Individuals. Ideas. Institutions.

As institutions age and societies rush ahead, the challenge is keeping alive the dialogue between visionaries, the ideas they spark and the systems meant to carry them forward

- SHISHIR PRIYADARSHI

Individuals ignite imagination; institutions give it continuity

A few weeks ago, over an unhurried cup of coffee in my hometown, a friend pointed to a dilapidated bungalow across the street. “That place,” he said, “was once the headquarters of a cooperative that transformed this entire district. Started by one man with a stubborn idea—and look at it now, swallowed by a mall.”

He wasn't saying it with nostalgia as much as with a quiet warning. "That's the thing about nations,’ he added. “They rise when individuals carry ideas, and they decline when institutions forget them.” His remark lingered with me long after the conversation ended, because in one stroke he had captured what I've long believed: that human progress can be understood through a simple but profound chain—individuals, ideas, and institutions. And that the moment any link weakens, the entire chain begins to fray.

Every institution we admire today, and many we take for granted, began with the courage of an individual who refused to accept the world as it was handed to them. Sometimes this person is a reformer who pushes against tradition; sometimes an entrepreneur who dreams past today’s constraints; sometimes a thinker who asks the uncomfortable question. These individuals are the sparks. They ignite imagination, they disturb complacency, they widen the horizon of what seems possible. Yet sparks alone cannot illuminate a path for an entire society. For imagination to spread beyond personal conviction, it must be carried by something more durable—an idea.