India Today: Issues Before the Nation: a Festschrift in Honour of Professor (Dr.) K. Raman Pillai

India has been projected as an emerging great power in the world. Certainly, the nation is endowed with all the basic assets required for its realisation. India is a reservoir of a huge, intellectually gifted, man power and rich natural resources. Geo-politically, it enjoys a strategic position which few countries of the world can boast of. Above all, India is the largest democracy in the world. Yet, the puzzle is: what holds back India from wisely utilising all these basic assets and becomes a shining model of a great democracy, occupying a top slot in the human development index in the world? Is it being undermined from within by the Indian Quislings and Mir Jaffers at the behest of foreign vested interests? Or, are there other debilitating factors connected to state policies and institutional weaknesses, which also contribute to perpetuate this situation? Pertinent is also the question whether the country is taken away from the expected path of self-reliance and self-sufficiency, to a track of debilitating foreign dependency