Building on the gains, reversing the decline

Years come and go. Generations, likewise. They come and go with some changes for the worse that are bemoaned and others for the better that we must celebrate

- Gopalkrishna Gandhi

Did anything end yesterday, the 31st of December? Has anything begun today, the 1st of January, that is new, different? Nothing, except the calendar and the diary. Come tomorrow, and the New Year wishes, and the even more clichéd replies, will be as stale as the remnants of tea at the bottom of an unwashed mug.

Years come and go. Generations, likewise. They come and go with some changes for the worse that are bemoaned and others for the better that we must celebrate.

For instance, the human race now lives longer than earlier generations did. We eat more and better and faster than our grandparents did, if not more wisely. Unlike the world of our ancestors, ours is staggeringly connected today, webbed through cables under the sea and invisible waves in the air that make time and space immaterial.

And we can draw satisfaction from the fact that it has been 80 long years since the last World War that killed 85 million humans. Eighty long years, too, since the atom bomb fell over two cities in Japan — the first and, as of now, the last time, killing over a 100,000 in one flash and several thousand more in its slow and agonising aftermath. All those torments are behind us.