Starting a national conversation

LAST month I raised the analogy of national stability as a three-legged stool – the economic, political and social. Those who are focused on the economics – mostly businessmen and economists – concentrate on raising GDP numbers. But politics is all about trade-offs between different demands from different quarters. Politics involves the power to tackle social demands on imbalances, inequalities and on how the country should be run.

But at a time of grave global uncertainties, when everything seems to change at the same time, it is the time when we all begin either to look inward or look outward. This is all about the meaning of our social contract.