Exploring A Question
This week’s reading from Roam: The Back of the Napkin was an interesting and valuable tool to include in a leader’s toolbox. The tool explores a visually creative and systematic way of generating innovative ideas and problem solving. The tool simplifies the entire process, brings clarity, and shows an explicit way to present ideas, and solutions.
With this tool and the associated visual techniques learnt, I set out to understand and explore a question that has gained much attention in the past decade. Will the 21st century belong to India? Will India be a leader? And if so, what will it take for India to be an empowered country?
India’s power within is its people. The 1.2 billion strong, it is quite a force to reckon with. This power coupled with global influences in the past decade has caused the country to emerge from the shadows. Presently with the growth and development in economy, technology and infra-structure and other efforts to create a global presence, India is viewed not just as a ‘developing’ nation, but as an ‘emerging’ country.
To envision an empowered nation, India needs to take a closer look at its people power. With almost 65% under the age of 35, young people in the country are its greatest assets. But they lack direction, inspiration and motivation. Strategic efforts focused on youth empowerment in the next 10 years will lead the way for a transformation from an emerging country to an empowered one.
While there are secular methods employed to empower young people, the question remains as to the depth and sustainability of their empowerment. The church, as a time tested channel, is a only viable catalyst to effect change in body, mind and spirit. The church, therefore, has a crucial and important role to play in providing direction, skills development, leadership development and capacity building leading the way to an empowered people and an empowered nation. Should the church take such a lead, there is no doubt that the 21st century will be ‘India’s century’.
Roam, Dan. The back of the napkin: solving problems and selling ideas with pictures. New York: Portfolio, 2008.
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