Best of all times

We live in a perfect world. This message does not normally hit our ears these days. Rather what is heard all the time is that we are living in a grim economic situation, we are living in an age of terror, Earth is getting warmer, we are running out of water and other vital resources, a billion people are trapped in terrible poverty globally. But this is not exactly the case.

Let us just go through some very positive points. First of all the world is largely at peace. The richest and the powerful countries in the world are not in a geopolitical competition with one another, or fighting wars, engaging in arms race or cold wars. This is a historical rarity. Similar period of peace was hundreds of years ago.

Whenever we hear of a terror attack we indeed think that we are living in dangerous times but going by the facts the number of people who have died as a result of world wars, civil wars and yes terrorism has gone down since the past years. The political stability that the world has experienced has created a very powerful economic system in which the countries are flourishing.

Going by the facts in1980 the number of countries growing at 4% a year (a robust growth) were around 60. By 2007 it has already doubled. According to UN, poverty has been reduced greatly in the last 50 years. Life expectancy has increased dramatically. All this is because of rising standards of living, hygiene and medicine.

Just take a look at our laptops, cell-phones and other gadgets. Doesn't the advancement speak for itself that we have come a long way. Moreover there are so many projects and products, which are yet in their infancy.

The good news just goes on and on. Colleges have increased, the number of college graduates has increased greatly, and women have been empowered massively.

We have had daunting tasks over the last years, Wars, economic crisis, diseases (remember H1N1 and how we fought against it). We reacted, we responded and solved the problem. We are indeed living in a perfect world. All we need is to just not screw everything up!

Mrinal Shrama