55 years ago, on this day, a country was reborn. Like the Phoenix, it rose again, from the ashes of 300 years of British rule, with a dream. A dream that hundreds of thousands of Freedom Fighters gave up their lives for. A dream to make India the Golden Bird that it once used to be.

It's been more than half a century now.

We have a population of over one Billion. Out of the 10 lakh lepers in the entire world, 5 lakh are Indians.

Every year, lakhs of innocent people are killed in acts of Communalism and Terrorism. So many reports of cast injustices and inhumanity dot the newspapers that you'd think it was a trend. Illiteracy, Backwardness. And to top it all, Bureaucracy and Corruption - parasites that have managed to infest and take control of the so called "leaders of our country".

This is what the Freedom Fighters gave up their lives for, right? Is this what they saw in their dreams? An entire generation of people has gone by. The people who were given the responsibility to make the dream a reality completely forgot about it.

It's not that they didn't do anything. The IITs and IIMs - institutions created with one sole aim - to produce great minds that would take India towards its dream. It's not that these institutions have'nt been successful - just count the number of these "Millionaire NRIs" in the Silicon Valley, and you'll know.

I guess it's all up to us - the generation that still has a chance to do something. We have a very simple choice to make: Either we follow the myopic principle of our immediate predecessors and "Live Life For ThySelf". Or we make India the dream that the Freedom Fighters gave up their lives for.