though. The spectre of death always looms just ahead, forever out of view but forever ready to strike. Barely a week ago to this writing, twenty-five year old Phillip Hughes, one of Australian Cricket’s best young talents, lost his life in a horrifying moment where he got hit on the neck by a bouncer. A reminder, perhaps, that the hooded figure with the scythe is forever watching.
Many such good people will leave us too, in 2015. Let us not bemoan that fact. Let us look heavenward just for a moment, and ask for strength to get through these tough moments.
On behalf of Made in India, I wish you all a safe and happy 2015.
