By the Editor: Siddharth Sehgal

The country is changing, the people are changing, and divergent issues are stirring people to take sides. Passions are running high and 71^st republic day marks the turning point in the saga of this country.  India as a country has come far from 1947 but we have come a long way ahead of us with a lot of problems to overcome.

Population poses the biggest challenges for the development of this country, with this huge populace, resources are going to stretch long and thin. Government needs to ensure it brings laws and regulations that encourages control on birth rate and penalizes those who do not follow the law. We also need stringent laws such as NRC that not only accurately register citizens of this country but also pinpoints who actually belong here and who does not.

Also, given the violence which Muslim extremist groups carried out on streets in the name of opposing CAA and the ongoing social hijacking like Shaheenbag in New Delhi which is nothing but illegal occupation of the road and public property. We need to renew our internal threat assessment to the country. The likes of Sharjeel Imam are the new breeds of Jinnah that bites the hand that feeds it. Last week was the 30^th anniversary of Kashmiri Pundits exodus from their ancestral land, only now people are aware of their plight and pain. Only now it has dawned on many Indians that government of that time simply stood by as mute spectators because they did not want to irate their vote bank from a particular community. West Bengal, Assam, Jharkhand, Kerala can become another Kashmir if we don’t wake up now to the threat of Islamic extremism. There are lot of patriotic and law abiding Muslims out there who consider this country their home and whom we need to shield from the extremist poison but this can’t be done till we reach out and engage with them. We should clearly distinct between peace loving and extremist Muslim elements. We need not only a strong but vibrant, diverse democracy.

We are preparing to send manned mission to space, we have made many rapid advances in the field of technology but population and terrorism and its wider implication remain the biggest challenges to our collective future. It’s our responsibility that coming generations do not grow up with problems that we are facing today.