The Land of the Vedas: The Hope

	Today is a historic day not just for America but also for the whole world. Hope and expectations from the new President-elect, Barack Obama, will be enormous. We all hope he will make the CHANGE happen by rescuing the American economy (along with the Global economy) and changing the global political landscape by bringing in peace and stability instead of blind aggression and wars. Three years ago (in 2005), I was sitting with one of my close friends, Buck Kulkarni, in Starbucks (Edison, NJ), sipping a hot cappuccino and discussing the political landscape of two great democracies - the USA, the oldest democracy, and India, the largest democracy. India was ruled by Dr. Manmohan Singh, a Sikh Prime Minister, Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam, a Muslim President, a Christian (Sonia Gandhi) ruling party leader, and L K Advani, a Hindu opposition leader. Where can you expect something like that? Will America ever elect a woman or an African American as President? And we thought it would take another 50 years for something like that to happen. How wrong we were.
Fast forward to 2008 - We got an African American, born to Muslim-Christian parents, brought up in Indonesia, and then by his white grandparents in Hawaii - Barack Hussein Obama, The President of the United States of America. This is the second instance that strengthened my belief in democracy. First, the farmers from India voted Congress back to power in 2004 when BJP's India Shining theme went down with the winds. These events bring back the most famous quote from Abraham Lincoln – that this (USA) nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- that government Of the people By the people For the people shall not perish from the earth.