Be the change you want to see in the world, said Mahatma Gandhi. He

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believed the change we want to see around us will only come about if each of us feels the change in our inner self. Finally after many years, change has come about and it is this change we have witnessed in our electoral verdict. Our people have voted and elected a pro-reform government. The success of this election does not lie in the decisive verdict alone, but also in the maturity shown by the Indian voter in exercising his vote.

This election holds promise for every citizen of India, because it is after a long time that a single party has emerged as a clear front runner. We needed the emergence of a single largest party rather an amalgamation of regional parties to bring in clarity in policies and long-pending reforms, which can catapult our country into a different league.

The mandate we have given this government can only succeed if the members of Parliament act as true leaders and look beyond divisions of caste, religion and state. Divisive politics has widely received a huge thumbs down and there are lessons to be learnt – we need progress, but not at the cost of dividing our country on regional grounds.

We have a long history of invaders and rulers who divided our nation on various parameters, but we have always come out victorious in our belief of unity, secularism and democracy. These are the foundations on which our nation is built and this is what we need to build on further. India has a strong intellectual infrastructure and we should use this to our advantage.

The other important realisation the Indian voter has revelled in is that, India as a country is at crossroads on the world stage — India along with China is being touted to bring the world out of the recessionary pangs. In recent years, the global view of India has been couched in terms of the daunting China comparison. It was not long ago, 1991, to be precise, when India and China had similar levels of per capita income. That was then. Now China's standard of living is more than three times that of India. The China comparison has been India's wake-up call, an example of how economic development can be propelled by pro-active government policy. Yet, China now faces major challenges in the face of imbalances of its export oriented economy.

For years, India has had to bear the brunt of coalition politics, which largely restricted reforms. The only saving grace is that the Indian economy is built on a strong foundation of local consumption. Hence, in a way, it will prove to be far more resilient in the long run than economies built on exports like China. But for this to happen the “sleeping giant” needs to be woken up through a stable government, which provides impetus to push the economy to the next level.

Every major downturn has seen the emergence of new companies and new countries. Fate has willed India to stand at this point of its history as a country that can find its rightful place on the global stage and, in the process, help the global economy on its way to recovery. Can India emerge stronger and as a country that has a larger role to play in the world?

This calls for passionate leadership. The first signs have been encouraging. The leadership now needs to focus on building infrastructure, education, healthcare facilities and providing electricity to the far flung parts of our country. The focus cannot be restricted to building cities; the outlook has to incorporate a plan for inclusive growth.

Opportunities have been knocking at our doors for a while now and there is no major world corporation, which does not have India in their plans. The issue for the past few years has not been lack of foreign investment but rather lack of political will to welcome investors and ease their entry. We need to unshackle the economy and free it from bureaucracy and red tape. We need to weed out corruption.

We require policies that promote rural growth and employment. The rural consumer base that we have today, which amounts up to 800 million needs to be boosted. The potential they hold can leapfrog our country into a different dimension. The reason being, these 800 million people are hardly leveraged and if they are educated and policy changes help them with avenues for growth, we will have the largest democracy in the world, which is well on its way to achieving the tag of a superpower, which is not highly reliant on global markets, but on its very own population. This should be thought provoking in itself and should bring in the reforms and policies that are critical to uplifting this huge populace.

This could be a great opportunity for India to now give its economy a chance to emerge as a clear front runner on the global stage. Five years of good governance and enduring leadership will pave the way for us to be placed alongside the most developed nations in the world.

But first, before the world takes notice, we as a country need to take pride in our achievements. The country should respect its own citizens and this comes from the way citizens are treated in their daily lives. We cannot afford to have one class of citizens treated differently from others. To get people to have a strong sense of pride for the nation, one has to first give them respect. The leaders should demonstrate a sense of purpose and ambition, for us to be world leaders. We as a nation need to rise above our petty needs. We should as citizens feel proud that the time has arrived for India to take the world stage and in our own humble way contribute to building Brand India. It’s time we work for our future generations so that when they look back, they remember the turn of this decade as the turning point in our history. It is time for change and we as citizens will not have anything less, because as someone said, “Nobody can go back and start a new beginning, but anyone can start today and make a new ending.”