Breaking of barbed wires in our blood

At the peril of sounding trite, I nevertheless would like to share the feeling of pride with each of my fellow Indians at the juncture that we have arrived today after a long and tedious 69 years of journey. There certainly was a scope of achieving so much more than what we have today...there is so much to crib about, valuable efforts and talents wasted...agree...But again, there is Dipa, our low cost Mars mission, the Chandrayaan mission, the eradication of polio amongst a whopping 1.3 billon people and bringing over 200 million people out of illiteracy are certainly aspects that gladdens my heart. We are moving ahead, even if in tiny baby steps...we have miles to go...yet, with that first step that we had taken...we had already broken the barbed wires in our psyche, that had restricted us. And to me...That is what the essence of freedom and Independence is.