This 15th of August ... shall we commit to change ourselves?

It is India's Independence Day. Casually turning the pages of a recent magazine, I saw an IBM ad saying that the annual Global Retail Theft Barometer Survey across 36 countries in 2008 found that India has the highest shrinkage rate at 3.1%. Shrinkage is stock loss mainly due to theft by employees and customers.

Oh my God, not again. Not another Global list show-casing India's poor performance in one more area. Only recently did the cover story of Business & Economy show India near the bottom of "good" lists and near the top of "bad" lists.

How do we react in India? Public says Government is bad. Employees say managers are bad. Managers say staff is bad. Consumers say businesses are bad. Parents say college admission practices are bad. And the list goes on. The problem is, we forget that the Government, the colleges, the businesses, everything that we blame is simply us -- you and me.

Starting this Independence Day, could we try something different? Could we do some self-analysis? Ask ourselves a few questions ... Should we change our thinking? Should we change our attitudes? Our values? Our behaviors?

Self-analysis should lead to our own personal Change. When we change, we will see change in the country. Isn't that what the architect of the country's freedom -- Gandhi -- was suggesting when he so famously said "Be the Change you want to see"?