Resurgent India Looks Ahead- Recollections and Reflections (An Old and Rare Book)

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Educated at Sawantwadi, Bombay and Columbus (Ohio State, USA), M.S. Sabnis obtained his Master of Arts in Sociology and Political Science at the Bombay University and his Ph.D. with honours in Social Administration (with specialization In Criminology and Correctional Administration) at the Ohio State University, USA, in 1951.

For the best part of his career as a social welfare administrator, Sabnis worked with socially deprived, economically exploited, vulnerable groups of people, especially young children and adolescents. Some of them may have, somehow, managed to survive the subhuman levels of living malnutrition or under nutrition, half-starvation, ill-health, ill-education and exploitation, in which they have been condemned to exist. Standing on the threshold of the twenty- first century, most of them are illiterate or semi-literate, unemployed or with no visible means of subsistence, having little of hope and cheer to look forward to. Living a precarious existence, they are seen increasingly turning to unconventional, clandestine, adventurist activity and associating themselves wi... anti-national elements.

What a frightening situation this has been for the law-abiding, peace-loving. Hardworking, upright citizens? Has it come about as a direct consequence of the administrative ineptitude, and moral and ethical misdemeanour by the persons who really matter in the management of the national affairs? What has gone wrong with the Indian democracy that it should have failed to put in the saddle, for good governance of a nation of a billion strong talented people, people more honest, conscientious and dedicated than the self- aggrandizing, squabbling politicians of to- day? Has the ship of democracy struck a serious leak? Does this warrant an immediate in-depth probe by constitutional experts? (Chapter: 22,24).

On two occasions, Sabnis carried out special assignments of the United Nations - as Expert in Social Defence at the UN Asia and the Far East Conference on Crime and the Treatment of offender, held in Rangoon (Myanmar) in 1954; and as Consultant at the UN Conference on Social Services held in New Delhi in 1959. The Government of India appointed him as one of the five United Nations correspondents in Social Defence for a five-year term (1980-1985). He had been a visiting lecturer at reputed training centres for administrators, including the prestigious Sardar Vallabbhai Police Academy (for IPS probationers) at Hyderabad.

Resurgent India Looks Ahead is not a book of either history, or ancient culture, or economics, or politics, or sociology, or international law. And yet, it contains little bits of all these branches of knowledge, and something else. The book seeks to piece together the reminiscences and recollections, which made my mind their home for a long time, of the more striking events and episodes, triumphs and tragedies that shaped and shook India and her people over the past seven decades. It attempts to blend the scattered impressions, stored in my memory which is always selective, by my own reflections and interpretations of the events to which I have been an observant witness before and after the Independence.

The book, under the first two chapter headings: (1) India That Never Fades, and (2) India That Forever Thrills, attempts to take a quick overview of the multi-faceted contribution which the more talented among the people of the first millennium A.D. and before made to the enrichment of India's many-splendored cultural and spiritual Heritage. In particular, it underlines 'the staying power' of the Indian people's undying faith in the abiding social institutions and the moral and ethical value-systems as embodied, in the five millennia old, immortal Vedas and the Upanishads, and in the incomparable Epics of the Mahabharata and the Ramayana.